Interviewer: In accordance with your wishes not to be identified with a surname, how may I address you?

Dick: Call me, Ishmail ... no, seriously, I thought it would be cool to break the ice like Herman Melville.

Interviewer: You want me to call you MOBY DICK?

Dick: No, just Dick, please.

Interviewer: Okay Dick Please. - Wait! Now, I'm kidding, I'm sorry! You have some insights into why the U.S. is taking such grandiose steps to prevent the world from knowing about UFOs?

Dick: Not to prevent the world from knowing about UFOs - after all, the Russians and Chinese also have captured wreckage of such craft, for instance. But the U.S possession of the ones we have has lead to questions of greed, defense, politics, megalomania, and morality, to name the big ones.

Interviewer: How far back does your knowledge go?

Dick: Just after World War II.

Interviewer: Would you like to describe it in your own words? I might like to interrupt for specific questions, or for clarification.

Dick: Fine. Up to 1947, as any historian knows, there was no CIA yet, nor even a unified intelligence authority for our country after the war ended. The OSS would later be folded into the original CIA; but since they used numerous Russkies (our WW II allies), our entire intelligence community was totally infiltrated by communists from the very beginning. That's why Stalin knew about the A-bomb before Pottsdam, in 1945. At least ten per cent of workers on the Manhattan Project were spies.

Interviewer: You could have read that on Wikipedia.

Dick: And since their material is vetted, you might give me the benefit of the doubt for a moment.

Interviewer: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get ahead of you, but you are going to start with Roswell, right?

Dick: Yes and no. While the Roswell incident is the beginning of my family's experience with alien contact, it it important to understand who and why the players involved got to be there.

Interviewer: Please continue.

Dick: So without a unified intelligence community, each branch of the services had their own intel group, except they were extremely balky at sharing anything they knew, partly because they couldn't trust the security of the other intel groups, and partly because they didn't feel they answered to any other military group.

The Air Force, which had increasingly proven its value for the second consecutive war, now sought to elevate themselves above the rest of the services by simply pretending to be in charge, and since they controlled military air travel, they could easily beat anyone else to crash sites ... which leads to Roswell.

Interviewer: Right. That explains why the Air Force grabbed everything.

Dick: Exactly. But more than that, they knew the importance of keeping the findings a secret. The cover story, which was hashed together quickly, was that it was a weather balloon; but then why did they take the remnants of a "weather balloon" to hanger 18? [Famous or infamous Hanger 18 was actually at Wright Field in Ohio, today known as Wright-Patterson AFB.]

Interviewer: And you worked at Hanger 18?

Dick: My dad did. The wreckage was greater in volume than twenty "weather balloons", and of course, there were the bodies, one of which was still alive. Decades later, the newer concoction was that our "weather balloons" were secretly equipped to overfly Russia and spy on it, but no one tries to explain in detail why anyone should expect a balloon in New Mexico to reach Russia - a balloon, by the way, that was only 120 miles from Alamogordo, where we were exploding A-bombs! If they were REALLY weather balloons, they undoubtedly were taking radiation readings, something the country couldn't afford to admit, lest our fledgling nuclear industry would grind to a screeching halt!

Interviewer: Tell me about the alien.

Dick: We had no way to know what to do for the poor thing, small by our standards, obviously its immune system compromised by our Earthly microbes. The doctors took their best shot with the limited medical knowledge we had. We killed it ... with inadequate medical knowledge.

The Air Force immediately took total control of the craft with the idea of reverse engineering the next generation of war-craft. Army G-2 knew about it because it was still the "Army Air Corps". But we also had a communique from James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy (and former FDR campaign aid; he was from Beacon, NY). The Air Force told him to beat it! First come - first served - bullshit like that!

Interviewer: Now I see why you laid the groundwork about no CIA. There was no oversight group to countermand the Air Force's manipulation.

Dick: Yes, but they underestimated James Forrestal, partly because he lived in obscurity. And it is a historical fact that within three weeks of Roswell, President Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, in which he consolidated the armed forces, intelligence community, and limited foreign policy under one (new) federal umbrella, although most of the provisions would not take place until after Congress confirmed the newly created cabinet post, the first ever Secretary of Defense: James V. Forrestal!

Interviewer: So let me get this straight. Roswell is in the history books as occurring July 7, 1947...

Dick: And the Act took place on July 26, 1947. You can "smell" the background machinations on that one! The Senate confirmed Forrestal on Sept 17, and the next day, most of the provisions of the act took effect. And a week after that, Truman authorized the creation of Majestic 12, the mysterious "holders of the keys" to UFO intel - headed initially by Forrestal.

Interviewer: So they came and got the wreckage and that was that? No?

Dick: Not quite. I was born in Beacon NY. My father was close friends with Forrestal, especially when they sold bonds together at the brokerage house that became Dillon Read & Co ... Forrestal was actually President of the company in 1937, I think.

He convinced my dad to get out of Wright Field before "the shit hit the fan". He helped my father join the newly created CIA, which naturally led him to follow up (with his guru's blessing) with the assignment of oversight on captured technology.

With my father's contacts at Wright, it was easy to keep the wreckage securely where it was already protected, but now the President had to be kept in the loop. (What happens at Area-51, some two thousand miles away, is what WE have built, based on reverse engineering, as well as remnants of later recovered craft.)

But things would turn extremely sour (and dangerous) in 1949.

Interviewer: Are you saying Forrestal's suicide was actually a murder? [Historical fact: James V. Forrestal was found dead on May 22, 1949. His body was found on a third floor roof below a 16th floor kitchen window (of Bethesda Naval Hospital), across the hall from his hospital room. His bathrobe sash was around his neck.]