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    For Nobody's Eyes Only: Missing Government Files and Hidden Archives That Document the Truth Behind the Most Enduring Conspiracy Theories
    For Nobody's Eyes Only: Missing Government Files and Hidden Archives That Document the Truth Behind the Most Enduring Conspiracy Theories
    For Nobody's Eyes Only: Missing Government Files and Hidden Archives That Document the Truth Behind the Most Enduring Conspiracy Theories
    Ebook308 pages4 hours

    For Nobody's Eyes Only: Missing Government Files and Hidden Archives That Document the Truth Behind the Most Enduring Conspiracy Theories

    By Nick Redfern

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    About this ebook

    The author of Body Snatchers in the Desert investigates hidden government files on conspiracies and coverups from UFOs to JFK and Princess Diana.
     
    Under the Freedom of Information Act, government agencies have declassified millions of pages of documents on numerous subjects. But there are many files that have not been released. Some supposedly can’t be found, or suspiciously missing. Some contain top-secret information that agencies are determined to keep secret. The reason: to prevent the truth behind some of the biggest conspiracies of all time from ever surfacing.
     
    For Nobody’s Eyes Only includes fascinating new information on the stories behind these mysterious documents. Here you will read about the buried files and photos documenting the Roswell UFO crash of 1947; the secret records of the JFK assassination; the sensational missing data behind the Watergate scandal; and the mysteriously vanished documents on the CIAs mind-control operation, Project MK-Ultra. This volume also discusses the nature of how documents are deemed classified and top secret.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 21, 2013
    ISBN9781601635037
    For Nobody's Eyes Only: Missing Government Files and Hidden Archives That Document the Truth Behind the Most Enduring Conspiracy Theories
    Author

    Nick Redfern

    Nick Redfern began his writing career in the 1980s on Zero—a British-based magazine devoted to music, fashion, and the world of entertainment. He has written numerous books, including Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, and has contributed articles to numerous publications, including the London Daily Express, Eye Spy magazine, and Military Illustrated. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

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    Book preview

    For Nobody's Eyes Only - Nick Redfern

    FOR NOBODY’S EYES ONLY

    FOR NOBODY’S EYES ONLY

    MISSING GOVERNMENT FILES AND

    HIDDEN ARCHIVES THAT DOCUMENT

    THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MOST

    ENDURING CONSPIRACY THEORIES

    NICK REDFERN

    Copyright © 2014 by Nick Redfern

    All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

    FOR NOBODY’S EYES ONLY

    Cover design by Howard Grossman/12E Design

    Printed in the U.S.A.

    To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press.

    The Career Press, Inc.

    220 West Parkway, Unit 12

    Pompton Plains, NJ 07444

    www.careerpress.com

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Redfern, Nicholas, 1964-

    For nobody’s eyes only : missing government files and hidden archives that document the truth behind the most enduring conspiracy theories / Nick Redfern.

    pages cm

    Summary: Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, govern-ment agencies have declassified millions of pages of documents on numerous subjects. But there are other files, many of a far more intriguing nature than those the government has already released. They’re the ones that agencies haven’t released. They include the files that supposedly can’t be found, that are suspiciously missing, as well as the top-secret papers that agencies admit exist but which they are determined to keep hidden from us. The reason: to prevent the truth behind some of the biggest conspiracies of all time from ever surfacing. For Nobody’s Eyes Only includes fascinating new information on: The conspiracy-filled story of the buried files and photos documenting the legendary Roswell UFO crash of 1947 The truth about the secret records of the JFK assassination that still remain sealed from public view The sensational and missing data behind the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon The mysteriously vanished documents on the CIA’s controversial mind-control operation, Project MKUltra It will also discuss the nature of how documents are deemed classified and top secret. For Nobody’s Eyes Only picks the locks to the secret vaults they don’t want any of us to see-- Provided by publisher.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-1-60163-288-3 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60163-503-7 (ebook) 1. Conspiracies--United States--History--20th century. 2. United States--Politics and government--1945-1989. 3. Security classification (Government documents)--United States. 4. Classification. I. Title.

    E839.5.R374 2013

       352.3’79--dc23

    2013035451

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    I would like to offer my very sincere thanks and deep appreciation to everyone at New Page Books and Career Press, particularly Michael Pye, Laurie Kelly-Pye, Kirsten Dalley, Roger Sheety, Gina Talucci, Jeff Piasky, and Adam Schwartz; and to all the staff at Warwick Associates for their fine promotion and publicity campaigns. I would also like to say a very big thank you to my literary agent, Lisa Hagan, for all her hard work and help.

    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    Part 1: What Secrecy Means

    1: Welcome to the World of Top Secrets

    2: Freedom of Information and Need to Know

    Part 2: UFOs, Aliens, and Cosmic Conspiracies

    3: The Roswell Files: Abducted!

    4: You Can’t See the Files for the Trees

    5: UFO Dossiers: Denied and Disappeared

    6: Inventing an Alien Invasion

    Part 3: Files on Famous Faces

    7: Marilyn, Moon Dust, and a Missing Diary

    8: Squidgygate and Secret Tapes

    9: A Celebrity Sorcerer Goes Spying

    Part 4: Secret Government Projects

    10: Missing More Often Than Not

    11: An Ultra-Controversial Project

    12: Fanning the Flames of Conspiracy

    13: Experiments on Humans

    14: A Secret Space Program

    Part 5: Presidents, Politicians, and Powerful People

    15: Death in Dallas

    16: Hoover’s Secret Files Get Hoovered

    17: Wiping the Slate Clean

    18: Seventy Years in the Making

    Conclusion

    Bibliography

    Index

    About the Author

    INTRODUCTION

    Mahatma Gandhi, the man who ultimately led India to gain independence from the United Kingdom, made a wise and knowing statement: A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. Gandhi’s words were intended to be interpreted in a wholly positive fashion. That is to say, when people put their minds to tasks at hand, and their belief is solid, strong, and unswerving, they can achieve just about anything and everything they desire (Prabhu and Rao, 1998).

    There is, however, another body of determined spirits who have an unquenchable faith in their mission and who can, and assuredly have, altered the course of history. They have done so in two most unfortunate ways: by hiding history and, sometimes, even by erasing it from the face of the Earth. And who might they be? They are nothing less than a small but influential body of characters secreted within the highest echelons of government. Following secret agendas, they have buried, burned, shredded, and hidden from the general public an incalculable number of Top Secret files that, if released and made available for one and all to see, would undoubtedly rewrite significant portions of 20th- and 21st-century history.

    Government files and records get destroyed or denied release for all manner of reasons, not all of them, or even most of them, remotely sinister. And on this matter, it’s vital, at the outset, to dispel some widely held views, opinions, assumptions, and prejudices. Often, conspiracy theorists point fingers at government agencies and, by default, practically accuse all of their collective employees of being implicated in countless cases of controversial chicanery and coverup. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of all employees of officialdom—whether of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, or of Britain’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6—are not engaged in any form of deceit, deception, and conspiracy. Indeed, the exact opposite is the case.

    Most of those who work in the arena of government, and for whom highlevel secrets are part and parcel of their everyday work, should not be demonized. They are loyal, patriotic individuals doing their utmost to defend their respective nations and people from enemies and aggressors. Unfortunately, the actions of the few often create situations that reflect upon, and sorely taint, the many. It is those few, those who wield significant power, and who sometimes operate outside of the law when the mood takes them or circumstances dictate is necessary, who we have in our sights in For Nobody’s Eyes Only.

    In the pages that follow, you will learn how, and why, the classified files on the infamous UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 cannot be found. Anywhere. You’ll also learn why not even the United States Congress, the Air Force, and the Government Accountability Office (the investigative arm of Congress) could locate the records pertaining to the alleged alien event. You’ll come to appreciate how and why an almost identical situation applies to what might be termed a British Roswell. It’s an out of this world incident that occurred in December 1980 that shook the British government to its foundations. Like Roswell, it’s also a saga dominated by missing records and vanished files.

    Moving away from UFOs, there are major questions to be answered, many of them relative to the world of Hollywood and famous faces. Why, for example, does the CIA deny holding any files on the world’s most famous blond, Marilyn Monroe, when documented evidence from other agencies demonstrates the agency does have records on the legendary star? As for Diana, Princess of Wales—arguably one of the most famous faces of all time—who is it that sits tight on the hours upon hours of illegal recordings of her private phone calls with close confidantes and secret lovers?

    What about classified government projects of a highly controversial nature? We’re talking, specifically, about mind control, the use of human test subjects in radiation-based experiments, and even officialdom’s deep digging into the dark and disturbing arena of black magic, Satanism, and the occult. We know the projects existed, but where are the records? Who is hiding them? Who destroyed them? Why is their very existence denied?

    And speaking of missing records, the Watergate affair that brought down President Nixon, the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the secret stash of files of legendary FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover: They all fall under our scrutiny in the chapters that follow.

    I started the Introduction to this book with a quote about history. So, it’s only appropriate that I should finish the Introduction with one, too. It comes from Napoleon Bonaparte, the first emperor of France: History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon (Self-Made Myth, 2013).

    PART 1: WHAT SECRECY MEANS

    1: WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOP SECRETS

    To understand how and why government agencies classify data, it is important to have an appreciation of the nature of what constitutes classified material, as well as the various levels of secrecy that exist within officialdom and why. Often, the term Top Secret is recklessly tossed around by conspiracy theorists—usually in distinctly misleading style—to describe the contents of a particular file that is withheld by officialdom, or the circumstances surrounding an event that is considered to be deeply sensitive. In reality, most governments have systems in place that allow for documentation to be covered at varying degrees of classification, not just Top Secret. Those classifications depend on (a) the gravity of the particular material, and (b) the extent to which national security might be damaged if the data was released or compromised. And contrary to popular belief, there are no categories that are classified above Top Secret. Rather, there are restricted access projects that, to gain entry to their inner sanctums, a person may be required to provide additional clearance in the form of a particular codeword. These operations are known as Special Access Programs, or SAPs. If it all sounds a bit confusing, well, read on.

    SECRECY IN THE STATES

    Let’s begin with the United States of America. National security statutes and regulations are defined by what is termed an Executive Order of the President. The most recent one—EO 13526—was passed on December 29, 2009, by President Barack Obama. The EO makes it clear that within the United States there are three specific levels of official secrecy: Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential. As for the highest degree of classification, we are told that: Top Secret shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe. Material considered to be of Secret level is described in similar terms to those which apply to Top Secret status, except that, whereas the unauthorized release of Top Secret material may cause "grave damage to U.S. national security, Secret material leaked outside of official channels might provoke serious damage." Regarding the Confidential category, this is the lowest level of secrecy in the United States’ military, government, and intelligence arenas. Even so, EO 13526 makes it clear that significant damage to security of the nation could still occur if data of a Confidential level was compromised and shared with hostile forces (Executive Order 13526—Classified National Security Information, 2009).

    The National Archives, Maryland, is home to millions of pages of formerly classified files. ©Nick Redfern

    As for the particular topics that fall under the umbrella of EO 13526, they include: (a) Army, Navy, and Air Force strategies and programs; (b) the current state of U.S. military capabilities; (c) information on overseas—and potentially—enemy nations; (d) the means by which the U.S. government secures intelligence-based data; (e) the names and locations of both domestic and foreign covert sources of material; (f) the ways America can defend its nuclear arsenals; and (g) matters relative to one of the biggest, potential problems facing the free world today: weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

    DECLASSIFICATION AND NON-DECLASSIFICATION

    It is a fallacy to assume that all documentation, regardless of its level of secrecy, ultimately gets declassified by those U.S. agencies that are withholding it or have jurisdiction over it. EO 13526 makes it clear that at the time the security level of a particular document is decided upon, the original classification authority shall establish a specific date or event for declassification based on the duration of the national security sensitivity of the information. If, however, the person or persons who determined whether a particular file should be stamped Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret cannot decide upon a particular time when declassification should occur, information shall be marked for declassification 10 years from the date of the original decision, unless the original classification authority otherwise determines that the sensitivity of the information requires that it be marked for declassification for up to 25 years from the date of the original decision (Executive Order 13526—Classified National Security Information, 2009).

    As for any data that might be considered important enough to be withheld for more than a quarter of a century, this requires certain standards and procedures for classifying information to be carefully studied. This, generally at least, revolves around the important question of: How damaging to national security might it be to release the relevant file, regardless of its ever-increasing age? As a result, files can, and assuredly do, get withheld for more than 25 years. Nevertheless, as the documentation that President Obama put into place on December 29, 2009, makes clear: No information may remain classified indefinitely (Ibid.). Technically, that is completely true. But, even so, there are still a number of means and methods by which data can remain outside of the public domain for decades, even lifetimes. Let’s look at the facts on the matter.

    Section 3.3 of EO 13526, titled Automatic Declassification, informs government personnel that: ...all classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2) have been determined to have permanent historical value...shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed. That is, theoretically, in the year that the book you are now reading was published, 2013, every single document ever produced by the U.S. government up until 1988 should now be in the public domain. Then, in 2014, the 1989 files should be declassified. Well, sometimes it works like that, but certainly not always. Although millions of pages of formerly classified files can be accessed in person at the National Archives, in College Park, Maryland, there is a particular clause contained within Section 3.3 of EO 13526 that has a major bearing upon this 25-year-long period of limitation on what we can, or often cannot, be allowed to see (Ibid.).

    The clause in question allows the directors of government agencies the ability and right to deny the public and the media access to files that are older than 25 years, providing certain criteria are met. Those criteria cover, as one would expect, a wealth of critical national security–themed matters, including such issues as U.S. military technology, sources and methods of gathering intelligence data, safety issues surrounding the president and his staff, plans for war, and relations with overseas nations, both friendly and aggressive. As a result, and on many occasions, a period of 25 years is not the end of the line, after all. And should anyone within government decide to sidestep these regulations, and surreptitiously share secret files with outsiders, he or she can end up in deep trouble. It may even mean spending the rest of his or her days securely locked in a small room in Guantanamo Bay.

    TALKING OUT OF TURN

    One of the actions that the U.S. government can take against those employees that do leak classified material is to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917, which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. A little-known piece of legislation that, as its name suggests, is now almost a century old, it is still in regular use to this day. Certainly, one of the most visible examples of how the act has been used in recent years is in the case of Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army soldier who was placed under arrest in May 2010 for passing classified materials on to WikiLeaks, the controversial and notorious body overseen by the equally controversial Australian Julian Assange. Two years later, in 2012, a former CIA officer named John Kiriakou was charged under the terms of the same act for sharing secret information with journalists on matters relative to undercover agents involved in crushing al-Qaeda.

    Secrets, as all the above shows, are a fact of life in government. They are also guarded and maintained with the utmost zeal. Sometimes, however, secrets are allowed to enter the public domain, as we shall now see.

    2: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND NEED TO KNOW

    It was on Independence Day 1966 that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an historic piece of documentation that brought into being the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The FOIA permits members of the general public and the media the right to file a request with government agencies to (a) obtain copies of files that may already be declassified, or (b) request that files which are currently withheld—either in whole or in part—be declassified into the public arena. The FOIA, however, is not a tool that is guaranteed to open all doors. There are many clauses within the act that permit government, military, and intelligence-based bodies to withhold their files, if they deem it appropriate to do so. The grounds for denial of access to files via the FOIA include national security concerns, matters having a bearing on the defense of the nation, privacy issues, data relative to legal and criminal subjects, and the internal operations of the relevant agency or agencies.

    As all of the above shows, although there certainly are ways and means by which government-based Top Secret files may be declassified, there are also stringent laws available that allow for the continued non-disclosure of records for many years—decades, in some cases, and particularly so where agency chiefs have deemed the papers to be extremely sensitive. It’s much the same in other countries, too.

    SECRETS OF THE OFFICIAL KIND

    In the same, precise way that official documentation in the United States is subject to varying levels of secrecy, such is also the situation in the UK. The classifications in Britain are, in rising order of importance: Unclassified, Protect, Restricted, Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.

    In the UK, a piece of legislation exists that is designed to prevent certain employees of Her Majesty’s government from breaching security and sharing classified materials with non-cleared individuals. It is called the Official Secrets Act (OSA). Those that fall under the auspices of the OSA are termed Crown Servants. This includes members of the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and British Army, as well as employees of British Intelligence, such as MI5 (the UK’s version of the FBI), MI6 (Britain’s CIA), and the Government Communications Headquarters (the British equivalent of the United States’ National Security Agency). Prosecution under the terms of the OSA, for such actions as revealing the contents of classified documents, can result in lengthy prison sentences, particularly if potentially dangerous damage to national security could have resulted, has resulted, or, in the future, still might result.

    As far as the general public’s right to access official documentation in the UK is concerned, this used to fall under the banner of what was called the Thirty Year Rule, a 1958 creation of the British Parliament. As its title implies, the Thirty Year Rule ensured that all government records, regardless of their level of sensitivity, remained behind closed doors until a period of 30 years had passed since their creation. At that point, they were flagged for review by the agency

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