Area 51 Insider TD Barnes Talks UFOs

From Andre Skondras' list:

On Jan 14, 2012, at 5:31 AM, André Skondras wrote:

Hi T.D. & Ed: What is your expert take on this guy and his theories re UFOs as deep black projects? Do they contain a kernel of truth of are they utter BS? Kind regards. André http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h9bhjRQSOs&feature=g-vrec&context=G292fd05RVAAAAAAAABQ This is a clip from a presentation by Michael Schratt, aerospace historian, at MUFON's 2010 Symposium. Titled, Bombshell UFO case files revealed, Schratt examines advanced black budget aircraft, possible Nazi technology, and UFO case files from MUFON and CUFOS. He asks the audience to determine what is ours and what might be extraterrestrial.

TD Barnes

Andre, in my opinion Michael's presentations are interesting and popular, but I rate them as entertainment. For while he was promoting this altered photo, but appears to have stopped when both Pete Merlin and I produced the actual photos before alteration and called him on it.

On Jan 14, 2012, at 11:14 AM, André Skondras wrote:

Hi T.D.: I also had serious suspicions about the photo's veracity. The reliable researcher I told you about in my previous message states that Michael Schratt is an aerospace draftsman posturing as a "historian" without a shred of any rigorous scholarship. In fact I found additional info re Michael: http://www.boomslanger.com/images/american_space_program.pdf : "Michael Schratt, 38-year-old, has always had a passion for studying airplanes and even took some Parks College courses in aerospace engineering in St. Louis. He did not earn a degree, but he went on to become an autocad draftsman working on aerospace components. Today, he is an Aerospace draftsman for Armstrong Aerospace based in Elmhurst Illinois."  This researcher adds that Michael's claims of knowing personnel holding "TOP SECRET Q "MAGIC" clearance" - which to him is totally bogus and fraudulent - cast grave doubt over his credibility and judgment. May I also share this info with other interested parties? Kind regards. André Op 14 Jan 2012, om 19:23 heeft tdbarnes@me.com het volgende geschreven:

TD Barnes

Yes, you may share. I agree with your comments. Michael's clearance claim gives him away. I will soon be publishing my book, "Soaring with the Eagles". I will share a bit about clearances that is in the book. "Before getting further into terms such as caveats, code names, cryptonyms, pseudo names, security clearances, need-to-know, compartmentalized, read in, and so forth, the author will attempt to clear up misperceptions by those who do not know better when they identify something being cleared above top secret. Many United States government agencies can issue security clearances, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, and the CIA. There are only three levels of DOD security clearances: confidential, secret, and top secret. Information "above top secret" is Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI). It is not truly "above" top secret, although the media and movies often use the phrase. SCI information may be either secret or top secret, but in either case, it has additional controls on dissemination beyond those associated with the classification level alone. An example is the security compartmentalized name Talent_Keyhole, which identifies data gathered from imaging satellites. Another is Oxcart, the codename for the CIA A-12 spy plane to replace the U-2. Code names or words identify compartments of information, which formally and automatically enforces the “need-to-know” principal. Within the classified world, merely saying one possessed an Oxcart Clearance gave them priority and protection over any other activity, regardless of level of security clearance. No one, regardless of their authority or station in life, could demand access to Oxcart information if they lacked Oxcart clearance. A good, but humorous example of such a priority occurred on an occasion when Col Slip Slater, commander of the 1129th SAS at Groom Lake was flying an F-101 VooDoo from Groom Lake to CIA Langley to attend Col Jack Ledford’s promotion party when he made brigadier general. Colonel Slater landed at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio to refuel. Three planes lined up ahead of his, with one of them piloted by a general. Slater says he felt like hell, hung over from a party at House Six at Groom Lake the night before and a hurting in his big toe (turned out to be gout). He found the individual in charge and showed him a document stating that he had CIA Oxcart priority. The attendant literally removed the fuel connection from the general’s plane, had it shoved out of the way to make room for Slater’s plane and started fueling it.  Regardless of the person's security clearance level, to see information within a compartment, a person must have access to a given compartment of information. Renewal of security clearance is necessary after a number of years. Unlike a security clearance, which lasts for a given period after a background investigation, access to a compartment of information lasts only as long as the person's need to have access to the particular category of information. Some categories of information may not require special access control; however, by their nature they usually require extra security education, special handling procedures, et cetera. Known as caveats, the following are examples:    * FOUO - For Official Use Only *    * COMSEC - Communications Security *    * CNWDI - Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information *    * NOFORN - Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals (access restricted to US citizens) *      WNINTEL - Warning Notice - Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved.    * CRYPTO - Cryptographic *

Hi TD & Ed: I suppose you both knew Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich through your classified work at Area 51. What are your expert opinions re the statements made in the following videoclip? In short, what is correct and what is false or distorted information? If you are not knowledgeable about some statements, please say so too! I would appreciate that kind of honesty! Extraterrestrial UFOs are real : Ben Rich Lockheed Skunk Works CEO admits on his deathbed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7ahst8TMww&feature=feedrec_grec_index Kind regards. André

TD Barnes

Andre, I have to wonder just what Ben said and what has been embellished over time. I also wonder about the circumstances under which he might have said it. My point is, did Ben play games with someone when he spoke of UFOs and such. Could it have been a circumstance like Al O'Donnell telling Annie Jacobsen a wild story about it being a Russian craft that landed at Roswell, and that it had genetically altered children aboard. Furthermore, he allegedly claimed that he and four others did the same thing at Area 51as Stalin did with the children on his Roswell saucer. Al is a highly respected nuclear engineer well advanced in age. He admitted that Annie pestered him for 2 years to give her something juicy for her book and that he finally did so to shut her up. She published it and when he recanted, she continued her claim. She says that because he said what he did, that as a reporter she has to stick by it even it it is untrue. Could this have been the circumstance with Ben? Andre, if those who believe we gained our technology from an extraterrestrial source would just spend some time with the Pratt & Whitney engineers who designed the J-58 engine in Florida, they would be amazed at what a struggle it was. Even today, NASA is experiencing the unstart with its unmanned platforms that we experienced. As DDST, Dr. Wheelon carried a load for Oxcart that few at Groom Lake knew about. He rated his most important task as riding herd on Kelly concerning aircraft performance and configuration. One of his most long-running problems concerned compressor stalls. In meetings between Wheelon and Kelly, Kelly acknowledged that the problem was in the hydraulic servo system that drove the spike in and out. It was clear to Wheelon that the hydraulic system could not respond fast enough to the changing aerodynamics. He urged Kelly to change it for an electronic version. Kelly did not like or trust electronics. He kept dragging his feet, pointing out that CIA had 30 million dollars invested in the hydraulic solution. Wheelon pointed out to him that it cost more than 30 million every time a plane went down. Wheelon finally told Kelly that he would cancel the program if Kelly did not switch. Kelly was stunned but informed his team in Burbank on his return that he had decided to make the switch. Personally, while I was on the NASA High Range, I worked with the North American engineers designing the Mach 3 XB-70 as well as Lockheed folks building the Mach 3 Blackbirds. I was on the flight testing end and witnessed the problems they all had dealing with the heat generated and the challenges of developing engines that could fly high and at Mach 3. Once we exceeded Mach 2.5, we entered an entirely new aviation arena. Heat was our biggest enemy. Speed was not the limitation of the engines - it was the heat melting the engine when it approached Mach 3.5 or so speed. The same challenges exist today. We invented things to solve the problems we encountered. There was never a suggestion of our having technological assistance from anything extraterrestrial.  Ben would have been correct in saying something along the line of us having things far beyond anyone's dreams. In the last ten years or so, we've seen some this technology emerge rather rapidly in the form of UAV platforms. We've gained experience and experience over the past fifty years where now they don't have to do all the trial and error that we did to develop a new concept. Also, they have computers where we did not. We can go from design to operational in a much shorter time these days, and this is what they do. The cameras we used in the U-2 and Blackbirds in Ben's day weighed near 800 pounds. Compare that to what the UAVs and satellites carry today and you can see where Ben was correct with that statement. A statement like that may have been interpreted as meaning we were getting this technology for an outside source or from reverse engineering. As to reverse engineering at Area 51, we did do that with the Soviet MiGs to learn their technology and capabilities. We found that in most things we were far more advanced than they were and it was the Soviets who were reverse engineering our technology to copy it for their use. We had no scientific facilities at the Area to reverse technology as has been claimed. We did the MiGs in their hangar. Any reverse engineering say on the engines would have been done in Florida. We were strictly in the flying and RCS business. I helped put the first Have Blue on the pylon for us to do a RCS on it. The changes weren't done at the Area. The engineers took the prototype back to Burbank to engineer the changes and then they would bring it back to us for another RCS scan. What I'm trying to say is that we were not in the manufacturing business at Groom Lake. We were the beginning of what it is today - a technological laboratory where designers can test and evaluate their product as we did with the Have Blue prototype.  It is where the customer evaluates the proof of concept prototypes to ensure they meet the needed specifications before choosing the one they want to purchase. It is a test laboratory. I probably didn't answer your question, but you have my take on what Ben might have said and the circumstances. I know some will disagree, but like the Roswell incident, I doubt if anyone really knows the true answer. We all have our own opinions. While I'm at it, I will give you my take on Roswell. At the time of the Roswell crash, Northrop was experimenting with its first flying wing concept at Roach Lake, a dry lake where Primm, Nevada is today. It was something revolutionary and secret. If one of those crashed and if Northrop was the only one who knew what it was, it would have caused quite a stir with the Air Force at Roswell. Whatever it was, it was badly handled by the Air Force just as some of the sightings of our A-12 was. We flew 2850 flight out of Groom Lake with the A-12. Even our own Air Force didn't know it existed for a long time. We had FAA and ADC personnel on site to ensure that their people didn't say anything when their radar picked up our flights. There were obviously some sighting of the plane flying at 90,000 feet and at Mach 3.2. Since no one knew the plane existed, these sightings were UFOs. When Project Bluebook personnel investigated the sightings, if the investigating officers got too close, they were told it was a classified flight and to make up a cover story and go home. Some of the cover stories were piss-poor and didn't hold up. They merely enhanced the belief of a coverup of a UFO sighting, which is true - it was a coverup of a UFO sighting. In those cases, however, the flights were one of our planes.   Now, aren't you sorry you asked.  ha Best regards,TD <td_email.jpg>

Thornton D. (TD) Barnes

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On Jan 14, 2012, at 10:47 AM, André Skondras wrote:

Hi T.D.: Thanks for your detailed viewpoint re this matter. No, I am not sorry I asked. I know from a very reliable source - a highly skeptical researcher - that the nature of UFOs will revolutionize and rock our world but he cannot prove that just yet; however, he adds that the excellent evidence, e.g. in the form of sensory data, proves overwhelmingly that there is a truly unexplained phenomenon acting with impunity and that it deserves intensive scientific study. As you will probably know, Kelly Johnson had a UFO sighting in the early 50s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwgqFd5ApZM . I do concur with your viewpoint re the absurd Al O'Donnell claim about Roswell as described in Annie Jacobsen's book! May I share your comments re Kelly's and Ben's statements with other interested parties? Kind regards. André

TD Barnes

I don't mind if you share my comments. I agree on the scientific studies being needed. It is a shame that people like Jacobsen choose to sensationalize to make a buck. It discredits and tarnishes the truth whether it is pro or con. Science should be objective and respected regardless the subject or field. Mistakes learned are almost as valuable as the successes. We learn by testing the edge of the envelope. I am always reminded by the late Hank Meierdierck's remarks after a flight of the U-2 in 1955 when he and Lou Setter were each breaking the world altitude record almost daily as they tested the U-2 and wrote the books on high flight. "Hank or Lou would come into the Quonset after a flight and say, "make a note for the book to not try xx, it will get you killed". The A-12 pilots did the same as they pioneered Mach 3 flight at high altitudes.  TD