Nick Redfern September 3, 2021

On March 28, 1975, Senator Barry Goldwater wrote the following, highly thought-provoking, words to a UFO researcher named Shlomo Arnon: “The subject of UFOs is one that has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret.” Goldwater continued to Arnon: “I have, however, heard that there is a plan under way to release some, if not all, of this material in the near future. I’m just as anxious to see this material as you are, and I hope we will not have to wait much longer.” Born in 1909, Barry Morris Goldwater served as a Major-General in the U.S. Air Force, a Senator for Arizona, the Chairman of the U.S. Government’s Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 1964 election. Indeed, it was on May 2, 1964, that Goldwater received no less than 75 percent of the vote in the Texas Republican Presidential primary. Moving onto the next case…

You may not be surprised to know that other senators have got into the UFO subject – and related phenomena, too. From January to March 1973, the state of Iowa was hit hard by cattle mutilations. Not only that, many of the ranchers who lost animals reported seeing strange lights and black-colored helicopters in the direct vicinity of the attacks. That the FBI took keen notice of all this is demonstrated by the fact that, as the Freedom of Information Act has shown, it collected and filed numerous media reports on the cattle-mutes in Iowa. The next piece of data dates from early September 1974. That’s when the FBI’s director, Clarence M. Kelley, was contacted by Senator Carl T. Curtis, who wished to inform the Bureau of a wave of baffling attacks on livestock in Nebraska – the state in which Curtis resided and represented. At the time, the FBI declined to get involved, as Director Kelley informed the senator: “”It appears that no Federal Law within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI has been violated, inasmuch as there is no indication of interstate transportation of the maimed animals.” The mystery was never solved. Indeed, cattle mutilations continue.

One year later, in August 1975, Senator Floyd K. Haskell, of Colorado, made his voice known to the FBI, on the growing cattle mutilation controversy: “For several months my office has been receiving reports of cattle mutilations throughout Colorado and other western states. At least 130 cases in Colorado alone have been reported to local officials and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI); the CBI has verified that the incidents have occurred for the last two years in nine states. The ranchers and rural residents of Colorado are concerned and frightened by these incidents. The bizarre mutilations are frightening in themselves: in virtually all the cases, the left ear, rectum and sex organ of each animal has been cut away and the blood drained from the carcass, but with no traces of blood left on the ground and no footprints.” Now, onto the Rendlesham Forest “UFO landing” of 1980.

A well-respected Democrat, Jim Exon was the governor of Nebraska from 1971 to 1979, and the senator for Nebraska from 1979 to 1997. Jim Exon was also a key member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, specifically the chairman of the subcommittee. It was in the early months of 1985 that ufologist Ray Boeche decided to take his investigation of the Rendlesham Forest UFO case of December 1980 to the next level: namely, to seek help from Senator Exon. Ultimately, things didn’t go quite as well as Boeche had hoped for. There is no doubt at all, however, that the whole situation touched a highly sensitive nerve within the labyrinthine corridors of power. Boeche put out a notable feeler to the senator, as Boeche told me: ““We got him a copy of Sky Crash and Clear Intent. [The latter] contained six-pages of material on the case, and we sent those to Exon’s office. A copy of the Halt tape, too. And that started the entire thing.” On March 18, 1985, Exon wrote to Ray: “As you requested, I have asked the Air Force for their assistance. Please know that when I hear from them, I will be back in touch. I am still reviewing the two book you provided me, Mr. Boeche. I will return them when I have finished.” Ray received another response from Exon on April 2. Exon came straight to the point: “Frankly, I am not convinced that the incidents you are concerned with did, in fact, occur. Nor have I found any evidence of a cover-up by the government.” The story didn’t go much further.

MU*

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