Sarbacher letter (1983)

Sarbacher letter (1983)

Date	29 November 1983
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
People	Robert Sarbacher, Wilbert Smith, William Steinman, Vannevar Bush
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 96
Year	1983 in UFO history
Timeline	1983 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	9

The Sarbacher letter is a letter of 29 November 1983 from the physicist and businessman Robert I. Sarbacher to the UFO researcher William Steinman. In it, Sarbacher said that while he was a consultant to the Pentagon's Research and Development Board, he had heard that "certain materials reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and very tough". He named John von Neumann and Vannevar Bush as "definitely involved", and thought Robert Oppenheimer was too.^[1][9] He stressed that he had not been involved in any recovery himself and could not attend the meetings he was invited to.^[1] The letter followed Steinman's discovery of notes of a 1950 conversation between Sarbacher and the Canadian engineer Wilbert B. Smith, in which Sarbacher allegedly said flying saucers were real and their subject "classified two points higher even than the H-bomb".^[5][6] Together, the Smith documents and the Sarbacher letter are among the most quoted sources in crash-retrieval research. They are also hearsay: Sarbacher said he had seen nothing himself.^[5]

Robert Sarbacher

• Background. Robert Irving Sarbacher (1907–1986) was a Harvard graduate who became dean of the graduate school at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was an inventor and consultant to government agencies, with a special interest in remote-controlled rockets. He later founded the Washington Institute of Technology, whose letterhead described it as working in oceanographic and physical sciences.^[1][6]
• The Research and Development Board. Sarbacher was connected with the Defense Department's Research and Development Board (RDB) as a consultant.^[5][6]
  • In the letter he described his role as limited: he was one of the "dollar-a-year men", for whom his own business came first.^[1]
  • The researcher T. Scott Crain later interviewed Fred A. Darwin, a former executive director of the board. Darwin said Sarbacher "had virtually no connection with the activities" of the RDB. Darwin had got him appointed to the Guidance and Control Panel, but after a couple of months the chairman asked for him to be replaced because "he never came to the meetings".^[5]
• His son's account. According to the Canadian website NOUFORS, a researcher later located Sarbacher's son. The son said his father believed UFOs were real because they could turn 90 degrees at 600 mph without slowing. He also said his father had been asked to design missiles carrying cameras to track and photograph them, not to destroy them.^[6] This account has not been confirmed elsewhere in the sources read here.
• Death. Sarbacher died in the summer of 1986.^[6]

The 1950 conversation with Wilbert Smith

• Smith. Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was a senior radio engineer in Canada's Department of Transport. In 1949 and 1950 he was Canada's chief delegate to the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement conferences.^[3]
• The meeting. During a trip to Washington in September 1950, Smith asked staff at the Canadian Embassy to find out whether flying saucers were real.^[4][5]
  • According to embassy correspondence later described by the researcher David Rudiak, the military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Bremner, arranged an interview with Sarbacher on 15 September 1950.^[4]
  • Notes of the meeting, "written from memory" but kept "as nearly verbatum [sic] as possible", record the exchange.^[5] Randle suspects the notes were Bremner's, while Rudiak describes them as Smith's own handwritten notes.^[4][5]
• What Sarbacher reportedly said. In the notes, Smith said he had read Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers. Asked how much of it was true, Sarbacher replied that "the facts reported in the book are substantially true".^[5] Then, in summary:
  • Asked whether the saucers existed: "Yes, they exist."^[5]
  • Asked whether they worked on magnetic principles: "We have not been able to duplicate their performance."^[5]
  • Asked whether they came from another planet: "All we know is, we didn't make them, and it's pretty certain they didn't originate on earth."^[5]
  • On secrecy: the subject was "classified two points higher than the H-bomb. In fact it is the most highly classified subject in the U.S. Government at the present time." Asked why: "You may ask, but I can't tell you."^[5]
• Smith's memo. On 21 November 1950 Smith wrote a memo to his department asking to study geomagnetism as a possible way to detect flying saucers.^[3]
  • It reported that the Americans considered flying saucers real, that their study was more highly classified than the hydrogen bomb, and that it was led by a small group under Dr Vannevar Bush.^[3]
  • The request was approved as Project Magnet.^[3]
  • Rudiak notes that the September notes do not mention Bush or "mental phenomena", so Smith must have got those details from other sources.^[4]
• Classification. The memo was marked "Top Secret" until it was downgraded to "Confidential" in 1969.^[3] A commenter on Kevin Randle's blog who corresponded with Dr Omond Solandt, head of Canada's Defence Research Board, said Solandt wrote that Smith had no authority to mark anything top secret.^[4]
• How it surfaced. Smith died of cancer in December 1962.^[3] His papers passed to the retired Canadian air force pilot Arthur Bray, who brought the memo to light.^[3][6]
  • NOUFORS dates the discovery to the early 1980s.^[6] The earlier version of this article said around 1978, which is not covered in the sources read here.
  • NOUFORS also gives Smith's year of death as 1961, which conflicts with the 1962 date in the Wikipedia account.^[3][6]

The 1983 letter

• Background. Steinman, who had obtained a copy of the 1950 notes, tracked Sarbacher down and wrote to him with lists of questions, including names of people alleged to have been involved in crash recoveries.^[1][5] Sarbacher confirmed that the 1950 interview had taken place.^[5] He replied in detail on 29 November 1983, on the letterhead of the Washington Institute of Technology, where he was president and chairman of the board.^[1]
• What he wrote. Answering Steinman's numbered questions, Sarbacher said:^[1]
  • He "had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery and have no knowledge regarding the dates of the recoveries".
  • "John von Neuman was definitely involved. Dr. Vannever Bush was definitely involved, and I think Dr. Robert Oppenheimer also." [sic]
  • Because his role with the board "under Doctor Compton during the Eisenhower administration" was limited, he had been invited to several discussions about the recoveries but could not attend. He thought Wernher von Braun and others on Steinman's list "were probably asked and may or may not have attended".
  • He had received some official reports at his Pentagon office but left them there, as they were never supposed to leave the office. He did not recall receiving any photographs.
  • He recalled an interview with "Dr. Brenner of the Canadian Embassy", which appears to refer to the 1950 meeting.
• The materials and the "aliens". "About the only thing I remember at this time," he wrote, "is that certain materials reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and very tough. I am sure our laboratories analyzed them very carefully."^[1]
  • There were also reports that "instruments or people operating these machines were also of very light weight, sufficient to withstand the tremendous deceleration and acceleration".^[1]
  • From talking with people at the office, he had "the impression these 'aliens' were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth", so that their low mass kept inertial forces low.^[1]
• Secrecy. "I still do not know why the high order of classification has been given and why the denial of the existence of these devices," he wrote. He suggested Steinman contact others "who may be more directly involved".^[1]
• Postscript. He added that Steinman had misspelled Bush's name.^[1]

Other interviews

• Friedman and Clark. The researchers Stanton Friedman and Jerome Clark also contacted Sarbacher. He confirmed that Steinman had reported him accurately, while making clear that his knowledge was second-hand.^[5]
• Friedman's 1983 interview. In a transcript posted on Metabunk, Friedman read Sarbacher the "two points higher than the H-bomb" line from Smith's notes.^[7]
  • Sarbacher replied, "I don't have the slightest idea why... It seems silly to me."^[7]
  • Asked why he had refused to explain the classification, he said, "Well probably cause I didn't know."^[7]
  • When Friedman pointed out that the notes mentioned no crash and asked whether one might have come later, Sarbacher said, "I don't know there may have been several of them. Ah there was some talk that there were."^[7]
  • Metabunk contributors argued over whether Friedman's questions led him.^[7]
• A naive witness? According to Bruce Maccabee and Clark, Sarbacher was "ignorant of UFO history" and did not even know what Project Blue Book was. Randle suggests this means he had not been influenced by the Roswell stories, which were not yet widely known in 1983.^[5]
• Consistency. One summary, reproduced by NOUFORS from HowStuffWorks, says that Sarbacher's story "never varied" and that he resisted the temptation to elaborate. It adds that all who interviewed him were impressed, but the story could not be verified because the people he named were dead.^[6]

Assessment

• Hearsay. Randle concludes that Sarbacher's information "falls into the category of hearsay rather than observation". It came from reports he had read and people he had talked to, not from anything he had seen.^[5] The earlier version of this article noted that his recollections came 33 years after the fact and were second-hand, which matches the sources.
• The Smith memo. Randle has argued that Smith's memo is "one man's opinion", based on unofficial side conversations prompted by the flying saucer books of 1950. It does not show an official U.S. or Canadian position or prove that crashes happened.^[4]
  • Rudiak counters that the surrounding correspondence shows high-level involvement.^[4]
  • In that correspondence, Solandt and Bush were to review a magazine article by Donald Keyhoe about Smith's theories. Solandt later admitted to discussing flying saucers "informally" with Bush.^[4]
• Smith's later beliefs. Sceptics note that Smith later claimed telepathic contact with "space brothers". Material attributed to him was published after his death as The Boys from Topside (1969) and The New Science.^[3][7]
• MJ-12. A commenter on Randle's blog argued that the memo's mention of Bush prompted the archival research by William Moore, Friedman and Jaime Shandera that preceded the MJ-12 documents, which he called a forgery.^[4] Rudiak links Sarbacher's interviews to the claims of Eric Walker, whom Sarbacher reportedly named.^[4]
• Later relevance. In 2023, after David Grusch's claims, a Canadian member of Parliament wrote to the defence minister that Canadian defence research had studied UFOs "circa 1950". Randle believes this referred to the Smith–Sarbacher episode.^[5]
• Authenticity. The earlier version of this article said "both documents are genuine". Randle says the Smith memo "has a provenance and no one is disputing that". Sarbacher confirmed his letter's contents to several researchers.^[4][5] Neither document proves that a crash retrieval took place.^[4][5]

People and topics

• Robert Sarbacher — Physicist who wrote in 1983 that he heard recovered UFO materials were studied.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Wilbert Smith — Canadian radio engineer who ran Project Magnet and recorded talks with Robert Sarbacher.
• Project Magnet — A Canadian Department of Transport study of magnetism and UFOs run by Wilbert Smith in the early 1950s.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• William Steinman — Researcher who corresponded with Robert Sarbacher and Eric Walker.
• Vannevar Bush — Wartime science leader named in the MJ-12 papers.
• Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.

On the Timeline

• Montauk Phoenix and Rainbow claims (1983) — Alleged Montauk projects reportedly used radio and microwaves in mind experiments.
• Saucer-like helicopters claim (1984) (11 March 1984) — Kit Green tells Vallée some military helicopters were designed to look like flying saucers.

See every 1983 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Wilbert Brockhouse Smith”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.