EINSTEIN’S FLYING SAUCER SECRETS: "THESE PEOPLE HAVE SEEN SOMETHING"
(originally published Sept 2011)
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If the US Government had sufficient concern about UFOs during the phenomenon’s early years, they most certainly would have quietly heard out the “Great Minds” of the time for their views on the subject. A little-known tape of a famed broadcaster’s lecture that was delivered over sixty years ago suggests that is precisely what happened. It also suggests that Albert Einstein was one of those brilliant scientists. In the tape, a segment of which can be heard below, we learn that Einstein and other science notables had expressed to President Truman their concern about the unknown objects, including those seen flying above our nation’s Capitol. The scientists beseeched Truman to not attempt to shoot down the UFOs.
Related information has surfaced which reveals that Einstein had maintained a long-standing and close relationship with a physicist who was a key member of a CIA UFO study group. The group was organized in the same year as the mass UFO flights over the Capitol.
Finally, a very little-known quote from Einstein has been found buried in a 1952 newspaper that hints at Einstein’s true thoughts on the visitors in our skies.
A BROADCASTER SPEAKS ABOUT EINSTEIN & UFOs
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Broadcaster and author
Frank Edwards
Frank Edwards was an early radio pioneer. He began as a broadcaster in the 1920s on Pittsburgh’s KDKA, which was owned by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Edwards then hosted network news and opinion programs nationally for many years through the Mutual Broadcasting System. Edwards was also associated with the AFL/American Federation of Labor (who sponsored some of Edwards’ programming) and the Union’s famous president, George Meany. Edwards had become a familiar name in households across America. He was well-connected to politicians inside and outside the Beltway and to prominent business people and high-level decision-makers from many walks of professional life. Edwards even appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in October of 1966 to relate some of his more interesting investigations into unexplained mysteries (which had later in his life become of strong interest to Edwards). By then he had released seven books through major publishers including Citadel Press. Some were category best-sellers including Flying Saucers: Serious Business and Stranger than Science.
In a lecture given to a Detroit, Michigan audience in 1956, Edwards made statements about Einstein that he believed to be true based upon his sources and his understanding of historical circumstance. And these statements are nothing short of remarkable. Edwards maintained that just four years before, in 1952, Albert Einstein had delivered an urgent message to then President of the
United States Harry Truman. Einstein was joined by other prominent scientists of the day in warning that Truman’s “shoot down” policy of UFOs over DC was unwise.
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Some of Edwards' lectures have thankfully been preserved by the historical research group Project 1947. My thanks also to researcher Grant Cameron (who specializes in study of US Presidents and UFOs) for his assistance. The two-minute segment of Edward’s 1956 lecture mentioning Einstein and UFOs can be heard here:
Frank Edwards 1956 Lecture Segment
EINSTEIN'S CLOSE ASSOCIATE – A UFO INVESTIGATOR FOR THE CIA
Atomic Physicist Samuel Goudsmit
Born in The Hague, Holland in 1902, Samuel Goudsmit obtained degrees in physics, and moved to the US in 1927. But even as a student Goudsmit had achieved fame by proposing the model of the spinning electron and developing similar advanced concepts resulting in ten published papers. For nine years he helped to lead the physics department at the University of Michigan. A strong anti-Nazi, in 1941 he joined MIT’s Radiation Laboratory and helped to develop the short wavelength magnetron as well as fighter-based radar. In early 1945 Goudsmit received an unusual assignment from the US Government to go rapidly into European laboratories as they were being liberated to garner any information of scientific accomplishments from those labs (which had earlier been taken over by the Nazis). Goudsmit then became Chair of the Physics Department for Brookhaven National Laboratory. Still later, Goudsmit helped lead the American Physical Society, retiring in 1974 and passing in 1978.
Einstein was very close to Goudsmit. Reading through correspondence between the two, it is evident that they were close both professionally and personally, with Einstein taking on a very familiar tone when communicating
with his physicist friend. There are many archives that reveal this, including a repository of correspondence between the two which can be found at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics. In Box 8, Folder 62 we see many letters written by Einstein to Goudsmit. These letters span the period of 1947-1954.
During much of the same time period, both also served as officials to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Goudsmit was on the Board of Directors, while Einstein was on its “Board of Sponsors.”
Curiously missing from nearly every Goudsmit biography is mention of his direct and active involvement in the study of UFOs. Goudsmit was called upon by H. Marshall Chadwell (the CIA’ s Director of Scientific Intelligence) to participate in the Agency’s 1952 “Robertson Panel” UFO study group (which was headed by Cal Tech’s H.P. Robertson.) The panel was charged with reviewing the available evidence on UFOs and to consider the potential danger that the phenomenon may pose to national security.
The fact that Frank Edwards maintained that in 1952, Einstein and “other scientists” had warned Truman not to shoot at the UFOs, coincides nicely with the directive and mission of the Robertson Panel (which convened in January of 1953) to determine if the phenomenon posed a military threat. It seems almost too “coincidental” for there not be some correlation.
Though the Robertson Panel supposedly had concluded that such sightings posed no threat or danger, this is not to be believed, as the entire Robertson episode is cloaked in lies. In an interview in 1958 with Mike Wallace of CBS, Major Donald Keyhoe broadcast to the nation that the CIA had been involved in the study of UFOs five years earlier. Despite this, the CIA went into denial mode. The Assistant Director of the CIA’s OSI refused to declassify the Robertson report and declined to disclose CIA sponsorship of the panel. Ultimately, a very sanitized version of the report which deleted reference to the agency and mention of warfare was released. This author spoke last year to Fred Durant (now well in to his 90s) who was the Secretary of the Robertson Panel. My conversation and emails with the scientist-spy Durant made it very clear that he was not being truthful or entirely open about the Panel and its findings, nor his personal knowledge about UFOs gained through his years in government service.
It has since been learned that Goudsmit was also very close to Dr. Linus Pauling. The two even co-authored a major work, “The Structure of Line Spectra.” This author has reported in previous articles (including “UFOs and Vitamin C: Linus Pauling’s Flying Saucer Secret”) that Pauling was a secret UFO researcher whose papers (marked “confidential”) and extensive library of books on the subject revealed intense interest in the subject. Pauling corresponded with Dr. Stirling Colgate of NMIT and Los Alamos about the Socorro UFO sighting. And Pauling, it was discovered, also worked with Battelle in the early 1950s on “intermetallics” – the basis for Roswell-like memory metal. Goudsmit had associations with UFO study – and with people engaged in UFO research – that are continuing to emerge.
He very likely had conversed privately with other contemporaries about the issue. In fact, it is inconceivable that he did not. Though I have not yet found any correspondence between Goudsmit and Einstein relative to UFOs, it is very difficult to believe that the issue was never brought up. Not only was the nature of Goudsmit and Einstein’s dialog far-ranging, and not only did Goudsmit have regular dialog with Einstein during the time that Goudsmit was known to be studying UFOs, but others on the Robertson Panel (including physicist Lloyd Berkner) were either professionally or personally known to Einstein. There were several physicists on the Panel. To think that the world’s greatest did not know what his friends were doing strains credulity.
THE CURIOUS QUOTE FROM EINSTEIN ON FLYING SAUCERS
Only once is it known for certain that Albert Einstein spoke directly about UFOs. In an AP item in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of July 30 1952, it is reported that Einstein wrote to evangelist Louis Gardner in reply to Gardner’s query about UFOs:
“These people have seen something. What it is I do not know and I am not curious to know.”
The article in which this quote appears is seen below (click image to expand; thanks and credit to researcher David Rudiak):
St. Louis Post-Dispatch article
quoting Einstein on UFOs
(click to expand)
The year of this Einstein quote (1952) is more than interesting. It is the same year that the Robertson Panel (on which Einstein’s associate Goudsmit served) was planned. It was also the same year that mass UFO sightings were occurring with frequency over Washington, DC. And it was the same year that Frank Edwards maintained Einstein had warned the President about attacking the saucers.
What is more interesting about the Einstein quote is what is not said. Though Einstein admits that there is reality to the phenomena (“These people are seeing something”), he says that he does not want to know just what it is that the people are seeing. This is of course disingenuous of Einstein. Since when does science shy away from encouraging finding solutions to mysteries? Einstein’s own friend and associate Goudsmit certainly was interested in the phenomena during the same time period Einstein was writing Gardner about it! It sounds more like Einstein simply does not wish to engage someone outside of his circle on this obviously sensitive matter.
Another interpretation is that Einstein really did not want to know because he was afraid to know. And this makes sense. If what Edwards says is true, Einstein feared the phenomenon. But what he feared more was us. Einstein feared our potential for a war-like reaction to the continued flyovers of craft that were piloted by beings that were not from here and that were unknown to science.