The Day the Navy Established ‘Contact’

From Second Look Magazine May 1979

Written by Jay Gourley

On July 6, 1959, Robert Friend, an Air Force major and acting chief of the Aerial Phenomena Division (Project Blue Book) at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, received a call from another part of the intelligence community requesting that he evaluate a ‘discovery’ by Navy Intelligence. 

Three days later Friend flew to Washington D.C. and met with two Navy commanders and several CIA intelligence officers. They began by asking Friend what he thought of UFOs. 

“I soon learned why they were asking,” Friend told SECOND LOOK. “They knew the Air Force often approached sightings with a jaundiced eye – expecting witnesses to be kooks. In this case they were the witnesses.” 

These intelligence officers who had called him to Washington began to unfold what well may be the most dramatic UFO events in the annals of government UFO investigations. 

According to Friend, this is what they told him: 

During the preceding month, the two Navy officers had gone to South Berwick, Maine, at the request of a retired admiral, to meet a woman there who claimed to be in contact with extraterrestrials. 

The officers met the woman and watched her enter a trance and become a “communications link.” The woman sat mesmerized. Only her arm from the elbow down moved. It scribbled out meaningless circles interspersed with legible letters. They spoke questions to which answers appeared within the scribbling. The answers indicated they were coming from a kind of space patrol leader named “AFFA.” 

According to the officers a number of unverifiable answers were offered to such questions such as, “What is the population of Jupiter?” Among other things, AFFA said he and his men were part of an inter-solar-system police force investigating atomic tests on Earth. 

But more interestingly, the Navy intelligence men posed questions incompatible with her education of technical understanding- questions like “What is the length of the Uranus ‘ day?” and “What is the distance between Jupiter and the sun at Jupiter’s apogy?” 

“Her” answers were correct, the two incredulous investigators later reported to Friend. 

About 2 p.m. July 6, 1959, at a secret government office concealed on the top story of a garage at 5^th and K St., N.W., Washington, D.C. (one of the two commanders, just back from Maine, went into a trance during which he wrote messages which indicated they were from an individual named “AFFA.” 

AFFA’s origin: planet Uranus. 

Another Navy intelligence and a civilian intelligence officer were present. 

AFFA said he and his patrol team members were four extraterrestrials, officers in the OEEV, which meant Universal Association of Planets, assigned to EU or Euenza. 

Erenza’s meaning: Project Earth. 

Among the more interesting interchanges later reported to Friend were the following: 

Q. It’s very interesting that we are talking with someone that we can see, but can see have proof of your existence?

A. What kind of proof do you want?

Q. Can we see you or your craft?

A. When do you want to see?

Q. Now.

A. Go to the window. 

All the intelligence people went to the window, where they saw a UFO fly by (i.e.) not stationary) a short distance away. As they later told Friend it was saucer shaped and brighter around the perimeter than in the center. 

The confusion that followed ended the communication with AFFA. 

The attempts to verify the target with Washington Center radar were unsuccessful. No unidentified targets were returning radar echoes from that part of the sky. 

Within several hours, friend was asked to come to Washington. 

At 2 p.m., July 9, 1959, in the same secret Washington office, the Navy commanders, in the presence of the civilian intelligence officers, unfolded the preceding events to the wide eyes of Maj. Friend. 

Friend suggested attempting another contact. 

A short time later the Navy commander lapsed into a deep trance. “I saw it,” Friend told SECOND LOOK. 

“There was no doubt about that in my mind. I could see his pulse quicken. I could see his Adam’s apple moving up and down rapidly. His handwriting was entirely different from his normal handwriting. The muscles in his torso did not appeared to be strained, but the muscles in his arms were obviously stressed – as were the muscles around his neck – especially in his neck.” 

“I tried to ask some questions, but he did not respond to me. Others asked questions. He responded to only one man. 

“I asked the one man that the Navy officer was responding to, to ask AFFA if he would arrange a flyby. 

“The officer’s arm jerkily wrote out, “The time is not right.” 

‘That trance lasted 15 to 20 minutes. There was no tape recording. No one had come prepared to make contact,” Friend explained. 

“I was convinced that there was something there. It didn’t make much difference whether they (the navy Commander and the woman in Maine) were in contact with people from outer space or with someone right here on Earth. There was something there that we should have found out more about.” 

Friend returned to Wright-Patterson AFB and prepared a memo to his commanding general. According to Friend, the general said that he would take charge of further evaluation personally. 

Later Friend left the intelligence assignment and moved on to work on the staffs of various Air Force science advisors. He heard nothing more about the incredible communication with OEEV or its Earth project commander AFFA until after his retirement. 

Friend is a credible source. He is now assistant director of engineering for Fairchild Stratos, a division of the Fairchild Industries, primary manufacturers of cryogenic releases for the space shuttle. 

South Berwick, Maine is not rich in retired Navy admirals. There was only one. Although Admiral H.B. Knowles is dead now, his wife still lives there – not far from Mrs. Guy (Frances) Swan, a woman who for more than 20 years has been in close communication with the U.S. intelligence community, and with the space captain AFFA of the OEEV patrol, at least according to Mrs. Swan and many of those who know her. 

Mrs. Knowles considers Mrs. Swan absolutely credible. “She is a highly respected member of the community. I have never doubted that she was in regular communication with people from outer space,” said Mrs. Knowles. “My husband was once asked the same question. He answered ‘There’s just no reason to believe everything that she is saying.’” 

Mrs. Swan has been told to keep her secret involvement with U.S. intelligence. This she has done. She spoke with SECOND LOOK only because she mistook this reporter for an intelligence officer. 

Mrs. Swann is neither well educated nor eloquent. She talks of “the good ones,” spacemen patrolling the solar system to protect us from dangerous geological faults and of “the bad ones” who want to colonize this planet. She believes that her communication is a prelude to “the second coming of Jesus.” She describes huge state- of - Maine sized satellites not too far past the orbit of the moon. 

Mrs. Swan says that when the spacemen want to talk to her they make a sound like the musical note A. Though others in the room can hear this, only Mrs. Swan can communicate with the aliens. 

Others should not try, she warns. She cites a recently received letter from the Navy commander whose life in general and career in particular were greatly disrupted by his contact with these foreigners. 

She no longer needs a pencil and paper to read the answers. “That was when I didn’t have enough control over my own mind.” Now she can sit quietly, remove all distractions, and hear and speak to them silently. She does this almost every day, although they are very busy and usually have very little time for the chats. She can contact them when she likes, but rarely does, waiting instead for them to contact her. 

Lending further credibility to reports of these bizarre events is a document purportedly written by the civilian intelligence officer, who was with the Navy officer when they reported the events to Friend. According to the document, its author, as Friend presumed, was an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

If legitimate the document substantiates everything said by Friend and most of what was reported to Friend by the Navy intelligence officers. It names the spacemen, their organization. It describes their purpose. It cites times and places of several meetings called to investigate the case – including the one at which the participants called upon the entranced Navy officer to produce the UFO, the UFO he did produce. 

Author Robert Emenegger obtained, studied, and, according to him, verified the authenticity of the CIA document. Emenegger told SECOND LOOK he spoke with the CIA officer who wrote it. Although Emenegger has declined to identify the man, he told SECOND LOOK, “I am personally convince that the document is valid – absolutely – and that the woman mentioned has been in contact with people from outer space.” 

Skepticism of the alleged CIA document’s validity becomes much more difficult in light of information obtained from Col. William Coleman, former chief spokesman for the Air Force. 

Coleman addresses the issue directly. 

“The document is authentic, and even without the document substantiating him, Col. Friend’s credibility is beyond reproach.” 

I have identified and located the CIA officer present at the secret CIA photo center July 6, 1959. His name is Arthur Lundahl, now retired. 

Lundahl confirmed that he was the civilian intelligence officer present when the Navy commander went into the trance. He confirms many of the details supplied by Friend and substantiated by the purported CIA memo – with a number of notable exceptions. 

Though Emenegger would not identify the author of the purported CIA memo Emenegger says that the man was present at the July 6, 1959 event, and that the man was the civilian who confirmed to Emenegger the authenticity of the memo. This description of the man entails that it has to be Lundahl. 

While Lundahl says that the navy officer did, in fact, report that he was in communication with AFFA and did instruct the group to look out the window for AFFA’s craft, nothing was seen. 

Lundahl says that there was no such memo to his knowledge. He further claims that when Friend arrived and met with them, Friend was told by those present that no UFO had been seen. And that the navy officer did not – go into a second trance when friend was present. This contradicts what both Friend and Emenegger told SECOND LOOK. 

Lundahl swears that his statements are true: 

“Never for a fleeting moment did I believe that this Navy officer was in communication with outer space, nor did I see a UFO. The demonstration was not done at our request. The man explained that Mrs. Swan had shown him something called ‘Automatic writing,’ and that if asked he would show me,” Lundahl explained. 

“He probably chose me because I was a friend, and because I had done the photographic analysis work on the Tremonton (UFO) sighting. 

“Though I believe in intelligence life other than ours, I felt nothing but sympathy and embarrassment on this occasion, for a man who was troubled, who was my friend, and who, if his superiors had learned of this, would undoubtedly have suffered in his career.” 

“There was one other person there. His name was Robert Nisham. He was a Navy photo analyst assigned to the CIA at the time. He and I have talked about this many times, and we agree that no UFO was seen. I swear I am telling the truth,” said Lundahl. 

If Lundahl is telling the truth, Nisham would have to be the other Navy commander, whose name was deleted by the CIA memo that Emenegger claims is authentic. 

Whether this case is one of the most incredible UFO events in history, or the best-perpetrated UFO hoax in memory will be explored future in a future article. A search by the CIA and the Defense department for the document has begun through SECOND LOOK’s demand under the freedom of Information Act. Emenegger has been asked to produce a copy of the document he purports is legitimate. And a search for Nisham, who retired from the intelligence community, is underway. 

Notes from Grant Cameron 

Mrs. Swan confirmed to me, in writing, that she did in fact have an agreement with the Navy to “be still.” Col. William Coleman confirmed to me, in writing that “The (CIA) document looked authentic” and that the word of Col. Friend was “impeccable.” 

The secret office that is referred to in this article is NPIC, the National Photographic Interpretation Center. The construction for the lab began in 1954 in response to the building of the U-2 spy plane. NPIC, the most highly classified photo lab in the country, was the place where the U-2, SR-71, and spy satellite photos were analyzed.

Arthur Lundahl, referred to in the above article, was the man who discovered the missiles in Cuba, and the man who was taken into President John Kennedy’s office the next morning to brief the President.

 Lundahl had according to Todd Zechel, the founder of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (C.A.U.S.) had the biggest UFO book collection he had ever seen. Zechel had a reliable CIA source that told him that Art Lundahl had acted as a briefer for three Presidents on the subject of UFOs.