United States Code…”
The Act also makes it clear that NASA is not free to disclose anything that the President or the DOD might consider to be “classified information.”
“Sec. 205… (d) No [NASA] information which has been classified for reasons of national security shall be included in any report made under this section [of the act]…”
The intent of these sections is to make it clear that NASA is not an independent, civilian space research agency, but rather an adjunct of the DOD that is totally under that department’s control. The reasons for this are not immediately clear until you study another document also commissioned at the dawn of the space age; the so-called “Brookings Report.”
After NASA was formed and almost before the ink was dry on the bill that brought it into being, NASA commissioned a formal study into the projected effects on American society of its many planned activities. This report was first published to some fanfare in early 1960’s, but then lay dormant for many years afterwards until it was rediscovered in the mid-1990s.
At that time, Professor Stanley V. McDaniel was seeking additional documentation for his then-ongoing study into NASA’s new imaging and data policy surrounding the controversial Mars Observer program. In the final stages of his study, McDaniel asked Richard C. Hoagland (my co-author on Dark Mission) for some assistance in locating some NASA documents and research papers relating to its SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project. Hoagland told McDaniel of the long-rumored existence of an official NASA report supposedly commissioned by the space agency in its early years that related to possible NASA censorship of SETI evidence if it was ever discovered. At McDaniel’s urging, Hoagland began actively searching for the document, polling various contacts and eventually having a conversation with former police detective Don Ecker. Ecker, a consultant to UFO magazine, called in a couple of favors and not only confirmed the existence of this highly controversial study—but came up with the actual title: Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs.
After some more digging, Hoagland eventually came up with the document, authored by The Brookings Institution. The Brookings Institution was probably the world’s foremost “think-tank” of its day, and the contributors to the NASA study were a veritable “who’s-who” of the leading academics of the time. MIT’s Curtis H. Barker, NASA’s own Jack C. Oppenheimer, and famed anthropologist Margaret Mead were all consulted for contributions to the final Report.
After scouring the document, it quickly becomes apparent that the underlying purpose of the Brookings Report was to provide legal and political cover for NASA in the event it ever kept secret discoveries that the president or the DOD declared “classified.” The most stunning remarks came on page 215, where the Report mentions the possibility that “artifacts” (i.e. extraterrestrial Ancient Alien ruins) may be found by NASA in their explorations of the solar system:
“While face-to-face meetings with it [extraterrestrial intelligence] will not occur within the next twenty years (unless its technology is more advanced than ours, qualifying it to visit Earth), artifacts left at some point in time by these life forms might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the Moon, Mars or Venus” the Report states. “Artifacts” of course, mean ruins. Ancient Alien ruins. It is obvious from this statement that NASA not only suspected they might encounter ancient alien ruins, they expected to find them.
It then goes on to consider whether such a discovery should, rather than be made public immediately, be suppressed:
“How might such information, under what circumstances, be presented or withheld from the public, [and] for what ends?”
This single line alone in the 250 page Report