Westwood on MJ-12 disinformation (2001)

Westwood on MJ-12 disinformation (2001)

Date	5 May 2001
Topics	Disinformation & hoaxes (topic)
People	Jacques Vallée, Jim Westwood, Robert M. Wood, Harold Puthoff, Ryan Wood
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 145
Year	2001 in UFO history
Timeline	2001 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	15

Westwood on MJ-12 disinformation refers to the views of James T. ("Jim") Westwood, a retired U.S. Navy officer and intelligence consultant, as recorded in the journals of Jacques Vallée. On 5 May 2001, at a meeting of the Science Advisory Board of Robert Bigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) in Las Vegas, Westwood spoke about the history of the UFO field and the disinformation surrounding it. He again dismissed the MJ-12 documents and Roswell as counter-intelligence exercises designed to flush out foreign spies.^[1][12] Vallée wrote that Westwood left "this idealistic group of scientists with an impression of dread mixed with disgust".^[1] Westwood's views were not fixed. In later years Vallée recorded him passing on claims of genuine crash reports, secret "iron post" sources and a hidden reverse-engineering program.^[1][13][14]

James T. Westwood

The Australian researcher Keith Basterfield compiled what is known of Westwood in a 2023 post.^[1]

• Navy writer. From 1970 to 1988 Lieutenant Commander James T. Westwood wrote numerous articles for the Naval War College Review, on subjects including Soviet naval strategy and intelligence operations, and became a specialist on the Soviet navy. He also wrote an article for the NSA's website on electronic warfare and signals intelligence at the start of World War I.
• Intelligence background. A 2020 article described his background in electronic warfare, unmanned aerial vehicles, cryptology and Sovietology, and his work as a military intelligence consultant. Vallée called him a "former CIA expert on fake soviet documents who had created similar fakes for disinformation". A note in Vallée's fifth volume says he "was retired from a classified unit that designed fake documents" to deceive foreign intelligence agents, and was also an expert in analysing Soviet documents obtained by U.S. intelligence.
• UFO interests. He wrote "Why Do The Lights Go Out?" for UFO Magazine in 1994, on electrical failures linked to UFOs and microwave weapons. In June 1998 he visited Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to look into a claimed 1941 crash there.
• Defence work. In a 2005 letter to Skeptic, Westwood described working, as a senior defence analyst at a major defence electronics firm, on an artificial-intelligence airborne analyst for the CIA, which he said would never fly.
• A colleague's memory. A commenter on Basterfield's post recalled working alongside Lieutenant Commander Westwood in 1973–74 at the naval security group activity at Winter Harbor.

The entries come from Vallée's published journals, Forbidden Science. The fourth volume, The Spring Hill Chronicles, covers 1990 to 1999 and includes meetings with the NIDS board, congressmen and intelligence officials. The fifth, Pacific Heights, covers 2000 to 2009 and was published by Anomalist Books in January 2023.^[3][4][11] Basterfield notes that the fifth volume "slipped by relatively unreported", apart from its material on the Wilson–Davis notes.^[1] Reviewers describe the series as an intimate record of Vallée's contacts across the decades.^[9][10]

Earlier views on MJ-12

• 1 January 1999. In his fourth volume, Vallée described Robert M. Wood's analysis of the MJ-12 documents. "Hal had hired James Westwood", he wrote, referring to Hal Puthoff, and paid him to work on Wood's project. Westwood's verdict was that the "Eisenhower briefing document", the "cornerstone of the UFO coverup arguments, had all the earmarks of a fake, an American disinformation document meant to fool the KGB".^[1] Shellenberger's timeline records the same entry.^[15]
• 5 May 2000. Westwood called the MJ-12 documents a sophisticated "authentic fake", whose authors must be within the intelligence structure. He also suggested the Roswell crash "may have been invented to flush out Soviet spies".^[1]

The FBI had already declared the MJ-12 papers "completely bogus" after the Air Force Office of Special Investigations told it in November 1988 that no such committee had ever been authorised or formed. According to the Wikipedia account, the documents were largely shown to be forgeries, and elements of the deception campaign began confessing from 1989.^[2]

The 2001 NIDS talk

Vallée's entry for 5 May 2001, which Basterfield initially missed because of an indexing error, describes the meeting.^[1]

• Tone. "In a scholarly but cynical way, he spoke about the history of the field and the disinformation associated with it." The talk was on the future of ufology, according to a commenter.
• A Cold War figure. Vallée wrote that Westwood "surfaces from the Cold War like a rusty submarine emerging from past eras".
• Biological warfare. Westwood drew attention to "various links with biological warfare", and again dismissed MJ-12 and Roswell as counter-intelligence exercises to flush out foreign spies.
• Russian UFOs. He had bought Vallée's book Samizdat for Vallée to sign, saying he liked it "as a sovietologist". He had underlined a passage in which a Soviet researcher said Soviet experts long considered UFO rumours CIA tricks. "And they were largely right," Westwood said. "Much of the phenomenon in Russia was phony, part of our own disinformation."

June 2001

On 10 June 2001 Westwood telephoned Vallée. Vallée wrote that talking to him "is to enter a universe of shadows and deception".^[1]

• Stalin and Korolev. Westwood said that during World War II Stalin asked his rocket designer Korolev what flying saucers were. Korolev answered that there was a real phenomenon but not a great threat.
• Old insiders. He said he had spoken to a 90-year-old man involved in government UFO research in the 1950s: "We never understood the phenomenon... I was against using it to manipulate the silly UFO believers, but the boys on the dark side of the house went ahead anyway." He had also tracked down an 84-year-old who worked on the Robertson Panel. The skeptic Robert Sheaffer suggested this was Frederick Durant, author of the panel's report and, in Sheaffer's description, "a complete skeptic".
• No hardware. "Puthoff really wants to find the hardware. Well, I've been in this business for 48 years, and I know for a fact there isn't any."
• Fake UFOs. Asked when the disinformation began, he said, "Not before the early 1970's... or perhaps the late 60's." He said he knew a pilot who flew over Cleveland carrying light patterns that simulated a UFO. Basterfield links this to "Project Skylite", the request to McDonnell Douglas's UFO study to "mimic, imitate or duplicate the observables associated with UFOs". The study's head, Robert M. Wood, said it never materialised there.
• Operation Shocker. Asked about Roswell, Westwood said: "For over 20 years we had a thing going, it was called Operation Shocker." It was run through a double agent, an Army officer the Soviets thought they had turned, who fed them data to convince them of capabilities the U.S. did not have. "The UFO business was woven into that." Basterfield notes that Operation Shocker was real, a 23-year FBI counter-intelligence operation against the Soviet Union.
• Voronezh and Bentwaters. Westwood said the Voronezh sightings Vallée described in Samizdat were at a major nuclear site. He doubted that Bentwaters was an American experiment, though "the timing would be right". He said his "only theme is chronology", kept on cardboard cards by date.

Shellenberger's timeline summarises the May and June 2001 exchanges together.^[12]

Later claims

Westwood's later statements, as recorded by Vallée and others, moved away from his 2001 position.^[1]

• March 2002. Eric Davis told Vallée that Westwood "claimed to have located two genuine reports about UFO crashes with hardware recovery and bodies".
• October 2003. Vallée wrote: "I think Jim Westwood is wrong with his idea of linking ufology with biological warfare; it must be even bigger than that."
• The "iron posts", March 2004. Vallée recorded that Westwood had identified the four secret "iron post" sources of Puthoff and Davis, who confirmed a hidden program reverse-engineering alien hardware. Westwood described them as "two senior flag officers, one defense industry/high OSD official; and one civilian high official of the Reagan and Clinton administrations". Vallée identified the two officers as Admiral Thomas Wilson and General Jack Sheehan.^[1][13] (See Four "iron post" sources.)
• Bowsher, 2004. Westwood said he had found a third trail through Charles Bowsher, Comptroller General of the United States from 1981 to 1996. According to Westwood, Bowsher found a "crashed UFO program" during an audit of classified projects in 1984–85. He called it a "bizarre special access program coverup", and considered referring it to the Justice Department for prosecution until "a powerful person in DoD quenched it". Basterfield dates Vallée's entry to 24 September 2004, and Shellenberger's timeline to 7 August 2004.^[1][14] (See Charles Bowsher audit claim.)
• 2008. In a 2008 interview with Charles P. Vick on GlobalSecurity.org, Westwood described a black program dating back to 1949, which he said used the UFO phenomenon as cover. He said the CIA's Desmond FitzGerald had flown "flying saucers" in Chinese airspace under Kennedy. He also said the program was live-tested over Strategic Air Command bases in Montana, Michigan and Maine in 1967 and 1975, "cooking" Minuteman guidance circuits so badly that an emergency repair contract had to be let.^[1]

Assessment

Westwood's statements are hard to reconcile. In 2001 he told NIDS scientists that MJ-12 and Roswell were counter-intelligence fictions and that no hardware existed. From 2002 he was relaying claims of genuine crashes, a reverse-engineering program and a Comptroller General's discovery of it.^[1] Basterfield notes that his 2001 denial of any hardware is "at odds with" others who came forward around then. His 2008 account of a U.S. black program behind the 1967 Malmstrom and 1975 northern-tier incidents is, Basterfield writes, "one explanation" debated in the literature, "but never so boldly stated".^[1] Basterfield could find no information on Westwood's activities after 2008.^[1]

Notes on the earlier version

• Robert and Ryan Wood. The earlier version said that "Robert and Ryan Wood spent years arguing that many [MJ-12 papers] were genuine". That is not covered in the sources read here. Robert Wood appears in them as the scientist whose MJ-12 analysis Westwood was hired to assist.^[1]
• Bowsher date. The earlier version did not date Westwood's Bowsher claim. Basterfield's and Shellenberger's dates differ, as noted above.^[1][14]
• Other sources. A 2008 MUFON UFO Journal PDF and a 2010 blog post on aerospace companies, both cited in the earlier version, contained no readable text about Westwood.^[7][8] Robert Wood's 1991 abstract "The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis Is Not That Bad", answering arguments by Vallée, is listed for context.^[6] An Atlas Obscura article on the FBI and MJ-12 refused automated access.^[5]

People and topics

• Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
• MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
• Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
• Jim Westwood — Former CIA consultant who studied the MJ-12 papers.
• Robert M. Wood — McDonnell Douglas engineer who ran an in-house UFO study and later promoted the MJ-12 documents.
• Harold Puthoff — Physicist who co-founded the SRI remote-viewing research and later worked on AAWSAP and To The Stars Academy.
• Ryan Wood — Researcher who published the Majestic documents with his father Robert Wood.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
• Air Force Office of Special Investigations — The Air Force's criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency.

On the Timeline

• Don Phillips testimony (April 2001) — Former contractor Don Phillips claims Lockheed studies extraterrestrial technology.
• Mark McCandlish and the Alien Reproduction Vehicle (9 May 2001) — Illustrator Mark McCandlish says gravity propulsion was reverse-engineered from recovered craft.

See every 2001 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Majestic 12”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.