Goldwater letter to Shlomo Arnon (1975)

Goldwater letter to Shlomo Arnon (1975)

Date	28 March 1975
From	Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), major general in the Air Force Reserve
To	Shlomo Arnon, UFO researcher (identified as "S.A." by Leonard Stringfield)
Key line	"It is still classified above Top Secret."
Claim	Ten or twelve years earlier he had been refused access to the Wright-Patterson building holding the Air Force's UFO information
Published	By Stringfield in Status Report II (January 1980), with Goldwater letters of 1974 and 1979
Air Force position	1985: no extraterrestrial visitors or equipment, ever, at Wright-Patterson
Topics	Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Congress & law (topic), Bases & Area 51 (topic)
People	Barry Goldwater, Shlomo Arnon, Leonard Stringfield
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 80
Year	1975 in UFO history
Timeline	1975 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	14

On 28 March 1975 Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona wrote to the UFO researcher Shlomo Arnon about a request he had made ten or twelve years earlier. He had tried to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the Air Force's UFO information was stored, and had been "understandably denied".^[1][11][12] "It is still classified above Top Secret," he added. He said he had heard of plans to release the material and was "just as anxious" as Arnon to see it.^[1][12] The letter became one of the most quoted pieces of evidence for a UFO cover-up. Goldwater's other letters on the subject are more guarded, and the Air Force has denied that anything extraterrestrial was ever at the base.^[4][12]

The letter

As published by Leonard Stringfield, the letter makes these points:^[1][11][12]

• His interest. UFOs had interested him "for some long time".
• The request. About ten or twelve years earlier, so around the early 1960s, he had tried to learn what was in the building at Wright-Patterson "where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force". He was "understandably denied".
• The classification. "It is still classified above Top Secret."
• Release. He had heard of "a plan underway to release some, if not all, of this material in the near future". He hoped "we will not have to wait too much longer".

The researcher Grant Cameron notes that Goldwater told the researcher Lee Graham that much of the material was "Above Top Secret". Cameron adds that whether any such category exists has been debated in the UFO community ever since.^[10]

The other letters

Stringfield printed three Goldwater letters side by side in his Status Report II of January 1980. He noted that "couched in each there is a variation in the text":^[12]

• To Stringfield, 3 December 1974. Goldwater said he neither believed nor disbelieved in UFOs, given "the billions of planets in our universe". He had "never seen a UFO", nor had any friend, though he had read accounts by reputable pilots. Long ago, he wrote, "I made an effort to get in the room at Wright-Patterson Field where the information was stored and I was denied this request, understandably. Frankly, I'm no expert on this subject."
• To Arnon, 28 March 1975. This is the letter above, the only one to mention a classification.
• To Lee Graham, 11 April 1979. Graham had asked about Stringfield's use of the 1974 letter. Goldwater replied that he had been denied access to a facility at Wright-Patterson: "Because I never got in, I can't tell you what was inside. We both know about the rumors." He had "never seen what I would call a UFO, but I have intelligent friends who have".

Stringfield read the letters as showing that Goldwater had been barred from a facility holding top-secret information he believed concerned alien craft and bodies.^[12]

The 1978 paper

Stringfield first used Goldwater's words in "Retrievals of the Third Kind", his paper for the MUFON symposium of July 1978. It was later serialised in Flying Saucer Review and is unofficially called Status Report I.^[3][7][12] There he quoted the December 1974 letter to himself, not the Arnon letter. He linked it to a security guard's account of a special area at Wright-Patterson.^[12] The paper also included the account of Roswell's "Major J.M.", later identified as Jesse Marcel.^[6] Its catalogue page on Goodreads holds no details of the text.^[9] In Status Report II, a source called "JK" told Stringfield he had been at Wright-Patterson when Goldwater visited, hoping for permission from General Curtis LeMay to see the UFO evidence. The refusal, JK said, "caused quite a fiasco on the base".^[12]

LeMay

Goldwater later named LeMay as the man who turned him down. In an interview in The New Yorker of 25 April 1988, he said he had repeatedly asked his friend whether a secret UFO room existed at Wright-Patterson and whether he could see it. An angry LeMay gave him "holy hell" and said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."^[1][13] On Larry King's radio show in 1988, Goldwater said he believed the government was withholding UFO evidence. He added: "I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about – and probably never will unless the Air Force discloses them."^[1]

His account was not always consistent. When reporters reached him in 1974, after Robert Spencer Carr's claims about alien bodies in "Hangar 18", Goldwater confirmed that he had asked for a tour and been refused. But he said he had never heard any rumours of alien bodies.^[14]

Goldwater

Goldwater (1909–1998) represented Arizona in the Senate from 1953 to 1965 and from 1969 to 1987, and was the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.^[2] His military career:^[2]

• The war. He was a wartime pilot.
• The Guard. He founded the Arizona Air National Guard in 1946.
• The Reserve. In the early 1960s, as a major general, he commanded the 9999th Air Reserve Squadron. He retired from the Guard in 1967.
• Intelligence. From 1981 he chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. In 1984 he publicly rebuked the CIA over the mining of Nicaragua's harbours.

According to Cameron, Goldwater answered many constituents' UFO letters, was a member of the civilian group NICAP, and corresponded about UFOs with the University of Arizona scientist James McDonald.^[10] Cameron also relays claims by Steven Greer that Goldwater called the secrecy "a damn mistake". In the same account, a later call Goldwater made at Greer's request to Bobby Ray Inman "scared" him away from the subject. These claims rest on Greer's account.^[10]

Wright-Patterson

Wright-Patterson was the home of Project Blue Book. It has long been the subject of legends of a "Hangar 18" or "Blue Room" holding crashed-saucer debris and alien bodies.^[4] The Air Force has denied the stories:^[4][14]

• Hangar 18. It says no "Hangar 18" has ever existed at the base, though there is a Building 18.
• The 1985 statement. In January 1985 it said, "There are not now, nor have there ever been, any extraterrestrial visitors or equipment on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base."

An online page about the base's "Blue Room" on Sacred Texts refused automated access.^[5] Stringfield, the letter's first publisher, spent decades collecting anonymous crash-retrieval testimony. He died in 1994, and his papers went to MUFON in 2012.^[3][8]

Assessment

The letters show that a senior senator and Reserve general asked for access to something at Wright-Patterson in the early 1960s and was refused.^[12] They do not show what the facility held. Goldwater himself said he never got inside and could not say what was there.^[12] The "above Top Secret" line appears only in the Arnon letter. His other letters describe the matter in more modest terms, and he denied in 1974 having heard of alien bodies.^[12][14] Some take the refusal as evidence of material held outside normal oversight. Others note that many classified programs at a major research base could explain it. The Air Force says there was never any extraterrestrial material there.^[4]

People and topics

• Barry Goldwater — U.S. senator and Air Force Reserve general who said he was denied access to UFO material at Wright-Patterson.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Shlomo Arnon — Researcher who received Barry Goldwater's 1975 letter about classified UFO information.
• Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — The Ohio air base that housed Project Blue Book and is linked to the Hangar 18 legend.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.

On the Timeline

• Unmarked helicopter claim (1975) (14 March 1975) — An Air Force officer says unmarked helicopters are sent to UAP-related sites.
• Transfer of the Blue Book files (1975) (April 1975) — Blue Book files are withdrawn from public access; some papers are allegedly destroyed or redacted.

See every 1975 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Barry Goldwater”, “Leonard H. Stringfield”, “Wright-Patterson Air Force Base”, “Hangar 18 (conspiracy theory)”, “Wright-Patterson Air Force Base”, “Hangar 18 (conspiracy theory)”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.