By Dr. Raymond A. Keller, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray,” the author of the international awards-winning “Venus Rising” Trilogy (Headline Books, Terra Alta, WV, 2015-2017), available on amazon.com while supplies last
The contactees of the 1950s and early 1960s tried to tell us that the Moon was already colonized by extraterrestrials, mostly Venusians. August C. Roberts, a close associate of the New Jersey sign painter and contactee, Howard Menger, who claimed to have taken a ride to a Venusian base on the Moon in a flying saucer, was interviewed by Joan Wiessmann, a correspondent for the Morning Call newspaper of Allentown, Pennsylvania. The intriguing interview appeared in the Friday, 4 July 1969 edition of the newspaper, just two weeks and two days before astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the surface of the Moon. Wiessmann’s interview with Roberts is important because it reflected the then extant mindset of most ufologists about the space program and a perceived cover-up of the truth about the UFO phenomenon.
In the Wiessmann article entitled “Augie Wants Moon News,” Roberts is quoted as saying that, “The Moon landing should prove a lot of things. It will also prove some people liars.”
At the time of the interview, Roberts was living in Wayne Township, New Jersey. Roberts could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the projected 20 July Moon landing. He was anxious to see if the astronauts would find dome-like buildings on the surface of the Moon. Roberts was a photographer noted for his tremendous collection of UFO pictures. But the finest flying saucer photos in his collection came from his good friend, the contactee Howard Menger. The famous photographer explained that, “I know a chap, Howard Menger, who has some good pictures of what he claims are flying saucers.” Roberts added that, “Menger claims to have been on the Moon. I did a book with him titled ‘From Outer Space to You.’” This book was published by the Saucerian Press of Clarksburg, West Virginia, in 1959.
Roberts continued: “Menger says some people from Venus landed in his backyard at High Bridge, New Jersey, and took him for a ride to the Moon.” While Menger was hovering over the Moon in a Venusian scout ship, the pilot of the craft allowed him to take some photographs of dome-like buildings on the lunar surface. These he turned over to his friend and fellow UFO researcher August C. Roberts, long acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities when it came to taking photographs of unexplained aerial and space phenomena.
Enter Valiant Thor
Of Menger, Roberts commented that, “I know his story very well. I believe that Menger thinks he is telling the truth; but I don’t necessarily believe the story.” When reporter Wiessmann asked Roberts to elaborate on this, Roberts explained that once he was in attendance at a meeting where the sign painter, Menger, was addressing the members of a flying saucer club assembled at his High Bridge home. Menger allegedly told the membership that there was a man from Venus among them, although they weren’t quite sure who he was.
“I took pictures of an unusual-looking man and then had these reproduced,” said Roberts, also declaring that, “Nobody has stepped forward and disproved the story. Menger called him Valiant Thor.” These and other photographs from Roberts’ special collection have been widely publicized in almost every UFO journal ever since. Just recently, I published them along with Roberts’ official seal and typed comments as found on the back of each photograph on the Jeff Rense Radio website.
Back in 1969, most of Roberts’ photos remained in his “secret file,” then considered one of the largest archives of UFO pictures in the entire United States, if not the world. Those photographs of UFOs and alleged extraterrestrials not taken by Roberts were carefully copied by him from other special collections. Roberts also co-produced a full-length commercial movie about flying saucers with Dr. Frank Stranges, out in Van Nuys, California. The movie was a UFO documentary entitled, “Phenomena 7-7.”
August C. Roberts was musing prophetic when he declared that, “What I do today, the children of tomorrow will see in books and movies.” Now, 49 years later, prominent Hollywood movie director Craig Campobasso has succeeded in garnering sufficient financing to go ahead with the production of a full-blown feature film about Valiant Thor’s arrival and activities here on Earth from 1957-1960. The movie will be titled Stranger in the Pentagon and should be in theaters sometime late next year or into the beginning of 2020.
Roberts on the Condon Report
During the time of the interview, the United States government recently concluded an exhaustive study of UFOs. It was contracted to the University of Colorado at Boulder and headed up by the prominent physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon. The Colorado team was assigned the task of determining whether or not flying saucers as extraterrestrial spacecraft were actually coming to the Earth. The Air Force paid the University of Colorado slightly over $500,000 to study this matter in 1966; and the study formally concluded in November 1968. Their report, titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, was released in January 1969. It has commonly come to be known as the Condon Report. Of the final document, Roberts was not impressed. “The research group must be incompetent because they decided the saucers didn’t exist,” he assured Wiessmann.
The pioneering ufologist added that, “I have proof-positive that they do exist. The people never asked to look at my files. The flying saucers look like bell-type ships.”
Wiessmann wondered if Roberts had any problems with the government, being so knowledgeable about the flying saucers traversing our skies. The ufologist did admit that he was once escorted out of the Pentagon because and a companion called out some top government officials as “liars” with respect to some of their misleading remarks about the UFO phenomenon that they were making to the press.
“They told us that President Ike Eisenhower said the UFOs were only sunspots,” noted Roberts. He thought this was a dubious statement because he served as a plane spotter at a remote base of the Army Air Corps situated at a secret location in a mountainous section along the Mexican border in 1943. “At that time, I and the other enlisted men were amazed to see a huge orange object circle below us in the valley. I know what a sunspot looks like, and this object exhibited no resemblance to that type of phenomenon.”
Remarkable Career
In his long career in the burgeoning subject of ufology, Roberts noted that for 1969, the year of the Moon shot, “business is slow these days as far as UFOs are concerned.” He added that, “A few UFOs have been seen in foreign countries. But you know, the saucers are supposed to appear in cycles. I believe it’s every five years.” Roberts expounded on the close approach of Mars and other planets in the solar system, when UFO activity seems to peak. “But I don’t say this is true. I don’t subscribe to any space theory.” Like the great anomalist John A. Keel, who worked in close association with Roberts on several projects, the prominent UFO photographer thought that there might be some inter-dimensional aspect to the whole UFO scenario, although he couldn’t be sure. “I keep an open mind to the possibility of UFOs as coming from some unseen ultra-dimensional reality,” he declared.
Another prolific figure from the UFO community who worked with Roberts was Gray Barker, the publisher of the Saucerian Press in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Barker edited and published Howard Menger’s first book, From Outer Space to You. Barker also popularized the frequent appearance of the mysterious Men in Black to UFO experiencers. Barker accused these dark figures with silencing the voices of those participating in close encounters of the third kind, or contact with the flying saucer occupants, and thereby keeping the truth about UFOs from the public at large. But it was Gray Barker who said of Roberts that, “If anybody deserves to be honored as a flying saucer pioneer, that person is August C. Roberts. In the unfolding saucer drama, his name has become as familiar as those of George Adamski, Major Donald E. Keyhoe, Ray Palmer and others.”
Roberts served as photographic consultant for Gray Barker’s Saucerian Press, in addition to working for a time with Raymond Palmer and his line of mystic, flying saucer, science fiction and space magazines. Long associated with UFO contactee Dominick Lucchesi, also of New Jersey, they published one of the very first flying saucer magazines, Nexus. He has given assistance to practically every major researcher from the early days of ufology, and was doing the photographic layout on a UFO book with comic book, science fiction and space writer Otto Binder, right before Binder passed away in 1974 at his Chestertown, New York, home.
One of the most exciting moments in Roberts’ UFO career took place in 1952. He was positioned in a sky watch tower and actually snapped a photo of a saucer which appeared directly above New York City. The photograph was shown on television, in newspapers up and down the East Coast, and national magazines. Roberts even appeared on a major television news program in 1955 where he displayed the photograph, along with some others of UFOs that he had taken since 1952 on other occasions. His account of the sighting and photograph of the object, along with other UFO photos, were included in the Westinghouse time capsule buried at the conclusion of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The capsule will not be opened until the year 6939. Hopefully, UFO disclosure will have come by then. But I suppose we shouldn’t hold our breath.
Another Moon Mystery
The discovery of mysterious obelisk and domed structures in the mountains to the north of the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the Moon cinched the area as the first priority landing zone for the Apollo 11’s lunar excursion module. Astronomers at the Corralitos Observatory on a remote ranch in the desert north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, attached there by a special lunar phenomena investigations division of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, were conducting a survey of the mountains and craters in and around the Sea of Tranquility just weeks prior to the Apollo 11 launch, when they reported a unique ultraviolet radiation in close vicinity to the proposed landing zone.
Back in July 1969, while co-editing the Flying Saucer Report out of Bedford, Ohio, I received a newspaper clipping from a subscriber in Arizona. It was dated 5 July 1969 and first appeared as an Associated Press dispatch in the Tucson Daily Citizen. Titled, “Scientists Find a Moon Mystery,” this news item detailed how a group of New Mexico astronomers recorded intermittent fluxes of radiation from a large crater not far from the proposed Tranquility landing site. They had been monitoring this radiation flux for the past two years. “We are detecting in the Aristarchus region on a lunar monthly basis an excess of blue or ultraviolet,” noted J. R. Dunlap, the resident director of the observatory.
Threat Assessment
President Richard M. Nixon was apprised of the situation at Aristarchus crater directly by Dunlap. “What you are telling me is certainly unprecedented, Dunlap. That this radiation threat is centered so close to our designated Apollo landing zone is worrisome to me. Do you think we should temporarily postpone the mission?” inquired Nixon.
The Corralitos facility director replied that, “Mr. President, I do not believe the radiation will threaten the Apollo 11 astronauts or future Moon landing crews.”
“Would it be prudent to select an alternate landing site?” asked the president.
Dunlap declared that, “I think that I should defer to the head of our astronomy department at Northwestern University for that, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. We are definitely dealing with something quite extraordinary at Aristarchus and the Tranquility region in general.”
“Yes, I know Hynek. I’ve consulted him before on similar occurrences in outer space,” remarked Nixon.
Hynek Briefs Nixon
The president’s secretary set up a secure telephone line for Nixon to speak directly to Hynek at Northwestern. The following is a summation of their conversation.
Nixon: Dr. Hynek, what’s going on at Aristarchus crater? We’re getting too close to launch with Apollo 11 to start making any mission deviations.
Hynek: From what my people at Corralitos are telling me, their observations of the ultraviolet radiation began while they were in the process of searching for information about some of the centuries-old phenomena on the Moon that have long baffled us in the astronomy community.
Nixon: What are we talking about here, Hynek? I know you’re my “Johnny on the Spot” for everything UFOs and paranormal. Are we talking about ET activity on the Moon? Don’t B.S. me, Hynek. I’m not John Q. Public that’s going to buy off on “swamp gas” or “Venus seen in some weather inversion,” or any other lame explanation, for that matter.
Hynek: I’d never B.S. you, Mr. President. You were right there in the White House when our first emissary showed up there. So there’s no bull shitting you, Mr. President.
Nixon: Glad we have that settled. So what’s up at this crater that I should know about?
Hynek: Our folks at Corralitos were charged by me to monitor the areas where this “red glow” has been consistently observed. I wanted them to watch for any such red glows in the area where our astronauts are planning to land.
Nixon: That seems wise, Hynek. Please continue.
Hynek: Well, these red glowing areas on the Moon have been observed by astronomers for at least four centuries. They’re called lunar transient events. But besides the red glow, our astronomers at Corralitos and other telescopes devoted to lunar observations have reported seeing temporary increases in the brightness at Aristarchus crater. It has changed colors in its pulsating brightness.
Nixon: We have our reasons to suspect saucer activity on the back side of the Moon; but I wasn’t aware of anything taking place on the side that always faces us.
Hynek: This is a definite concern, Mr. President, especially in light of the fact that it’s occurring now, right before our astronauts take off for that very region.
Nixon: So what have astronomers been doing about it? What more have you discovered, that I need to know about?
Hynek: As of a few days ago, the red glows have ceased. But they have been replaced by some quite pronounced emissions of ultraviolet radiation. Utilizing our 24-inch telescope at Corralitos, we couldn’t be sure if the atmosphere or something was interfering to produce it; and we could not duplicate our findings. Frankly, Mr. President, I’m not sure just what the hell is going on up there.
Nixon: Dr. Hynek, given the unusual energy fluxes at Tranquility Base as reported from Corralitos, is it your opinion that we need to change our landing zone to somewhere else?
Hynek: I think we will be OK to stick with Tranquility Base as our LZ. The radiation has been observed regularly since last fall. We have no doubt that the radiation is there. Something, or someone, is causing it. I don’t think we’ll be alone up there on the Moon. It might be prudent to keep our astronauts apprised of this. ET will allow us to land and make our observations. But anything we find out about their presence on the Moon will have to be hushed up. As news of some strange lights and radiation near Aristarchus have already reached the ears of some in the news media, I suggest we go with a press release declaring something like, “The lunar rocks are just giving off a natural fluorescence, akin to the same process that causes mineral specimens in museums to glow under ultraviolet or infrared light.”
Nixon: Do you really think the public is going to believe that?
Hynek: I certainly hope so. We are entering a new age with our Moon landing. ET may let us land on the Moon; but I doubt they will let us establish a continuing presence there.
The Aftermath
Following the success of the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission, both Dr. J. Allen Hynek and President Richard M. Nixon were asked for their opinions about extraterrestrials and UFOs at various news conferences. According to a 22 April 2009 article in the London, United Kingdom, Telegraph newspaper, this is what these two historic personages had to say on the matter:
Dr. J. Allen Hynek: “When the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap. We had a job to do, whether right or wrong, to keep the public from getting excited.”
President Richard M. Nixon, in office 1969-1974: “I'm not at liberty to discuss the government's knowledge of extraterrestrial UFOs at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject.”
Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus
Cosmic Ray's Excellent Venus Adventure
The Pioneers of Space: George Adamski's Lost Tale of a Journey from the Moon to Mars and Venus
My Flight to Venus: A True Mystical Experience - Long Before The Advent of the Flying Saucer - Heralding the Coming of Interplanetary Spacecraft
Lon's Suggested Reading List - Books & Films / DVDs
