DS: Well it started with -
interestingly enough - I have mentioned it before, that I was actually having
dinner with Rosemary Chalk who was the Secretary of the National Academy of
Science in Washington D.C. I happened to know her. I was General Counsel at the
Jesuit National Headquarters, Office of National Social ministry. We went to
church together, and I had talked to her at church, with a number of other
people. She invited me to dinner at her home, in Washington D.C. I was there.
This was in late 1976, sometime and I was having dinner with her - I've explained
this all a dozen times now. She was telling me that based on the cases I had
worked on up to that time that she assumed that I must have been just a born
lawyer - that I'd always wanted to be a lawyer my whole life - that I must have
been thinking of this since I was a kid. I told her actually no. I was actually
wanting to be an astronaut, and that I was an applicant to the United States
Academy in 1963 when I was a senior in high school. I had actually been one of
the finalists in New York State to be appointed to the Air Force Academy, so I
could go there and join the astronaut program. It's a long story, but Senator
Jacob Javits ended up giving the appointment to someone else. He told me to go
get the appointment from my Congressman. My Congressman, Carlton King, had
given the appointment to the son of the mayor of Glen's Falls, the biggest city
in my county. So I was sort of flabbergasted by all this, and offended at it,
so I decided, because I was not going to get into the Air Force Academy, I should
become a lawyer, thinking that I would just have to do a little fine tuning to
keep things like this unfair act from happening again or taking place in the
future. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
Turned out that it was a much longer
duty than I thought it was going to be. Ended up spending the next thirty years
of my life full time involved in social justice litigations. So I explained
this to her, and she was kind of flabbergasted that I really wanted to be an
astronaut. She asked me why I wanted to be an astronaut, and I said that I
thought that the most one exciting single event that was going on in our
lifetime was the reaching out into outer space, with the potential contact with
extraterrestrial civilizations. She was very surprised by this, and she said
"Gees, there's a person who I should introduce you to. She's a friend of
mine." She said, "Her name is Marcia Smith, and she is the director
of the Science and Technology Division of the Library of Congress'
Congressional Research Service. She's been working on a number of projects, and
doing research on UFO stuff and extraterrestrial intelligence." So it was
Rosemary Chalk who introduced me to Marcia. Sometime, there after, I met
Marcia. Marcia told me that she had been asked by the Science and Technology
Committee of the Library of Congress to undertake an evaluation of two separate
issues. One was the potential existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The
second was the evaluation of the data on these phenomena of UFOs. I was
pleasantly surprised to find that in her official capacity as director of the
Official Congressional Research Service, that she had been asked by the United
States Congress to do this investigation. This went on for some period of time.
I made inquiries about how this thing got started. Who was it that wanted to
have this thing done? It turned out that President Carter, then in 1977, when
he had actually come into office . . . it turned out that President Carter had
had a sighting when he was still governor of Georgia. He and a number of other
people had seen a UFO and he had written an official report and asked that it
be investigated. So it turned out that when he came to the Presidency, he had
actually asked to have the information regarding the existence of
extraterrestrial intelligence and the UFO phenomena sent to him. This procedure
of asking the United States Congress - The Science and Technology Committee of
the House of Representatives to have the Science and Technology Division of the
Library of Congress Congressional Research Service gather all this information
together, and make a determination about what information was going to be
released to the public, and how much was going to be made available to Congress
could be made in that context. So it was in that context that I was talking to
Marcia Smith, and Marcia asked me whether as General Counsel to the United
States Jesuit Headquarters, there at their National Office in Washington D.C.,
whether or not I could get access to the section of the Vatican library in Rome
that would contain this information - any information that the church had on
extraterrestrial intelligence and the UFO phenomenon. I was very pleased to try
to do that. So I asked Father Bill Davis, who was the Director of the National
Office at that time (1977) if I could follow that process of trying to get that
information from the Vatican. He gave me his official approval, so I undertook
that process, but much to my surprise in fact, and much to the surprise of
Father Davis I might add, we were refused access to that particular portion of
the Vatican Library. So I sent back a second letter to the Jesuit who was the
head of the Vatican library, and explained to him that this was an official
request that had come from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of
Congress - that it had come from the Congress of the United States, and that
the President himself had wanted to get this information. So I thought that
would get us the information, but I received a second response from the Vatican
Library saying no - the Jesuit National Headquarters would not be provided with
this information. So I had to regretfully report that back to Marcia Smith
letting her know that I was not able to get it. So I hadn't heard from Marcia
in a while, and she called me and told me that the United States Congress had
cut, in half I believe, the funding for the SETI program, the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California,
and wanted to know if I, in my capacity as the General Counsel for the Jesuit
Headquarters Office of Social Ministry that dealt with public policy, she asked
if I would be willing to join a group of former astronauts, and some other
people to go and meet with a number of key congressmen to lobby them - to ask
them to reinstate these funds for SETI. I was more than happy to do that. http://louis3j3sheehan3.blogspot.com/
Again I got permission from Father
Bill Davis, and he consented to this, so I participated with them. Shortly
after the full funding was reinstated for the SETI project I was then asked.
Marcia called me from the Library of Congress, telling me that the scientists
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in the SETI program, wanted to have me give
them a seminar out at JPL talking about the potential theological religious
implications of potential contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. I was
delighted to do that, so I said to Marcia "Look if I am going to be doing
this, which I am totally delighted to do, I would like to be able to get access
to some of the data that you might have available in the course of your doing
this investigation for the Science and Technology Committee in Congress. So she
said, "Well what would you like to see?" It didn't take me a second
to tell her what I wanted. I would like to see the classified sections of the
Project Blue Book. Well, she said that she didn't know whether the Air Force
and the Department of Defense would agree to release these to the Library of
Congress, but she would try. So she contacted them and shortly thereafter she
called me and she said, much to her surprise, "They have agreed to do
this." So she gave me a particular date and time and told me that I should
go over to the new building at the Library of Congress, which was on the other
side of Independence Avenue. I had mentioned before, when asked about this,
this building had not even been opened yet. There were no people in it. I went over
there, I believe it was on a Saturday morning and brought my identification. I
went to the door, and there was an Executive Protective Service officer at the
front door of the library. I showed him my identification. He was a little
puzzled because there was nobody in the building; no offices had been opened
yet. I showed him my identification, and he made a call. A little bit to his
surprise he said, "Yes, you are expected." So I went in, and he told
me what room I was expected to go to. I went down the hall, and went downstairs
into the basement looking for this room. I found this place, and there was a
room and these two security officers there at the door, and there was actually
a third, plainclothed, sitting at a desk to the right of them. As I came in
there I showed them all my identification, and they checked some documentation
that they had, and said "Yes. I was supposed to be here." As I
started to go in, the man sitting at the desk told me I had to leave my
briefcase there. I wouldn't be allowed to take any notes. It turned out I had a
yellow pad under my arm, so I set the briefcase down, gave it to him, and I
went into the room. I was in there for some time. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com/
There were a bunch of documents there.
There was actually a film machine. It was like a little reel-to-reel-kind of a
film machine there. I don't know if it was 35mm, or whatever those things were
-- so there was actually some little films there. I looked at some of the films
and they were like the classic films that you have seen, sort of far distant
shots of strange moving vehicles. So I decided I wasn't making much headway on
this, so I began to look into these little boxes, that had these canisters there.
There was one of these overhead filmstrip machines that was sitting in the
room. I began to take these little canisters out, and open them up, and put the
filmstrips in and look through these things. I don't know how many I had gone
through. I had gone through several, or at least a few of these boxes, when I
hit upon this one canister that had film and pictures. I started going through,
turning the little crank and there it was. http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.blogspot.com/
Again I have told people about this a
number of times. There were these photographs of unmistakable -- of a UFO
sitting on the ground. It had crashed, apparently. It had hit into this field
and had dug up, kind of plowed this kind of trough through this field. It was
wedged into the side of this bank. There was snow all around the picture. The
vehicle was wedged into the side of this mud-like embankment -- kind of up at
an angle. There were Air Force personnel. As I cranked the little handle, and
looked at additional photos, these Air Force people were taking pictures. In
the photograph they were taking photographs of this vehicle. One of the photos
actually had the Air Force personnel with this big long tape measure measuring
this thing. You could see that they had these parkas on, with little fur around
their hoods. You could see that they had the little name tags on their jacket.
They were clearly U.S. Air Force personnel. I was kind-of in this strange state
saying: "Here it is!" So I turned the crank for more pictures, and I
could see on the side of this craft these, like, little insignias - little
symbols. So I turned ahead a couple of pictures to see if there was a closer
picture. Sure enough, there was. One of the photos had kind of a close-up
picture of these symbols. So what I did is -- I was getting nervous -- I looked
around, and the guys weren't watching or anything. They were outside of the
room, so I took the yellow pad, and I flipped it open to the little grey cardboard
backing and I flipped it under the screen. I shrank the size of the picture to
the exact same size as the back of the yellow pad, and traced the actual
symbols out in detail, verbatim of what was there. Then I said, like, I'm going
to leave. That's it. I've got this, and I don't want to push my luck on this
thing... (Commercial break)
SDI: Danny, a long row you have been
hoeing there. You said that over in '76 when you were at a friend's place for
dinner, culminating in this recent sit-down, in a yet-to-be occupied basement
of a building in Washington, to be privy to some very interesting, if not
incredible, documentation and pictures -- what have you. Now, we are going to
ask you some questions and move on from there in terms of what you saw, and what
can be accomplished by this revelation. You were still finishing the story when
we broke for the news.
DS: It's just that once I had copied
these out -- I have thought about this a lot of times since that time because
it was a little peculiar since I was there -- I was authorized to be there. I
had been cleared into the place, even though they told me I couldn't take any
notes or anything. Once I had actually seen these pictures, and actually chosen
to copy down and trace these symbols from this craft, I just decided that I
should get out of there. So I got up, closed the little pad, and I put the film
back in the canister. I put all the boxes back where they were, and put the
yellow pad under my arm, and just walked out. As I came through the door, I went
over to get my briefcase up, and the man at the little desk that was sitting
there pointed to the yellow pad under my arm, and he said, "What's that
that you've got there?" I said,"That's the yellow pad that I had with
me." He said, "Let me see that." He reached out and I handed it
to him. He flipped through the yellow pages, and never looked at the back,
never looked at the inside cardboard backing, and handed it back to me. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com/
So, I just put it under my arm, got my
briefcase and walked out of there. I went right back to Jesuit National
Headquarters, and told Father Bill Davis about this, and asked to convene a
meeting of the 54 heads of the national Religious Organizations through the
Washington Inter-religious Staff Council to ask for a special retreat for the
churches to discuss potential issues that the Democratic and Republican parties
had not yet taken positions on. It was a general session, and I raised the
issue with them to see if they would agree to start looking into and authorize
a major official investigation of the existence of extraterrestrial
intelligence and the potential secreting of information by the Executive Branch
of the United States Government of the existence of this phenomena. They
basically didn't want to do it, and so I was kind of kicking myself. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.blogspot.com/
So, then I went and gave the
presentation to the SETI people at JPL -- big three-hour seminar discussing the
potential theological implications of contact with extraterrestrial
civilizations. I know that the reports came out -- that Marcia Smith in the
Library of Congress prepared two separate reports. One was specifically
restricted to the issue of extraterrestrial intelligence, and the other one was
on the phenomena of the UFOs. So I actually saw copies of these that Marcia
showed me that she had completed, and that was that.
SD; There is obviously a desire from
inside to get this information out, to get some real concrete action here --
some headway made, otherwise you wouldn't have been sitting there in that
basement.
DS: It would seem that something had
happened, and that's why I was surprised a little bit with President Carter in
the presidency, having reportedly seen one of these, this report having been
prepared, submitted to the Science and Technology Committee of the Library of
Congress, that something didn't happen. Of course, you will recall that it was
a peculiar type of presidency with President Carter. He was very much under
siege by extreme conservative forces that were actually inside his National
Security Council. Donald P. Greg, for example, was in his NSC. He apparently
was regularly reporting secret meetings that they were having all the way to
Bill Casey, who was the head of the Republican campaign to try and oust Carter
from the Presidency to the point, as you know, of intervening in the efforts
that President Carter was making to negotiate for the release of the American
hostages from Iran. So it was a terribly disruptive period of time. Gary Sick,
who was in the NSC for President Carter at the time, has written a book called
"The October Surprise." It actually delineates his conclusions, as an
official member of the NSC, that the efforts of the entire Carter
administration were being sabotaged by extreme conservative elements that were still
in the government that wanted him out of there. It was very difficult
apparently for President Carter during that period of time. The only estimate
that I can have, is that any idea that he ever had of releasing information
about this ended up getting swamped through the gas shortages, the difficulties
he had with the hostages, and a whole series of other national security
problems. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com/
http://louis4j4sheehan.blogspot.com/They just kept him from doing this.
SDI: If we can go back to the room in
the basement. You said on your way in, there were a couple of security people
there. Were they military security? Were they Wackenhut? What were they?
DS: I didn't ask them for their
credentials! As I recall they were civilians. They guy that was at the chair and
the desk. He was in civilian clothes. The other two guys . . . they had extreme
military bearing, but they were in private clothes -- in suits and ties, but I
got the impression that they were military. The other fellow gave off the vibes
of a civilian.
SD; The other question of course is
what became of the yellow pad with the cardboard backing?
DS: Oh, I still have that. SDI: You
do?
DS: Oh yes.
SDI: Has anyone analyzed that? Have
you had anyone take a look at that?
DS: Well actually, no. I've got it in
all my Jesuit Headquarters files. I have them all in file drawers that are in
the basement of the garage.
SDI: What would be the chances of
doing a scan of or reproduction of...
DS: Well, I'm obviously going to have
to do that one of these days. You know when I got asked to give a presentation
to MUFON, I figured it was just important to tell people about this. I guess I
should have realized the potential importance of the data. There should come a
time when I should dig these documents out, and make them available, which I am
going to have to do.
SDI: Actually, it's extremely
interesting because there are people who contribute to this program who claim
they have seen what they believe are alien symbols, and there have been reports
of other symbols that have been seen on objects in the sky, and it would be
interesting to compare what they've seen and what you managed to bring out of
that room with you.
DS: Yes. It's true. You see I had
expected frankly that by this time that I would have been asked by our
community -- the UFO community -- would have been interested in having a major
professional investigation undertaken. So, I always said to myself, when that
time comes, then I know it would be politically time to bring this forth and to
integrate this into a major professional investigation. Much to my surprise, it
still hasn't happened.
SDI: So in the world that is UFO
investigation you have been waiting for the proper vehicle to come forward, but
perhaps, shall we say, a little frustrated with the mechanics of the UFO world
out there -- it's treatment of what you have done, and how this is all going to
play itself out in a factual or respectable manner?
DS: Well, it's a difficult issue. As
you know I think that there are real efforts under way now by members of the
post-war generation, now that we are past the cold war. Even though it was 10
years ago, it seems like it happened just yesterday, that we are in this new
era. It seems to me that we now have an opportunity in this particular area of
public policy, to become much more sophisticated in this public policy arena to
come together, very importantly, I've raised this twice now in presentations
that I've made. This extraordinary inclination that seems to be present in this
particular community of attacking, and setting upon each other, over various
minutia of their various reports. I think that what I want to do is participate
in gathering people together, to come together to discuss these things in an
intelligent way, to combine our forces and our resources to really focus on a
concentrated professional investigation. This is what our Christic Institute
set about doing in the area of nuclear power, with the Karen Silkwood case, in
the areas dealing with the clan and the Nazis, in the case we did in
Greensboro, in regards to the Contra military funding, in South America, in the
Iran-Contra case. It is something that when a public policy really comes to
maturity, they eventually come to realize that there needs to be this kind of
coalition force in disciplined attention, verifying in detail, through a
professional investigation, the data that we need to move forward. I'm
(unintelligible) the conference that we are going to be having down in Irvine
here on the 20th and 21th and 22nd of July for MUFON may well play a major role
in bringing people together to focus our resources on such an investigation.
SDI: Ya, that would be good if that
would happen. The two reports that you say Marcia Smith had produced and done
for Jimmy Carter. You said you saw one, or you said you had seen both?
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