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The Suppression of UFO Technologies and Extraterrestrial Contact 369
Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA communications systems,
claims that all the Apollo and Gemini flights were followed at a distance
and sometimes quite closely by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin,
but Mission Control ordered absolute secrecy. Chatelain believes that
some UFOs may come from our own solar system—specifically Titan.
During a BBC radio interview in December 1972, astronaut Edgar
Mitchell, lunar module pilot on Apollo 14, was asked by a listener if
NASA had made any provisions for encountering extra-terrestrials on the
Moon or nearby planets. He replied in the affirmative. When the interviewer
intervened and suggested that, if and when we ultimately come
into contact with other civilizations, it would only be via radio-astronomy,
Mitchell emphatically disagreed, making a point of recommending Allen
Hynek's book, The UFO Experience, which contradicted official policy
on the subject.
I wrote to Dr. Mitchell and asked him to elaborate on this and another
statement he made on the programme, to the effect that there had been no
concealment of UFO sightings either in transit to or on the Moon, and that
such information was open to all. Mitchell's assistant, Harry Jones,
replied: "Dr. Mitchell asked me to write and tell you that to his knowledge
there have been no unexplained UFO sightings. All unexplained sightings
have subsequently been explained. Dr. Mitchell personally attests that
there has never been any lid of secrecy placed on any NASA astronaut that
he is aware of." [Emphasis added.]
Although puzzled by this contradictory reply I did not pursue the matter
further, since the publicity from UFO reports in 1973 led to a number
of positive statements by some other astronauts. "I'm one of those guys
who has never seen a UFO," said Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo
17, at a press conference. "But I've been asked, and I've said publicly I
thought they were somebody else, some other civilization."
In 1979 former Mercury astronaut Donald Slayton revealed in an interview
with Paul Levy that he had seen a UFO while test-flying an aircraft
in 1951:
I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I
was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought
the object was a kite, then realized that no kite is gonna [sic] fly that
high.
As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three
feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn't look
like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disc.
About that same time, I realized that it was suddenly going away from
me—and there I was, running at about 300 miles an hour. I tracked it
for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off. It