When an individual or even a few people see what appears to be a streaking silver disc high in the sky, there remains ambiguity as to what it was. If the witness is prestigious enough, like a famous astronomer, it might get news coverage. Still, there is room to doubt what he saw. The news stories eventually fade away and society minimizes it with a collective shrug. Add the contactee kooks and their gospel and on the whole this was the UFO experience prior to 1957.

     However, there are a few moments in the UFO phenomenon in America in which society was jolted by mass sightings. The first, of course, was in 1947, then 1952. We have already shown the significance of the Second Great UFO Flap (1965-1967). Another benchmark is Levelland, Texas, late night/early morning November 2 and 3 1957. It stands out from everything that had come before in the history of the UFO phenomenon. Dailies picked up the stories. It was front page news.

     To give you an example of the enormity of the Levelland incidents, I open with a quote from A.P.R.O’s November 1957 newsletter Bulletin. “We have received 150 clippings pertaining to the incident which took place at Levelland, Texas on the night of 2 November, and also on Sunday morning during the early morning hours.”

     The events at Levelland have never been explained, nor have they been conveyed entirely in context. With what has now been revealed on this site they finally can be. The startling encounters came a few years after the word got out that US Research and Development was involved in a saucer program.

     Pro-saucer buffs, especially Major Don Keyhoe and his NICAP civilian investigating organization, wouldn’t accept that the government and its Department of Defense aerospace and aeronautic contractors could ever perfect such a revolutionary craft as to be responsible for any UFO reports. It has been mentioned a number of times on this section of Quester Files that he condemned the idea the US had a saucer program as part of an Air Force conspiracy to downplay the truly startling facts that UFOs were flying saucers from outer space.

     Yet 1957, the year in which a stark tangibility comes to the UFO phenomenon, opened with some rather obvious clues that black projects along similar lines were being tested. The first clue to test flights came on February 13 when several “UFOs”— merely lights at night— were seen in unbelievable performance near Lockheed’s skunk works over Burbank, California.

     Levelland, Texas, to the east of White Sands, New Mexico, and the secluded military proving grounds, is the next clue.

     In the records of the events, it begins with Pedro Saucedo and his friend Jose Salaz. They were on Route 114 about 4 miles west of Levelland, This is and was a narrow two lane road, the main route west to Whiteface, Texas. A blinding orange-yellow flame came swooping in to the road before them. Saucedo’s truck lights dimmed and his engine sputtered, then it conked out. Saucedo got out to have a look, but Salaz stayed inside. The thing was moving so quickly and there was such a burst of heat that Saucedo dove under his truck. The object set on the road or hovered over it several hundred feet in front of them. Salaz could barely see anything due to the brightness of the object. Saucedo thought it was 200 feet long and like a torpedo. After the glowing object moved off, Saucedo’s lights came on and his engine would turn over. They sped off to Whiteface and from a phone booth Saucedo, excited, called patrolman A.J. Fowler on duty in Levelland’s police station.

   Pedro Saucedo. The glowing object came in from the southwest and hovered over Route 114 before him and his friend Jose Salaz.

     Saucedo’s impression of the glowing object as a 200 foot oval or egg-shaped burst of light would be repeated by others. However, some of the other soon-to-be witnesses that night would also say that it hovered about 200 feet off the ground or was 200 feet ahead on the road. “200” is repeated in too many separate measurements not to indicate blurred media reports. Fortunately, the details of a couple of witnesses that night will give us a more believable measurement for the actual object.

     One was a freshman from Texas Tech. About an hour after the Saucedo encounter, he was driving 9 miles east of Levelland. His engine sputtered. His ammeter slumped to discharge and back again. His lights flickered and went out and his car engine stopped. He coasted to a stop. He got out and lifted the hood. Finding nothing, he slammed it and turned around. He now noticed an object had been sitting on the road ahead. It was now glowing blue-green. He was sure there was shiny metal behind it. He estimated it was about 125 feet long, with a flat bottom.

     This was not the most important sighting that night in terms of determining size. Another young man was driving At 12:45 a.m. about 4 miles west of Levelland, near where Saucedo had his encounter an hour and a half earlier. A glowing orange ball of fire came in and settled gently on Route 114 about a quarter of a mile ahead. His engine sputtered and his headlights went out. His truck continued to coast and he hit the brakes. The object was bright enough to light the inside of his truck cab. After a while, the object lifted off and zoomed away. His lights flickered back on and he was able to turn over his engine and continue. He had been very observant. One, as the object came in it was glowing red-orange. As it rested on the road it dimmed to blue-green. When it took off again, it returned to its red-orange-yellow color. Equally significantly here, he noticed that while sitting on the road ahead it only covered the paved part of the road.

    Route 114 today, via Google Earth, looking toward Levelland at around the same spot where Saucedo and Salaz had their encounter; and where the same object was later observed sitting on the road by another witness.

     Route 114 was even more narrow back then than today. And it is unlikely that it ever reach more than 25 feet wide, if even that. The witness drew artwork, showing the object sitting far head. It was a capsule type with a rim at the bottom.

     Between these events already mentioned, the object had been seen by others. Four miles east of Levelland, a man only identified in the documents as Mr. W of Whitharral saw a “brilliantly” glowing egg-shaped object sitting on the road ahead. The estimate of 200 feet wide is associated with this object, but it would have been impossible for such a large object to even fit on the narrow road between the power poles and fences. His car engine died and his lights went out. They returned after the object lifted off. According to Mr. W. (who mentions no color), after the object rose to 200 feet its light (which was like neon) blinked out completely.

     Another man from Whitharral encountered a glowing object sitting on the road soon thereafter 11 miles north of Levelland. Like the others, he called into Levelland police, and Fowler took the report.

     Around 12: a.m. November 3, another Whitharral resident encountered the object sitting on a dirt road. His motor died and his lights went out. The glowing object rose up vertically and a few hundred feet up its lights went out. He called Fowler from a phone booth in Whittearral with his report.

     At 1:15 a.m. a call came into Fowler in Levelland from a terrified man calling from Waco, Texas. He had been on the Oklahoma Flat Road when his car died and the lights blinked out. A large egg-shaped object was sitting on the road ahead, glowing intermittently like a neon sign (no color mentioned). It rose vertically with a roar and afterward his lights came back on. The 200 foot estimate is also associated with his sighting.

   Sheriff Weir Clem and his deputy saw something that looked like a red sunset a quarter of a mile ahead on Oklahoma Flat Road, north of Levelland.

     Not surprisingly, sheriff units were racing around on these roads trying to encounter the object. Sheriff Weir Clem and his deputy Pat McCulloch were on the Oklahoma Flat Road by 1:30 a.m., between 4 and 5 miles north of Levelland. In the distance they saw a bright oval red light “looking like a brilliant red sunset across the highway.” It was about 400 yards away and lit up the pavement for about 2 seconds and was gone.

     About 2 miles behind Sheriff Clem, Levelland police patrolmen Lee Hargrove and Floyd Gavin saw the streak of light, a flash that “went from east to west and appeared to be close to the ground.”

     Moments later the police constable of Anton, Texas, also reported a brilliant flash of light moving east to west.

     Closer than these law enforcement officer was Fire Marshal Ray Jones, also looking for the object. When it streaked and flashed nearby, his headlights dimmed but did not go out. His engine sputtered, but remained on.  

     Altogether these constitute the incidents at Levelland, Texas. It rated national news. There were too many witnesses, including law enforcement. Some of the landings had more than one witness. The witnesses were unconnected. Each reported tangible side-effects— the disruption of electrical power and their motor. As we shall see in our pathway forward to the present (if you are following the pages in sequence), we will encounter two distinct types of black projects which come boldly into play and caused the Second Great UFO Flap in American history over 1965-1967.

  Key areas in the incidents at Levelland, November 2-3, 1957, are marked in a yellow exclamation point.

     One we can identify as Lightcraft, a bell capsule and hemisphere shaped device of roughly 25 and 12 feet in diameter (two different models), the 12-foot model with a flat bottom and power rim. The larger looks more like a mushroom/saucer; the smaller like a space capsule with rim. At low power the glowing light it emits is predominantly blue-green. At higher power, the colors are warmer, going from orange-red-yellow to stark white. This is exactly what the young man described on the road west of Levelland at 12:45 a.m. His sketch of the object in the distance heavily resembles a Lightcraft capsule at low power. He specifically said it covered the paved area of the road, which means it could have been either a 12 foot or 25 foot model. (Its glow would make it look bigger, and its sudden speeds could make it look like a longer streak.)

       Being able to identify the craft in action at Levelland can only induce in one that its actions were a part of a genuine PsyOp. For what reasons I will let the informed reader fathom on their own. Some may find this hard to believe. But the Cold War was a strange time, and many strange psychological experiments were undertaken, many without any real government oversight. Who would imagine that the Atomic Energy Committee would engage in a dozen experiments over 1948-1952, knowingly subjecting people unaware to nuclear radiation in order to study the biologic effects? Who also would imagine that it would take the General Accounting Office to discover these tests over 40 years later in an audit?

     The witness’ artwork of what he saw sitting on Route 114 four miles west of Levelland. It was large enough to cover the paved area of the road and heavily suggests a Lightcraft type device, one including a power rim on the bottom.

     Levelland’s impact on popular culture cannot be minimized. These events over those few hours form the prototype for our popularized image of Close Encounters of the Second Kind. Both in movies and, suspiciously, in later abduction claims an angelic glare projects from a huge saucer as it stalks over in the night sky and lands or sucks up the unwary into their spaceship. In the least provocative scenarios, it coasts over the alarmed motorist. The car headlights dim and the engine stops. The radio falls silent. The occupant gazes upward in amazement as the otherworldly glowing saucer drones overhead and then streaks away. The radio comes on, jolting the mesmerized earthling on his lonely road. The headlights beam again over the dark and isolated terrain. He starts the engine again, dazed but realizing he has had a Close Encounter.

    It is the stuff of fiction, but the dead car and streaking, unidentified “UFO” have its basis in fact. . . but not in outer space.

     Drawing based on Paul Bennewitz’s sketch of a 12-foot Lightcraft in action over Kirtland AFB, 1978. It is a capsule with a power rim. One of the earliest daylight reports I have found of one is near the aerospace works at Hunstville, Alabama, in 1963, where it was described as a flying urn with a dark spot toward the top.

     Another sighting indicates the Lightcraft type devices were coming from White Sands. A few days later on November 5 the infamous Stokes sighting occurred. James Stokes was an engineer at White Sands. While about 10 miles south of Orogrande, New Mexico, on Route 54, he and other motorists saw a large streak of glowing light fly from the area of the Sacramento Mountains, thus heading southwest. It paralleled the highway where they had stopped, and suddenly it crossed over it. Their lights dimmed. Then it cut back over and headed northwest— in other words, over White Sands Missile Proving Grounds.

     Soon Stokes was vilified for making his report very public. His reputation was damaged, and he was forced to retract some of his statement. His sighting was then condemned as a hoax. Why? Back then saucer buffs had a specific conspiracy agenda. Conservative NICAP (in its January 1958 issue of The UFO Investigator) implied it was done intentionally to ruin Stokes’ reputation. The reason, of course, was because this was an alien spaceship and Stokes’ credibility had to be undermined else the public might begin to believe. Stokes had also fatuously estimated the size of the object as 500 feet long. It seemed ludicrous that something that big could have been a US black project. NICAP and Donald Keyhoe played up Stokes’ character assassination as another example of the conspiracy to withhold from the American people the truth of alien visitation from outer space.

   A 12-foot Lightcraft at low power. Note the bell shape to it. See Greg Valdez’s book Dulce Base.

     But the witnesses at Levelland tell us the object there was a Lightcraft type device. It was capsule shape and despite some questionable size estimates (which may be press mistakes) it was big enough to only cover the paved area of these old narrow country routes. Today, Stokes sighting rather suggests its base was White Sands.

     As we have already seen, Lightcraft type devices could hover, make sudden turns and ascend vertically at terrific speeds. At night it is a glowing light of variegated colors, and if seen from the front a brighter glowing power node is often visible, looking much like a glowing red/orange porthole. Sometimes it ejects a cyan colored bolt of plasma energy which falls to the ground. It can shoot rays of light, which strangely matches the reports of such glowing UFOs over Burbank in February 1957 near the Lockheed skunk works.

     It seems now to have been in action near Levelland, Texas, in November 1957. The witnesses there were numerous, and their reputation unsoiled. In the only vilified witness case, a few days later, one seems to have been seen heading back to White Sands. The Air Force denied the existence of any such type of revolutionary craft in America’s arsenal. The denials were not reassuring in the face of something so tangible like Levelland.

     It was made worse for the Air Force by another critical change brought about in 1957. In January, Donald Keyhoe was given the Directorship of NICAP in Washington DC— National Investigating Committee on Aerial Phenomena. He began enlisting on its Board prestigious people. One was Vice-Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, former Head of the CIA (1947-1950), who was personally interested in the phenomenon. Keyhoe turned NICAP into a powerhouse of civilian UFO investigators, and the organization’s publication The UFO Investigator went to thousands of subscribers. Keyhoe believed the UFOs were from outer space and his style was to lambaste the Air Force with barbs about their “Silence Group.” Conspiracy was the order of the day. Up to a point, Hillenkoetter agreed the Air Force’s silence was dangerous. And the lack of addressing Levelland was an obvious case in point. This really griped the Air Force.

       The events at Levelland increased UFO awareness over the United States, and it remained a thorn in the establishment for years. Keyhoe’s 1960 book Flying Saucers: Top Secret was another success, and Levelland had the greater part of a chapter devoted to it— “The November Crisis.” Keyhoe’s style was to present the UFO phenomenon mounting upwards to crescendo. In the face of this the Air Force looked doubly insipid for its silence. Then on top of this Hillenkoetter was making statements about how the silence could jeopardize national security. This really griped the Air Force too.

     Then their restricted briefing directive issued December 24, 1959, was leaked to NICAP and on February 27, 1960, NICAP broke the story to the mainstream press. The Acting Inspector General, General Richard O’Keefe, was quoted from the secret briefing wherein he forewarned the Air Force commands that UFO sightings would increase and it was a serious problem. The title of the briefing was UFOs: Serious Business. Naturally, the pro-ET crowd read into this what they wanted: that the Air Force truly knew flying saucers were real and from outer space. This really griped the Air Force.

     But it seems the Air Force was preparing its own ranks for the upcoming UFO surge of the 1960s— a foreknowledge that argues it was preparing for the massive use of Lightcraft devices, which did, in fact, come into being.

     On top of this NICAP was coming close to achieving Congressional hearings on UFOs. From a standpoint of pending operations using Lightcraft there couldn’t be a worse moment.

     When Hillenkoetter suddenly resigned from NICAP in 1962, Keyhoe discovered the Air Force had pressured him to do so. This destroyed his bid for Congressional hearings on UFOs, but NICAP’s prestige continued and so did its influence. Keyhoe could take comfort in other highly placed NICAP members and their continuing support. One of them was retired US Air Force Colonel Joseph Bryan III. He had joined NICAP in 1959. Initially suspicious that any Air Force man was a plant trying to infiltrate NICAP’s network,  Kehyoe’s fears were quickly assuaged when Bryan declared publicly that UFOs were interplanetary vehicles. Open-armed Keyhoe gladly brought him into the fold and onto the powerful Board of Governors. Sensitive to the kook image of the saucer crowd, Keyhoe had a blind spot for credentials that belied this in NICAP members. They may not have been the wisest people, but they indicated respectability, like scientists, academics, industrialists, and military men. Unbeknownst to Keyhoe, Bryan had not only been a covert CIA agent, he was the original Chief of Psychological Warfare Staff for the CIA (1947-1953). Hillenkoetter had never told Keyhoe about Bryan’s past covert employment under him.

     Without any real manipulation necessary, the stage was set to put in place the narrative that UFOs were ET craft. In fact, when resigning Hillenkoetter had made some interesting comments. Whether the UFOs were interplanetary or just misidentifications, NICAP’s investigation had gone as far as it could go. There was essentially nothing left to investigate because “I know UFOs are not U.S. or Soviet devices. . . The Air Force cannot do any more under the circumstances . . . and I believe we should not continue to criticize their investigations . . .”

     No latitude was in place to question the impetus of The Great Flap of 1965-1967, the most influential UFO flap in history instigated by the prolific use of Lightcraft. The use of these glowing, dynamic craft proved UFOs were real to so many, including J. Allen Hynek. Keyhoe and the public said “Outer space!” Officialdom said “Ridiculous!” No one would even considered top secret devices.

     In fact, NICAP had helped put the whole idea of human engineering as responsible squarely in the “ridiculous” category. Just the year before in 1964, The UFO Investigator had run a very negative overview of the collective aeronautic industry attempts at creating flying saucers. During the flap, Keyhoe and NICAP were a consulting base to many of the TV shows and news reports.

     But no one could have foreseen the scale the UFO flap would take on, nor anticipate how far the ripples would go from the few choice rocks Lightcraft dropped into the public lake. Congressional hearings ensued in April 1966. J. Allen Hynek testified and the public got a taste of how useless Project Blue Book really was. Congress then instituted the Condon Committee. But the highly profiled group quickly fell under widespread suspicion for being rigged. (Years later the CIA would release paperwork that revealed Dr. E.U. Condon, head of the committee, paid them a visit and expressively said he didn’t want the public to know the CIA was assisting him in examining the evidence). CBS did a negative documentary on UFOs in 1966: UFOs: Friends, Foe or Fantasy?

     Altogether, the taint of incompetence somewhat tinges the fringes of the flap. If its purpose was psychological warfare to create the belief in UFOs so US spy craft could be deployed abroad safely, then things had gone too far . . . Nothing was slowing down the belief in UFOs as interplanetary visitors, and the phenomenon was only inviting too much civilian and press scrutiny.

     With unwavering certainty that UFOs were from outer space, Keyhoe continued to use the flap for fuel to prove that end. Then in December 1969 it was obvious Condon’s Committee report was negative on the whole phenomenon of UFOs. Project Blue Book was disbanded by the Air Force. The investigation was publicly over. Yet people weren’t convinced. Strategically, NICAP was in the position to take up the slack and become the most powerful saucer investigation group on Earth.

     However, Colonel Bryan was Chairman of the Board of Governors. In that role he was instrumental in getting Keyhoe removed as Director of NICAP on December 3, declaring him “inept” to the other members of the Board. Replacing him was Jack Acuff, an FBI nark and head of the Society for Photographic Scientists and Engineers. Acuff basically ran NICAP into the ground and in a few years’ time it had gone from glory to bankrupt and dissolution.

     It was Keyhoe’s sensitively to the kook image that surrounded flying saucer investigation that made him naively prone to anybody whose job title dissuaded that image. CIA saturated NICAP. Ironically, they brought him down. Keyhoe had railed frequently for years in The UFO Investigator, blowing a trumpet and announcing that communists were not allowed to join. When one of the contactee or pseudo-religious quacks was discovered to be a member, a news article in the publication would announce it was revoked and his membership card was demanded to be returned. In some sense, Keyhoe’s sudden downfall seemed poetic justice.

     There were still excellent investigators in UFOlogy in the 1970s, but there was no real influence in Washington DC anymore with NICAP essentially defunct. Water seeks its own level. The Lorenzens had attracted the more outlandish within UFOlogy. They accepted contactee and abductee cases. Hynek steered away from theorizing and wanted to pursue gathering data in a rather sanitary way. Outside of this there were many disunited cranks. Conspiracy theorists attract other of their ilk and they never need proof.

     Was NICAP’s downfall intentionally brought about? Possibly. Not as an organized CIA maneuver. Intelligence personalities are naturally curious types. On their own they join such groups like NICAP. If some intelligence worthy of the agency comes through, they would naturally inform. Otherwise there is complete un-officiality to their roles in the organization. But personalities clash. Former operatives might like to go rogue and now being a former employee they can easily do so with their own silver back agenda. Yet maintaining their own official contacts, they remain a link in that agency that declares itself “a nation at work” (implying everybody is fair game for relaying intelligence). Contrariwise, old contacts remaining at their desks at the agency may see a good thing, and the ex-employee, still trusted, plants the suggestions, maneuvers here and there a little. From the impressive data accumulated over NICAP’s observations during the Great Flap of 1965-1967, there was a real possibility they could blow a secret operation or with their prestige give credit to the idea the UFOs were actually US Lightcraft.

     Let’s face it, because of Keyhoe’s reputation NICAP was getting top secret information from pilots and military investigators, who felt the information had to be dealt with more properly than the way officialdom dealt with it. This trickle of restricted information continued after he left, but it was going into the hands of Jack Acuff who, unbeknownst to the givers, was narking for the FBI. NSA and CIA have no law enforcement powers. If they uncover a leak, they have to inform the FBI, which has LE power. That was no longer necessary with an FBI nark in charge. All leaks were soon plugged, and any information on Lightcraft, which could have emerged the longer the operations went on, couldn’t find a voice.

     Would the ferociously patriotic Keyhoe have blown the whistle if he had been given proof that the UFOs were novel Lightcraft? At first, probably not. But over time things may have changed.  

     We must return to Lightcraft, not only to establish its existence again but demonstrate how it was used and its secret jealously guarded, even to the point reliable people who saw and reported it had their reputations destroyed.