A Story About one Wilbert Smith CIA Connection
By W.Todd Zechel, Director of Operations, Associated Investigators Group
Excerpted
from Filer's Files #34
" I worked on a case involving a
now-deceased CIA guided missile expert and Patent
Attorney for Werner Von Braun and Herman Oberth,
Commander. Alvin Moore, who recovered a mysterious
broken-off cylinder on his property in Virginia
around the time of the 1952 flap, and after a UFO
had followed an airliner en route from
Martinsburg, W. Va., to Washington, DC, and was
tracked suddenly dropping off air traffic control
radarscopes. Over 20 years ago I wrote about this
case, first for SAGA'S UFO REPORT and then FATE. I
had become friends with Moore through Art Lundahl,
founder and original Director of the CIA's
National Photographic Interpretation Center, also
my friend and UFOlogical mentor. Lundahl and
Moore, both former Navy officers, served together
in the local Navy Reserve unit and in the CIA.
Moore met Captain Donald Goodspeed of Canadian
Army Intelligence at CIA where Goodspeed was
liaison. He gave Goodspeed the mysterious cylinder
to take back to Canada for study by Project Magnet
and Wilbert Smith.
Lundahl later learned through CIA sources that the
physical evidence had been studied by the A.V. Roe
Company, which was then under contract with the
USAF to build a 'flying saucer,' in what became
known as the AVRO Disc " Eventually the
material was returned to Moore, but shortly turned
up missing from his CIA office safe after the
Director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence,
Marshall Chadwell, had asked to examine it and
then returned it to Moore. Neither the USAF or the
Canadians or the National Bureau of Standards ever
could identify the material, although the Bureau
said, it was not a meteorite or a natural
substance. Only Howard Cross of Battelle, for the
USAF, said he thought it might be from an open
hearth furnace--which made no sense in light of
the fact it had come crashing from the sky,
damaging trees, and embedding itself in the
ground, where Moore's caretakers found it. There
was a picture of the object in the Blue Book files
at the National Archives, as well as the Forest
Service agent Edward Crocker's report about the
tree damage. Who knows what's left now?
In 1967, Dr. Condon and Robert Low and others from
the Condon Committee came to the CIA's National
Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) to
confer with Director Art Lundahl, who told them he
needed good UFO pictures or films to study. Condon
subsequently put out a press release announcing to
the public that the Condon Committee was seeking
UFO photographic evidence to study. He left out,
however, that this evidence was being obtained for
the CIA for it to study. While at NPIC, Lundahl
told Robert Low about the Alvin Moore physical
evidence case. Low talked to Moore, who explained
he no longer had the material, but said he had
submitted a full report to Project Blue Book,
including a photograph of the object and Forest
Service agent Crocker's report. Subsequent to
this, the USAF told Low they had no such records
of the case--which was a lie--and the Condon
Committee never even mentioned the case in its
report, presumably concluding the two
distinguished CIA men were somehow lying, but not
the USAF! I subsequently not only found Moore's
report in the Blue Book files, but interviewed
scientists at the National Bureau of Standards who
had examined the material and issued their own
report stating it was not a meteorite or an
identifiable natural substance.