ME: Why would they do this?
PRESIDENT NIXON: (He lowers his voice to a harsh whisper) It wasn’t just bodies at Roswell. There was a craft. There was another crash in ’49, then a third in ’58. With a survivor. That was the one you saw, that thing was real, Milford. They’ve been secretly trying to reverse-engineer the technology they found at these sites ever since.
ME: Who has?
PRESIDENT NIXON: The Gleem/Aquarius group. Like I said, they use different names for it now: the Wise Men or the Study Group, or sometimes just “the Group.” Headed by someone they call the Caretaker.21
I don’t even know who that is. CIA was in on it from the start. Jim Forrestal ran the Defense Department then, he was part of this thing to begin with, under Truman––Jim was a friend of mine––but he didn’t like where the Agency was taking it and he tried to blow the whistle. You know what happened to Forrestal, Colonel?
ME: (I paused) Yes, sir.
PRESIDENT NIXON: So they’re calling the shots now, and they’ll drown every last damn cat before they let one out of the bag. It’s not just that thing I showed you. I’m told there’s more than one kind, too, different species, maybe as many as six. We don’t know what they want. Hell, some might be nothing more than the equivalent of long-haul truckers. But a few of the others, they’ve got agendas. I’ve heard all sorts of batshit crazy ideas, that they built bases, vast complexes, all underground. Here––in Nevada, Washington State, in Dulce, New Mexico, at least one in Australia they call Pine Gap, way out in the desert, the outback. A goddamn kangaroo couldn’t find it.
ME: Who built them?
PRESIDENT NIXON: Our own people, they say. The ones on the inside, the Wise Men.
ME: For what purpose?
PRESIDENT NIXON: That’s up to you to find out now. I can’t help you anymore from here. Captains go down with their ships. (He lowers his voice again) But I can tell you these things are part of something even bigger, something old and dug in, and it’s been here all along. Watching us. More than that. Manipulating. We’re all so caught up with our own petty preoccupations we can’t see what’s got its hand stuck up the back of our shirts. We’ve all been barking up the wrong tree. Which, take it from me, has been their objective all along. Distract us with bullshit so we never see how they’re really and truly fucking us.
ME: What can I do? Where do I start?
PRESIDENT NIXON: You have to listen. Over time. In the right places, and you better be smart about it. Dig deep. And for God’s sake, go slow in case they’re watching you, and stay low in your foxhole, because they probably are.
ME: Who can I trust?
PRESIDENT NIXON: (He pauses) There’s a man at the FBI, the one I told you about.
ME: I have his contact.
PRESIDENT NIXON: He’s the only one. Wait awhile and then set a meeting. Face to face. Nothing written, nothing on the phone. CYA, Colonel. You’ll have to figure it out from there. They all have code names, by the way, the ones at the top of Aquarius. Birds. I hear the Caretaker’s name is Raven––(A loud knock is heard.) Shit, someone’s at the door. Best of luck to you, Colonel. We’ll never speak again.
(He hangs up abruptly.) 22
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
Three days after Milford last spoke to Nixon, Congress passed the first of three articles of impeachment against the president, for nine acts of obstruction of justice. Less than two weeks later Nixon resigned from office and retreated into deep seclusion at his home in San Clemente, California, from which he would only rarely emerge. President Gerald Ford, the handpicked vice president who succeeded him, pardoned Nixon the following year, but over 40 of his former aides and associates eventually went to jail. President Ford, who years earlier had attempted to expand the investigation into UFOs while still a Michigan congressman--there had been frequent and disturbing sightings in his home state; he was rumored to have had a sighting of his own--turned over that responsibility to his new secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and the man Ford had just chosen as his chief of staff, Richard Cheney.23
Doug Milford laid low as well. After waiting for over a year, as the president had advised, Milford cautiously went to work. During that time he pulled together the strange history of the region around his hometown--which comprises the early sections of this dossier--including the accounts of his own youthful experiences in the woods around Twin Peaks.
I can also confirm that the funding for the secret program Milford discussed with the president came through--apparently set up in untraceable offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.24
1 Verified—TP
2 Verified that this handwritten section offers a 99 percent probability match to known samples of Major Milford’s handwriting—TP
3 Verified that “the Wise Men” has often been employed as another name for the alleged mystery cabal Majestic 12, or MJ-12. The “Mason” reference appears to mean President Truman, a high-degree Mason, who allegedly convened MJ-12 to begin with.
The “other path” might then, following the message’s internal logic, refer to an opposing “secret society,” i.e. the Illuminati, etc.
The Archivist admits here to having access to Milford’s private papers, establishing an irrefutable personal link between Milford and the Archivist. Not sure who “M” is in these notes, but it likely refers to the “White House source” mentioned above by the Archivist.
Now it gets a lot weirder.—TP
4 “Connie” was an often-used nickname for a Lockheed Super Constellation, which happened to be the type of plane used by President Eisenhower at the time, prior to it being known as “Air Force One”—TP
5 Verified that rumors of “The Yellow Book” persist—maybe it was Steve Jobs from the future offering them a beta version of the iPad—and if you connect the dots it seems they further suggest that this was the original “take me to your leader” moment in American history.
Then it gets even weirder—TP
6 I hope it goes without saying that I find no official confirmation anywhere for any part of the previous statement—TP
7 Verified. JFK was openly curious about space in general and the UFO phenomenon in particular—TP
8 Verified. Milford’s promotion came in 1966—TP
9 Dr. J. Allen Hynek was an astronomer and professor of physics at Ohio State University who—like Milford— worked with Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. Though he was, by his own admission, an early skeptic, decades of exposure to credible UFO eyewitnesses—including many fellow astronomers—opened his mind to wider possibilities. He later launched his own, privately funded line of inquiry into UFOs, and served as scientific advisor on—
and also briefly appeared in—Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (Still, no matter what you think about UFOs, a classic)—TP
10 Verified as accurate quotation from Condon Report—TP
11 This appears to suggest that Nixon was “M,” Milford’s 1950s White House contact.So “M” may have stood for Milhous, his middle name—TP
12 Verified. The Viking program successfully put a lander on Mars in 1976—TP
13 Sounds like a reference to starting his own version of a Majestic 12—TP
14 Apparently connecting the Wise Man/MJ-12 group to Yale’s own secret society, which has, at various times, been linked in conspiracy theory to global organizations like the Illuminati or the Council on Foreign Relations—TP
15 This is the first mention of anything related to “extra dimensions” on this subject and, like Nixon, I’d really like to hear some elaboration. Will self-engage on research—TP
16 Damn. Milford strikes again—TP
17 The reader will recall that many moons earlier, back in the ’20s, Milford had “shacked up” for a time with the daughter of the Gazette’s then owner, Dayton Cuyo. Turns out she also lived long enough to sell him the paper—TP
18 There is more to come on their deteriorating relationship later—TP
19 This appears to be the same Fred C
risman, the alleged CIA “black ops” operative, who played a central role in 1947’s Maury Island incident. Crisman is also known to have had a close relationship with E. Howard Hunt, the senior black ops figure in the botched Watergate burglary in June 1972 that was only now starting to crawl into public perception as a “White House problem”—TP
20 They did, however, leave a clue to the identity of their unnamed companion that night at Homestead AFB. Those numbers scrawled on Milford’s journal entry—which I’m assuming he wrote in the immediate aftermath of this experience as part of their “plans to speak again”—correspond to an unlisted phone number from 1973 in Hialeah, Florida. If records from the period are accurate, that number belonged to the actor and entertainer Jackie Gleason. Remembered today primarily for his work on the early TV sitcom he created, The Honeymooners, during the 1960s Gleason was a showbiz titan, working in movies, television and music.
I have also confirmed that Gleason did indeed, a few years prior to their meeting, build a circular house in Peekskill, New York, that in more than one interview he referred to as “the Mothership.” Equally true is the reference to his massive private library of books on UFOs and many other occult subjects; such a collection was donated by Gleason’s estate to the University of Miami after his death in 1987.
As for the encounter at Homestead Air Force Base, years later Gleason’s wife at the time of the incident made reference to it in an unpublished memoir, saying that Gleason eventually shared with her some of the chilling details about “something” he’d seen that night with the president and that it plunged him into a serious, disorienting depression for many weeks. At his request she never published the book, but word about the Homestead incident leaked out. Gleason made an oblique reference to the incident himself in an interview not long before he died.
I don’t know about you, but this gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “To the moon, Alice!”—TP
21 Verified that these are often-used synonyms for Majestic 12—TP
22 JESUS. We knew Tricky Dick was cracking toward the end, but this is Humpty Dumpty territory. As Doug Milford claims to be recalling the conversation from memory alone there is, of course, no way to verify the contents. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Oh, by the way: James Forrestal. The country’s first secretary of defense, appointed by Truman in ’48. Long rumored to be one of the original members of Majestic 12, which may or may not have been real and which may or may not have been behind what Nixon referred to as Project Gleem. Forrestal resigned a year later, 1949, and soon after, although no longer in the military, he was confined in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital for “nervous exhaustion.” In what they called a “VIP suite” on the 16th floor. Six weeks later they found an open window across the hall from his room and his pajama-clad body on the roof of the third-floor kitchen below. Ruled a suicide, but they found severe abrasions around his throat and broken glass in his room suggesting a possible struggle. He was 57—TP
23 And I’m guessing that was most likely the end of anyone on the outside ever hearing about any of this—TP
24 So this establishes that Milford himself compiled the early research for the dossier, and then somehow passed it on to the Archivist, who—apparently in response to Milford’s work—wrote all of the interstitial commentaries. The Archivist also professes to know about Milford’s secret funding, which I assume he could have learned about only from Milford himself.
But what exactly had Nixon empowered Milford to do, and how did he go about it?—TP
*** THE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE:
*1* BLUE PINE MOUNTAIN
Habits of secrecy established by decades of working with classified intelligence are hard to break. Doug Milford did, apparently, make contact sometime in the late 1970s with the FBI man that the president referenced in their final conversation. On a parallel track, perhaps acting on a tip from the FBI or his existing contacts within the Air Force, he also opened a second operational front in 1982.
A young officer stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in nearby Spokane moved with his family to Twin Peaks that year on special assignment. Here is the small item Milford ran about it in the editorial section of the July 15 edition of the Twin Peaks Post:
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
The reason for this newcomer’s arrival, you may have already surmised, had considerably less to do with the upgrades at Unguin Field--although they did take place, providing a very convenient “day-job” cover--than it did the actual intent of the mission at hand.
As the work at Unguin Field proceeded slowly--very slowly, by design--a squadron of full-time personnel were also diverted from that job site and put to work building a much smaller, top-secret facility high up on Blue Pine Mountain. The area, a secluded 25-acre section of Ghostwood National Forest, had been quietly acquired by the military through the use of eminent domain. This detail was never reported by the newspaper, although one nosy neighbor wrote the following letter to the Post, which only made it into print because the publisher was out of town that week on business:
1 2
BOHEMIAN GROVE OWL, circa 1930s—TP
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
The first thing Doug Milford did when he returned from his business trip, after realizing this letter had made it into print, was fire the assistant editor who put the edition to bed without telling him about it. The second thing he did was pay a visit to his brother, the mayor. Tension between the two had been building ever since Douglas retired and moved back to town--or, to trace it more precisely, ever since Douglas was born. This editorial that Douglas ran the day after Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 certainly didn’t help:
And so on--you get the idea. It may not have been the smartest or most popular stance to assume publicly, given Doug’s own high-risk, covert relationship with Nixon--although one could argue that, from a tradecraft point of view, if you wanted to hide your affiliation with Caesar, what better way to do it than to praise him in print, rather than bury him along with the rest of the ink-stained wretches with whom he’d suffered such a long, bitter and contentious relationship.
In any event, the local flap generated by Doug’s opinion piece lasted only a few days, but his brother Dwayne, the perpetual mayor--a lifelong, dyed-in-the-wool Roosevelt Democrat--never forgave him for it. From that day forward, Dwayne couldn’t requisition a pencil in office without Doug flogging him in print about wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned bucks, while Dwayne practically based his biannual campaign platform on the fact that the Post and its “crackpot publisher” irrationally despised him. This juicy fraternal rivalry evolved into a reliable staple of local entertainment, providing endless and irresistible grist for the gossip mills at the barbershop, the salon and the Double R. In other words, like a lot of modern politics, people viewed it about as seriously as they do televised wrestling.
As for Carl Rodd’s letter, in response Dwayne publicly promised a thorough investigation into the questions it raised about the mysterious construction project up on Blue Pine Mountain. To Dwayne’s surprise, when Douglas came to his office a few days later, it was to volunteer his services in facilitating that inquiry. He even offered to contact the FBI personally, and Dwayne took him up on it. A few days later, a regional FBI supervisor and one of his special agents paid Dwayne a visit, hung around for a few days to conduct what they promised would be a “thorough investigation,” and a week later submitted a copy of the following report to Mayor Milford.
3
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
The FBI’s swift and sure response brought a quick resolution to Mayor Milford’s crusade for the truth. In other words, Dwayne swallowed it hook, line and sinker. The Blue Pine project would now proceed without any further nosing around from chatty locals, and the facility itself went live and operational in November of 1983. It did not, however, have anything in the slightest to do with the Strategic Defense Initiative--or “Star Wars,” as the mainstream pres
s derisively called it in print.
The project known officially as SETI ARRAY 7-1--or, as those on the inside more commonly referred to it, Listening Post Alpha (LPA)--was in fact the centerpiece of Doug Milford’s top-secret, ex-officio, post-Nixonian effort to plunge deeper into the post-Blue Book miasma of UFO investigation.
What the facility housed, in fact, was the most advanced deep-space, multispectrum search-and-receiving station ever constructed. And through the entirely plausible SDI cover offered by Doug Milford and his FBI colleagues, it began, remained and operated completely off the books of any official government or military oversight once it came online in late 1983.4
With Major Briggs as the only officer on site, work proceeded at the LPA through the second half of the 1980s--slow, methodical and extremely technical; combing the haystack of space for needles, searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe at large. At the direction of Doug Milford, the sophisticated intelligence-gathering array at LPA was also pointed in the opposite direction, toward the environs of Twin Peaks.
At which point, almost to the day, a series of tragic events began to unfold in the town that, at first, seemed entirely unrelated--until they eventually began to shed light on the bigger picture.
1 Rodd appears to be suggesting that the “Illuminati” strain continues to this day in the guise of the Bohemian Grove, a 150-year-old “secret society” located near San Jose, California. Their sprawling, heavily secured rural forest compound is the location for an annual gathering of its members, a roster which includes a staggering number of establishment heavyweights, former presidents, statesmen, military leaders and industrial tycoons. Their two-week summer retreat kicks off each year with a huge bonfire known as “the Cremation of Care,” conducted before a gigantic statue of a horned owl. It is the inspiration, perhaps justifiably so, for a long list of American conspiracy theories. Photo follows—TP