Puthoff–Green emails on a pseudonymous article

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Contents 8
Puthoff–Green emails on a pseudonymous article
Hal Puthoff
Hal Puthoff Photo: CIA · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Date31 July 1999
TopicsCrashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
PeopleHarold Puthoff, Christopher "Kit" Green, Jacques Vallée, Eric Walker
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 141
Year1999 in UFO history
Timeline1999 on the UAP Timeline
Sources12

On 31 July 1999, physicist Hal Puthoff emailed former CIA physician Kit Green and Green's partner, engineer Kristin Zimmerman, asking whether Green had read a set of UFO Magazine articles about crash retrievals by a group called "Zodiac", and whether he had ever heard the name.[1]

The articles

The 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio received its first C-17 Globemaster III Jan. 21,2010. The aircraft is on loan from…
The 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio received its first C-17 Globemaster III Jan. 21,2010. The aircraft is on loan from… Photo: United States Air Force · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Three articles by "Greg Halifax" appeared in UFO Magazine in 1998, in the May/June, September and December issues. They told the story of "Sedge Masters", a man recruited by the CIA and briefed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base about two craft recovered at Roswell in 1947. In the story, Zodiac was the usual code name for the MJ-12 group and program, said to have recovered eleven more craft by the early 1980s. The magazine's editor warned that the material was largely unverified.[1]

The email

Majestic 12 In 1988, two FBI offices received similar versions of a memo titled “Operation Majestic-12…” claiming to be highly classified government…
Majestic 12 In 1988, two FBI offices received similar versions of a memo titled “Operation Majestic-12…” claiming to be highly classified government… Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Puthoff wrote that he had reason to believe the articles were only lightly fictionalised versions of a source's experience writing up records for the archives at Wright-Patterson, and that Zodiac was supposed to be a true name. No reply from Green appears in the surviving thread.[1]

How it became public

Bigelow Aerospace President Robert Bigelow talks during a press conference shortly after he and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver toured the…
Bigelow Aerospace President Robert Bigelow talks during a press conference shortly after he and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver toured the… Photo: Bill Ingalls · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The email was part of a thread attached to a memo from physicist Eric Davis to Robert Bigelow dated 23 March 2001, which surfaced online in 2019. The memo itself concerned Green's views on the "alien autopsy" film, which Green later said were mistaken.[1][2]

Later history

Illustration of official papers and files
Illustration: official papers and files. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

Davis went on to look for a former TRW employee said to have worked on Zodiac. Researcher Richard Dolan later said the Halifax articles were written as fiction and that their author was probably a corporate lawyer for TRW. No document has confirmed that a program called Zodiac existed.[1]

People and topics

Jacques Vallée 2024
Jacques Vallée 2024 Photo: Cmichel67 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
  • Harold Puthoff — Physicist who co-founded the SRI remote-viewing research and later worked on AAWSAP and To The Stars Academy.
  • Christopher "Kit" Green — CIA physician and analyst who became a long-time contact of Jacques Vallée and studied UAP-related injuries.
  • Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
  • Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
  • Project Zodiac — Project Zodiac
  • Eric Walker — Penn State president and Institute for Defense Analyses chairman named in MJ-12 claims.
  • TRW — A U.S. aerospace and defence contractor often named in UFO claims.

On the Timeline

Illustration of a jet meeting an unknown object
Illustration: a jet meeting an unknown object. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

See every 1999 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Further reading

This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.

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