UFO FOIA Records Often Reflect Espionage Investigations
- Jack Brewer
- Sep 28
- 6 min read
Expanding Frontiers Research continues to investigate concerns expressed by mid-20th century UFO investigators to the FBI about activity taking place within the flying saucer genre. Previous FOIA requests revealed Dr. Leon Davidson wrote FBI Dir. J. Edgar Hoover in 1960 about the UFO topic used as a disguise for conducting subversive activity. Prior to that, in 1958, UFO writer Ivan Sanderson contacted the Newark Field Office with similar concerns. He and writer and editor Hans Santesson subsequently spoke with agents about the New York Saucer Information Bureau, a group they identified as promoting Communist ideology. The two volunteered to assist and inform FBI as it deemed advantageous.
Since obtaining the above material, EFR has been reviewing information from a variety of sources, as well as submitting additional FOIA requests on names dropped to the FBI by Davidson and Sanderson. Current and past research of the overlap between the intelligence and UFO communities indicates the agencies documented much more about subversive activities surrounding UFO personalities than they collected relevant material about the flying saucers the demographic claimed to study.
The latest records obtained and reviewed include an FBI file on Truman Bethurum, a self-described UFO contactee. Bethurum was documented in a 1958 FBI memo to have been named by Sanderson as a regular attendee at New York Saucer Information Bureau meetings while also touring the country to discuss UFOs with no visible means of support. Sanderson and Santesson advised the FBI, the memo stated, that “the New York Saucer Information Bureau was a possible Communist Front organization inasmuch as recent material published by this bureau and special guests at this bureau's meetings, have indicated to them that the meetings are just being held under the guise of information concerning unidentified flying objects but in reality are meetings being used to expand the Communist Party line.”
Truman Bethurum (1898-1969) was a blue-collar worker from California. He claimed his first contact with alien visitors was in 1952 and included the beautiful Aura Rhanes, the alleged captain of an often-returning spacecraft. He wrote books about his extraordinary adventures and pushed an agenda - supposedly at the instruction of Aura Rhanes - to raise money for the Sanctuary of Thought, an Arizona commune.
If Bethurum's bit was the idea of an attractive alien, it eluded the FBI. Its records indicate Valor, a magazine operated by William Dudley Pelley, had an apparent financial stake and interest in organizing and promoting Bethurum speaking engagements in 1954. That was surmised from information provided to the Bureau by Thomas Eickhoff, an Ohio man informing the Cincinnati Field Office of activities surrounding Bethurum. Eickhoff indicated George Hunt Williamson, who also described himself as a contactee, and another man known as Mr. Manspeaker, were handling details of organizing and advertising a Bethurum event in Cincinnati. Both men were described as being involved with Valor. The event stood to potentially raise thousands of dollars in ticket sales.
Eickhoff told FBI he did not know why Valor was interested in Bethurum or what the plans were for the money that might be raised. FBI noted Valor was published by William Dudley Pelley and that it was described as a journal of applied spirituality, dealing with mysticism and flying saucers. The 1954 FBI memo documented Pelley was "said to claim that these individuals arriving in flying saucers are of greater intelligence and learning than the earth people and are here to give the earth people intellectual guidance and spiritual endowment."
William Dudley Pelley (1890-1965) was an American fascist activist and supporter of Nazi Germany. His antisemitism led to founding the Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, in 1933. The Silver Shirts were characterized by their paramilitary uniform and fascist ideology. Pelley unsuccessfully ran for president of the United States in 1936 as the candidate for the Christian Party. He was convicted in 1942 of sedition and seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was paroled in 1950. William Pelley FBI records are posted on the Bureau website.
Other issues that arise in FBI records responsive to Bethurum include the activity of UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield of Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects, known as CRIFO. He attended a meeting with Thomas Eickhoff, Williamson, Manspeaker and Bethurum to discuss organizing a Bethurum appearance in Cincinnati, according to Eickhoff.
A 1954 interview is referenced by FBI that was conducted by Stringfield with Col. John O'Mara of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The interview was presented early on in this writer's book, Wayward Sons: NICAP and the IC, as it provides documentation that intelligence officers have been telling UFO writers for some 70 years that UFO Disclosure is imminent. In the FBI records at hand, Stringfield's agenda is called into question, including documentation of a statement attributed to him that the Air Force couldn't do anything about his activities because, “I'm claiming saucers are interplanetary.”
Yet another FBI informant – redacted and remaining unnamed in this instance - “advised that he was furnishing the foregoing information because he thought that possibly the real purpose of the Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects organization might be to gather bits of information about a very secret U.S. Air Force Development Project.”
Maj. Donald Keyhoe, soon to become the frontman of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena at the time the FBI memos were authored, is also referenced. Col. O'Mara, while providing Stringfield with statements supportive of a flying saucer mystery, nonetheless told Thomas Eickhoff, the Ohio FBI informant, that Keyhoe “is a fraud.” The colonel alluded to the existence of information in Washington to that effect, which may be a reference to circumstances described in now-declassified FBI records responsive to Keyhoe. The Bureau identified Keyhoe's writing as irresponsible and cited a specific example of an entirely untrue story published by the saucer enthusiast and conspiracy monger.
Stringfield previously came to this writer's attention after declassification of a 1978 NSA memo was requested and successfully obtained in 2017. The memo fascinatingly reflects how a longtime staple of the Mutual UFO Network and an NSA assignee, Thomas Deuley, informed his supervisors about his attendance and activities at an annual UFO symposium in Ohio. As Deuley explained, presentations included Stringfield, Todd Zechel and others discussing documents purportedly created by the CIA.
Deuley described in the memo how he relied on CIA to determine the documents were not authentic. He also explained how Zechel, who was reported by the Washington Post in 1979 to be an NSA man himself, solicited information on UFOs from Deuley.
The memo further documented how Zechel made the claim publicly a number of times to have worked for the NSA, yet NSA records did not indicate that to be the case. Zechel addressed the situation with Deuley, explaining he wanted to clear it up, and subsequently claimed to Deuley that confusion arose because he worked as a shift supervisor at an ASA (Army Security Agency) facility in Korea from 1963-1966.
Deuley's memo described Zechel urging him to find out about UFOs and share information he learned. Deuley wrote further, "There is some thought that [Zechel] would be capable of being behind the CIA letter fraud and that he is apt to go to most any length to collect information or to bend facts to fit his needs."
Deuley wrote his NSA supervisors about Zechel, “I have talked with him in a frank, clear manner that should have portrayed to him my position and I feel, without specific examples of him being dishonest, I should give him a chance of building a productive working relationship.” It is not clear exactly what kind of relationship would have been considered productive.
“Any further contact or requests for information will be reported,” Deuley concluded.
A number of interesting points arise in the 1978 NSA memo and its reading is recommended. The identity of the memo author – Thomas Deuley - is confidently established through the work of Philip Klass.
In 2018, this writer submitted a follow-up FOIA request to NSA, seeking additional memos and reports written by the analyst who authored the 1978 MUFON conference memo on Zechel's solicitation of information. NSA advised this week by email, as fate would have it, that the request was too broad. EFR is in correspondence with the Agency, working on narrowing the scope of the request in an effort to reach a resolution that provides more material for review and consideration.