Saucer Sisters of the Golden Age
During the question-and-answer session at a UFO gig recently someone asked me what I considered to be the strangest UFO story on record. Well, I don’t know that it’s the strangest, but the following most definitely has to be a close contender in the certifiably far-out stakes:
In 1955, two elderly sisters in Chicago, Mildred and Marie Maier, reported in the Journal of Space Flight their experiences with UFOs, including the recording of a radio program in which an unidentified code was allegedly heard. The sisters taped the program; and other ham radio operators also claimed to have heard the “space message.”
The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence duly became interested and asked its Scientific Contact Branch to obtain a copy of the recording.
Field officers from the Contact Division, one of who was a man named Dewelt Walker, made contact with the Maier sisters, who were “thrilled that the government was interested,” and set up a time to meet with them. In trying to secure the tape recording, the Agency officers reported that they had stumbled upon a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace.
“The only thing lacking was the elderberry wine,” Walker wryly cabled Headquarters. After reviewing the sisters’ scrapbook of clippings from their days as entertainers on the stage, the bemused and amused officers secured a copy of the recording. OSI analyzed the tape and found it was nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station. The matter rested there until UFO researcher Leon Davidson talked with the Maier sisters in 1957. The sisters told Davidson that they remembered they had talked with a Mr. Walker, who said he was from the Air Force.
Davidson then wrote to Mr. Walker, believing him to be an Air Force Intelligence Officer from Wright-Patterson, to ask if the tape had been analyzed at ATIC. Dewelt Walker replied to Davidson that the tape had been forwarded to proper authorities for evaluation, and no information was available concerning the results.
Not satisfied, and very perceptively suspecting that Walker was really a CIA officer, Davidson next wrote none other than Allen Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence, demanding to learn what the coded message revealed and who Mr. Walker really was. The Agency, wanting to keep Walker’s identity as a CIA employee secret, replied that another agency of the government had analyzed the tape in question and that Davidson would be hearing from the Air Force.
On 5 August, the Air Force wrote Davidson saying that Walker “was and is an Air Force Officer” and that the tape “was analyzed by another government organization.” The Air Force letter confirmed that the recording contained only identifiable Morse code that came from a known, licensed radio station. Davidson wrote Dulles again. This time he wanted to know the identity of the Morse code operator and of the agency that had conducted the analysis. Both the CIA and the Air Force were now in a quandary – and all as a result of their interest in the rather bizarre activities of two little, old ladies.
The Agency had previously denied that it had actually analyzed the tape. The Air Force had also denied analyzing the tape and claimed that Walker was an Air Force officer. CIA officers, under cover, contacted Davidson in Chicago and promised to get the code translation and the identification of the transmitter, if possible. In another attempt to pacify Davidson, a CIA officer, again under cover and wearing his Air Force uniform, contacted Davidson in New York City.
The CIA officer explained that there was no “super agency” involved and that Air Force policy was not to disclose who was doing what. While seeming to accept this argument, Davidson nevertheless pressed for disclosure of both the recording and the source. The officer agreed to see what he could do. After checking with Headquarters, the CIA officer phoned Davidson to report that a thorough check had been made and, because the signal was known to be of American origin, the tape and the notes made at the time had been destroyed to conserve file space.
Incensed over what he perceived was a runaround, Davidson told the CIA officer that “he and his agency, whichever it was, were acting like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster Union in destroying records which might indict them.” Believing that any more contact with Davidson would only encourage more speculation, the Contact Division washed its hands of the issue by reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence and to the Air Force’s Air Technical Intelligence Center that it would not respond to or try to contact Davidson again. Thus, a minor, rather bizarre incident, handled poorly by both CIA and the Air Force, turned into a major flap that added fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs and the CIA’s role in the investigation of UFOs and its surveillance of UFO “witnesses” such as the Maier sisters and researcher Leon Davidson.
As humorous as this Keystone Cops-meets-The X-Files fiasco certainly was, the episode offers us more clues into the workings of the CIA and its relationship to the UFO mystery than the Agency would perhaps prefer. First, the fact that the CIA would take an interest in a relatively obscure case such as this demonstrates that all avenues were being pursued in monitoring breaking stories on the subject. Second, the strange saga shows that the CIA was not above passing its agents off as employees of other agencies as it attempted to gain possession of UFO data and determine what the Maier sisters had come across. That the two elderly sisters had stumbled onto nothing more sinister than a Morse code transmission is irrelevant. The clear fact is that CIA personnel sought to obtain under covert and misleading circumstances, what was perceived initially to be UFO-related evidence. Indeed, this case almost has Men-in-black-style overtones to it.
How often have we heard of alleged government officials apparently keeping watch on UFO witnesses and researchers and turning up on people’s doorsteps demanding evidence of UFO activity in the form of photographs, etc., only to have the relevant government agency that the men allegedly work assert that it has no record of them?
Interestingly, on 1 March 1967, Lieutenant General Hewitt, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff for the US Air Force, circulated the following memorandum concerning the so-called Men in Black, whose tactics and modus operandi sounded suspiciously like those of the CIA agents involved in the debacle of the Maier sisters.
Said Hewitt: “Information, not verifiable, has reached HQ USAF that persons claiming to represent the Air Force or other Defense establishments have contacted citizens who have sighted unidentified flying objects. In one reported case an individual in civilian clothes, who represented himself as a member of NORAD, demanded and received photos belonging to a private citizen. In another, a person in an Air Force uniform approached local police and other citizens who had sighted a UFO, assembled them in a school room and told them that they did not see what they thought they saw and that they should not talk to anyone about the sighting. All military and civilian personnel and particularly Information Officers and UFO investigating Officers who hear of such reports should immediately notify their local OSI offices.”
The Maier sisters may not have made contact with aliens; however, the fact that their research had led to official interest on the part of none other than the CIA is a prime example – and certainly a very unusual example - of the way in which the Agency keeps a close watch on those of us that are, in turn, keeping a close watch on the skies above.
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on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm and is filed under The Redfern Files, Breaking News, Eyewitness Accounts, Alien Encounters, Government Projects, Men In Black, Conspiracies, Close Encounters, Evidence, UFOlogists, UFOlogy, Beliefs. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
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Oct 23 2007 
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:23 pm
It seems also like a blatant example of the inner struggle between different US government organizations, in this case the CIA and the US Air Force. We shouldn’t be surprised about the fact that most of the time, these agencies don’t like to cooperate or exchange info with other members of the “team”. 9/11 is another clear example of this.
That’s what Robert Dean claims about the lack of info NATO was receiving from Washington about UFOs, so NATO decided to conduct an investigation all by themselves. That part of his story seems quite possible, at least. The actual existence of such a report and the validity of their conclusions is another story.
And this Davidson sounds like he had a lot of cojones, too