Strategic Deception Planner and UFO Witness

In a previous blog post I pointed out the possible 1947 org chart of Joint Security Control (JSC) and specifically two colonels in the Special Section of JSC that dealt with strategic deception - Air Force Colonel Willard Van Deman Brown and Army Colonel Carl Goldbranson. Goldbranson’s connection to early UFO history has already been discussed and now I would like to focus the spotlight on Colonel Brown.

Willard Brown was a direct descendant of Solomon Brown, the American minuteman who was thought to have fired the first shot at the Battle of Lexington during the Revolutionary War in 1775. Willard first attended Georgia Tech in 1929 and then in 1932 joined the Army Air Corp and gained his wings at Randolph Field, Texas under the tutelage of future Joint Security Control member and Director of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG, Later CIA) Hoyt Vandenberg.

Willard went on to advanced flying school in 1933 at Kelly Field, Texas before joining the 20^th Pursuit Squadron at Barksdale Field, Louisiana. In 1935, Willard left active duty to fly commercially for American Airlines at Fort Worth, Texas. It was around this time that he met and fell in love with Miss Madeleine Lorraine Wilson of Shreveport and soon they were married. Willard decided he had enough of civilian life and rejoined the Army Air Corp in 1938, still a 2^nd Lieutenant.

Willard then served at Hamilton Field, California when his first daughter was born in 1940 and soon after he got orders for Wheeler Field in Hawaii, his wife and infant daughter accompanying him there in January of 1941. Willard became a 1^st Lieutenant in Oct 1941, just prior to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor two months later. Although Wheeler was the first to be hit, the family survived the attack. Willard sent his wife and child back stateside.

The following year, now a Major, Willard became Wheeler Field’s base operations officer. In 1943, Willard became a Lieutenant Colonel and received his first base command in charge of the advanced flying school at Spence Field, Georgia. His full bird Colonel rank came the following year in 1944.

Then a unique opportunity fell into Willard's lap in August 1944 – he was hand selected along with two other Air Force colonels to attend an extraordinary month long training course in September dubbed as the “Young Ladies’ Guide to Truth and Honor”, a euphemistic name for the first course on strategic deception organized in the United States, with a curriculum planned by Carl Goldbranson himself.

Willard then shows up on Joint Security Control rosters in 1946 and up to April 1947 at which point the National Archive’s JSC paper trail ends. In 1948, Willard is at the Air War College.

But in 1950, Willard surfaces again, this time as an alleged UFO witness of a case listed in the Project Blue Book unknowns:

Aug. 20, 1950; Nicosia, Cyprus. 1:30 p.m. Witnesses: USAF MATS liaison officer Lt. William Ghormley, Col. W. V. Brown, Lt. Col. L.W. Brauer. One small, round, bright object flew fast, straight and level for 15-20 seconds. Case # 793: Don Berliner, Project Bluebook Unknowns

So the first question on your mind is probably, how do you know the Colonel W. V. Brown mentioned is indeed Willard and not some other Air Force Colonel with similar initials? Let me lay out the evidence that points to Willard.

I will start first with an interesting tidbit. On January 8, 1950, in newspaper articles all over the United States, it is announced that Colonel Willard Van D. Brown was being sent to Moscow as the new Air Attaché. But it appears those orders were rescinded as Willard does not show up on the American legation Foreign Service list for 1950.

Where he does show up is in Ankara, Turkey from May of 1950 to May of 1952 as the chief of staff, U.S. Air Force Group, a part of the Joint Military Mission for Aid to Turkey. Willard’s duties in Turkey included working on a National Security Agency Project per declassified documents. So this places Willard in the right general area of the world for the August, 1950 UFO sighting in Cyprus.  

An April 1964 newspaper article details a presentation Willard gave at an Exchange Club in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he discusses: “The widening political gap between Turkey and the island of Cyprus. Van Brown, an Exchange Club member and retired Air Force colonel, was stationed in Turkey two years during the 1950s and visited the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus several times.”

The right name, the right place and the right time – Colonel Willard Van Deman Brown - a Project Blue Book unknown was witnessed by none other than one of the principal strategic deception planners from the early UFO era. What are the odds? There is far more than meets the eye here. Stay tuned.

Colonel Carl E. Goldbranson – Deception Planner Extraordinaire

I apologize that it has been over a year since my last post but life has been busy with travel and work and has left me less time to pursue my investigations. I did want to catch you up on our mystery man Carl E. Goldbranson whose hand in the UFO cookie jar was documented in my previous series of posts, the last of which Brad Sparks, Kevin Randle and Robert Schaeffer have yet to respond to.

The question of whether Goldbranson was back to his dirty tricks of deception planning during the UFO summer of 1947 can only be conclusively solved by the release of a 1947 Joint Security Control personnel roster which the National Archives does not appear to have, or through the release of Carl Goldbranson’s military record, assuming it provides that level of detail. The National Personnel Records Center in Saint Louis will only release to the public a service member’s record in whole 62 years after their discharge from the service, so the earliest this can occur is in 2019 as Goldbranson died in 1957.

In the meantime I continue to FOIA and dig through archives for more clues on Goldbranson’s deception career. Here are some interesting leads I have found.

After the UFO summer of 1947, Goldbranson still in his role on the War Department Intelligence Division staff shows up on CIA director’s Roscoe Hillenkoetter’s daily diary for December 15, 1947 delivering a paper of unknown subject. The Admiral John E. Gingrich mentioned as already having been briefed on this unknown subject was the newly appointed first director of the Division of Security and Intelligence at the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).  As AEC security chief, he was responsible for the physical security of AEC installations, control of classified information, development and operation of security clearance procedures, and coordination with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Given Gingrich’s role, it is conceivable that Goldbranson was delivering a paper of a counter-intelligence nature.

 Fast forward to November 2-3, 1951 when Goldbranson, serving in the Air National Guard as Strategic Planner in the War Plans division from 1948 till 1952, is still involved in deception planning as evidenced by this CIA Office of Special Operations (OSO) diary entry describing Goldbranson’s calling on the Assistant Director of Special Operations to discuss deception and double agents. This time the counter-intelligence focus of the deception is plain as day.

In my still being written book The Roswell Deception I will explain how the Joint Chiefs of Staff through Joint Security Control strategic deception operations gave rise to the UFO events of the summer of 1947 and these operations were focused singularly on counter-intelligence – the unmasking of Soviet spies.

From Goldbranson’s daring strategic deception exploits during WW2 to the Flying Saucer deception operations in the summer of 1947 to his continued high level deception operations in the Air Force up until his death, Goldbranson had a long and illustrious career in the deception black arts. There are further clues to be gathered that will conclusively shed light on the scope and nature of Goldbranson’s involvement, which takes great patience to gather. Then again it has been exactly 70 years since the world was shocked by the UFO summer of 1947 and what appeared to be other worldly events. It is high time to show the very human and down to earth origin of these UFO myths.

Why We Need a Zombie Apocalypse to Make America Great Again

If the Trump phenomenon is truly the product of hyper-partisanship, then what is needed to cure the US of this dreadful binary disease, is a more bad-ass binary disease. I am talking about a non-discriminating, politics-agnostic, pandemic-creating, world-ending, deadly virus that will equally turn your next-door Trump-sign-in-the-yard, garden variety Republican and your across the street liberal, Hillary-bumper-sticker-on-the-Prius, Democrat, into flesh-craving eating and killing machines. In laymen’s terms, the cure for hyper-partisanship is a full-fledged, good old all-American zombie apocalypse.

I am not referring to the slow as molasses and aimlessly wandering munchers of Walking Dead fame nor the crack crazy super jumpers of World War Z, but instead to the original brain tissue preferring ghouls of the classic Return of the Living Dead. Brains, or the lack thereof is what got us into this hyper-partisan mess to begin with.

Everyone knows that all zombie movies are based on the same predictable formula – those whose brains remain relatively intact defend themselves from those whose brains have been whittled down by the virus to its base reptilian form. In a zombie apocalypse where the black and white of society is no longer based on political views, income level, or access to health insurance but instead on whose cranium is filled with healthy brain tissue and whose liquified remains are steadily jiggling out of their ears like Jell-O, only then will hyper-partisanship disappear.

All zombie movies also have the same predictable ending where those who can still think with their whole brain ultimately prevail over the zombie hordes. Why? Because zombie movies demand happy endings? No, it is because those who can exercise more than their brain stem quickly realize that the key to their survival is to put all differences aside and to work together towards a common goal – the survival of the human species.

It is this we-are-all-in-this-shit together attitude that leads survivors to the creative solutions needed to obliterate the literally primitive single-minded but terrifying brain cravers. In other words, the only time we are going to start seeing ourselves, every one of us, as Americans again and not as Republicans or Democrats is for the shit to hit the apocalyptic fan when dire circumstances force us to forget the pettiness of politics and instead focus on what is needed for this country to survive, whether that is due to a zombie army uprising or outside interference by a foreign country. 

These are the top five reasons why a zombie apocalypse is needed to put the “US” back into the US of A:

1.      In a zombie apocalypse, there are no alternative facts, there are only the living and the undead, and if you don’t want to join the brain munchers, then you best grab hold of all the irrefutable facts you can remember. You know, the oldies but goodies like only drink uncontaminated water, boiling if necessary, or keep a wound clean to avoid losing a limb when the antibiotics have long run out. In fact, staying healthy in a world where modern medicine no longer exists is directly proportional to your odds of survival. Bonus to your survival clan if you count a medical doctor amongst your ranks – and I don’t believe you will care if they got their degree at Harvard Medical or at the University of Puerto Rico.

2.      In a zombie apocalypse, you also won’t care which side of the border your fellow survivors were born on; you won’t give a shit if they pull out their prayer rugs to pray five times a day and you won’t give a rat’s ass if they don’t sunburn as quickly as you do. In a zombie survival scenario, the only real capital is human capital and the larger the able-bodied group, the greater the chance for survival.

3.      In a zombie apocalypse, manual labor will be the resume of choice. Meanwhile. bankers, lobbyists, brokers and politicians will have to wait a few generations before their career choices open up again. Speaking of which, when it comes to survival and picking who will join my ideal survivor clan, I will take a dozen illegal Mexican manual laborers over a dozen white collared, nicely manicured but zero calloused handed, metro sexual young professionals, any day. Wouldn’t you rather be around those in society who are already used to performing the menial tasks which will be super important in a survival scenario? Not to mention, illegals already have a survivor mentality honed by a lifetime of hardship and more importantly they exude the optimistic view that the US is still a land of opportunity, even if that means ridding it of zombies first.

4.      Surviving a zombie apocalypse not only boils down to pulling together the right team with the right immediate skillsets but also including those who will contribute to creating a brighter future. Your survival clan will need educators who can teach the young ones the skills they need to rebuild, home care professionals to take care of the elderly whose wisdom will be treasured in a world with no iPhones or Internet, cooks who will make scarce food items edible and those with law enforcement and military skills who can protect and defend.

5.      Finally, the top reason we need a zombie apocalypse is to show the world once again what truly makes America great – during times of great peril, we come together as one people and forget about our differences as we focus on what truly matters, the preservation of our Republic. It is that same amazing spirit the world saw a brief glimpse of on September 11, 2001 when we pulled together at a time of great need. During World War 2 America showed its greatness not in empty words but in blood spilling actions when that greatest generation bravely faced an unprecedented evil. We didn’t shy away from the fight or isolate ourselves across oceans, we jumped into the fray knowing that the zombie hoardes would one day reach our shores as well.

Hyper-partisanship is a disease and the only cure for the masses fallen victims to its allure is a brain wasting zombie virus as nothing else seems capable of resetting a brain suspended in hyper-partisan animation. The uninfected will either form cooperative bonds with their fellow survivors regardless of race, creed, religion and color or will make the egocentric and ultimately fatal mistake of going it alone that will only serve to join themselves to the ranks of the undead. In the end, the virus will be eradicated and a new generation of humans will rebuild from the ashes, this time hopefully with a more congenial and re-found appreciation for the ethos of working towards the common good and embracing the common goals that all Americans should share – the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

So, my fellow Republicans and Democrats, there is only one way to truly Make America Great Again and you’re really not going to like it. It involves existential threat to your family, your community and your country. Hyper-partisanship is the primary obstacle to America greatness and needs to be eradicated if our Republic is not only to survive but to shine once again as a beacon of hope for the World. As a wise and observant Irishman once said, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities”. The same cannot be said about Democrats or Republicans.