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Sept. 29, 2010 - Project Camelot
35:38
PROJECT CAMELOT : ROBERT SALAS : A Question of National Security
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Make a conscious effort of trying to forget that information that you know is classified because you don't want to divulge it You know, incidentally.
I read your book, so I want you to know that I am knowledgeable, semi-knowledgeable about the situation.
Did you buy my book?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's even better.
Yeah, okay, my name is Robert Sullis, and yeah, this happened in 1967 while I was on missile duty with the Air Force in Montana.
Near Great Falls, Montana.
Malestrom Air Force Base is where I was stationed.
I was a lieutenant there and left as a captain.
I got promoted while I was there.
Like I said, I was in the Air Force from active duty from 1964 to 1971.
During this incident, I was down 60 feet underground in a capsule launch control center.
And we were obliged to stay down there, so we weren't able to leave, even though I got those phone calls talking about the UFOs upstairs.
We couldn't leave the capsule, so for obvious reasons.
You know, it could have been a hoax, a terrorist hoax, and there could have been terrorists up there.
So obviously we're supposed to stay where we are, maintain our posts.
Can you describe that area, the kind of base you were in, the underground situation?
The capsule, the launch control center, is right at the launch control facility, but underground, about 60 feet underground.
It's got all kinds of equipment necessary for the We have control of the missiles and also we're monitoring the status of the missiles, whether or not they're in good shape, ready to go.
So we were obliged to spend a 24-hour tour down there.
In the event of a war, a nuclear war, we got the command we were supposed to launch.
Other than that, We coordinated security efforts in case there were security infractions at the launch facilities where missiles were actually located.
We coordinated maintenance activities, that sort of thing.
And what year was this?
I was at Malmstrom from late 1966 to June of 69.
So this incident occurred in 1967.
And were you technically in charge of the base at that point?
Or the, you know, the facility that you were...
Let me...
You know, because I'm not a military person, I don't really know...
I wasn't in charge of any base.
I was assigned to Maelstrom Air Force Base, but they sent us out to our duty stations, which were these launch control facilities.
And when we were out there, we...
During this incident, I had a commander in the capsule.
So, yes, the commander of the capsule was in charge of the launch control facility during our tour.
We had security guards upstairs who were in charge of the upstairs area, you might say, for security purposes.
I was the one who was awake.
My commander was taking a rest You know, because it was a 24-hour tour.
We had a little cot down there.
But it was early morning.
I was probably reading a book of some kind, and I get a call from upstairs that the guards were observing strange lights flying around in the sky, and I pretty well discounted that.
I didn't think much of it.
What time is it when you say early morning?
How early?
It's hard to say because we don't have any windows down there, but...
It was still dark because they talked about the strange lights flying around.
So it was still dark.
It could have been anywhere from 4 or 5 in the morning, 6 in the morning, something like that.
But it was morning.
And because I recall we hadn't...
I was about to get my commander up, but he's screaming into the phone, just...
Really upset and frightened and he's telling me that there's this glowing object.
He's looking out his front window there and sees this glowing object hovering up above the front gate and it's a red glowing object and he's scared to death.
He's got all the guards out there, weapons drawn, wants me to tell him what to do.
I had Really, it just caught me by surprise.
But obviously he was telling me the truth because he was really frightened.
And by the way, these guards don't play games with us.
They never joke around with us, obviously.
We were officers and they were enlisted men and they weren't trying to be kidding around.
I took it seriously.
Basically, I think I told, secure the outer fence.
We had an outer fence around the facility.
And then he screamed that one of his guards just got injured, hung up the phone.
And so I went over to wake up my commander and tell him about the phone calls.
And just as I was starting to talk about the phone calls, our klaxons went off, lights went off on our Control panel, which we monitored the missiles.
And so there was a lot of bells and whistles going off, and our missiles started shutting down.
By shutting down, I meant they went no-go.
They were unable to be launched.
Wow.
So, and how long did they stay in that state?
Well, as far as I can recall, they were I believe they were still out by the time we got released.
Wow.
And had that ever happened before in that particular location?
I was on missile duty for three years at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Never.
That never happened other than that one day.
A missile going down for mechanical reasons was a rare event.
These were very reliable weapons.
So 10 of them going down all at once was unheard of.
And would you classify this as a threat to national security in that case?
Well, like I said in the book, at the time I thought all 20 went down the same day, the Echo Flight's 10 and our 10.
And even if 10 go down...
For no apparent reason, which is what the military telex said that went out from SAC headquarters to other military personnel, that these missiles went down for no apparent reason.
So you've got to think this was a national security event, of course.
We lost weapons for no reason.
We couldn't understand it.
In fact, the Air Force never quite figured it out, as far as we can tell from our research.
So, what happened when you say, you know, they were very upset, one guy was injured.
Now, how was he injured?
As far as I can recall, it was not, had nothing to do with the UFO. He had cut his hand, probably on our wire fence.
Barbed wire.
We had barbed wire at the top of the fence.
Now, whether he was trying to approach the object or get away from it, I don't know, but he had a cut on his hand.
As I recall, they went ahead and helicoptered him out or transported him back to the base because it was a big gash in his hand.
He had to get that stitched up.
So in terms of sequence of events, you're down there, you've tried to wake your commanding officer, the missiles are going down, what happens next?
What happens next is we start our reporting procedures, we report to the command post.
So you don't go upstairs to see what's happening?
Absolutely not.
You're not allowed to do that?
Not allowed to, for the reasons I explained.
It could have been...
It was a hoax.
We could have been under attack by who knows who.
But we had control of 10 nuclear missiles.
We're not about to open that door, that huge door we've got, and poke our heads out.
So we were obliged to stay down there, and we did.
We didn't go up.
So did you make a phone call to someone at that point?
Yes, we called command post.
My commander called command post and reported it.
And how far away is the command post?
I'd say somewhere around 100 miles in that neighborhood.
How far?
Yeah, we were way up towards Lewistown, Montana.
And of course the base was near Great Falls, Montana.
But it's basically country all around there, am I correct?
I'm envisioning, you know, open acres of land, am I wrong?
At that time, a lot of open land, wheat fields mostly, rolling wheat fields.
And how many guards were out there?
Four to six, something like that.
Did you guys ever talk about it between yourselves?
Well, I certainly went up and talked to our primary flight security controller, the main guard up there.
Right after we got relieved, I went upstairs, looked him in the eye, and made him swear up and down what he told me over the phone was true, you know, about the UFOs.
He certainly was very serious.
He was a professional, as I recall, he was a staff sergeant, but he was a very professional military security guard.
And he assured me that there was no joke involved.
And even if they had done some sort of practical joke, they had no way to control the weapons that we had.
If he had been joking, it would have been a hell of a coincidence, but I was assured that he was not by looking him in the eye and questioning him for a short time.
We didn't get a chance to have an extensive interview with him because we had to get back to the base they wanted us to interview to debrief the wing commander, not the wing commander, but the squadron commander.
So, okay, so to back up a little bit, you're down underground.
Your commanding officer is now awake.
Is he aware there are UFOs up there, or has he been told that?
Well, like I said, I was about to tell him about the UFOs.
I wasn't able to really get into that about the UFO part of that until a little bit later, because just as I was trying to explain to them the phone calls, the missiles started going down, and then we had to jump in and go through our procedures.
So you went through the procedures and nothing happened, I imagine.
Am I wrong?
You couldn't get them to go again, right?
Well, no.
We were not able to restart the missiles from there.
The missiles had to be restarted mainly because they had to be targeted again.
So that involved a crew going out there, a targeting crew, and realigned.
Yeah, one point we need to make is that the missiles, the 10 missiles, there is some interconnectivity with regards to control, but as far as their power, they're stand-alone.
They have their own power sources, they have their own emergency generators in case power went out.
So if one goes down, it won't shut down the others?
If one goes down, it should not shut down any of the others.
So this is very unusual.
The technical aspect of this is very unusual, that they all happen to go down, one right after the other.
So you and your commander, when you say you went through procedures, Part of that procedure was to call your base?
Yeah, and the other part was, of course, to check for any security violation indications, which we did have.
We had a couple of security violations at a couple of the sites, so I got back on the phone after we reported and talked to the guard again.
He said no, it was gone.
I did ask him about the guard at that time that got injured.
And then I had him dispatch a couple of security guards out to one of the launch facilities.
Actually, I think there were a couple where we did have indications of security infraction.
In other words, we had ways of monitoring whether or not The launch facility had been penetrated.
Meaning, okay, penetrated by the UFO, meaning the UFO went over, flew over the...
Well, of course, we weren't concerned so much about UFOs.
We were concerned about the penetration of security at the launch facilities.
It could have been anything.
And these were fairly common.
In fact, a jackrabbit hopping the fence somehow or...
We're getting through what set off security alarms.
So you're saying simultaneous with the UFO incident there were security?
Simultaneous.
We sent guards out there.
In fact, the team we sent out reported observing a UFO over one of the launch facilities.
They observed for a while, but the UFO flew off and then they came back.
And they were pretty shook up by that too.
So we did observe, we did have that kind of an observation also.
So how long did all of this go on if you were to cover a span, we're talking an hour, two hours?
Well, including sending the guards out there and them coming back, maybe an hour or less.
Okay, and at that point you had called the base, so the base sent out people to interview you?
To relieve you?
Well, we get relieved at a regular time, I forget what it was, maybe like 9 o'clock in the morning.
It would vary depending on whether the relief crew drove out or flew out on helicopters.
So were you relieved?
On the weather, really.
They usually sent helicopters out, but it would depend on the weather.
At this time, I recall specifically, it was a helicopter they sent out to Relivas.
This would not have been the kind of exercise the Air Force would have run, but he assured me it wasn't an exercise.
Like I said, the fellow from AFOSI was also their captain, I think, major, maybe.
Were you debriefed as you call it means that they interview you about the incident?
All right.
So were you interviewed separately or with your men?
No, together.
Basically they just asked us to review with them what happened.
And that's essentially what I told you.
And strangely they didn't ask a lot of questions.
They just heard our statement, and then they told us that this would be a classified incident, a classified secret, and that we were not to talk about it.
Not to our spouses, not to other crew members, not to other airmen, no one.
So we went on to talk about it.
So I didn't.
As a matter of fact, one of the airmen One of the security guards, it may have been the main guard, called me about a week or so later after the incident and he was having a hard time assimilating what had happened, accepting it.
Like I said, the guards that we had sent out came back pretty well shook up and they were upset at what they had seen.
But he wanted to talk about it.
He just wanted to talk with me.
And this was on the phone?
He called me on the phone.
He wanted to get together with me somewhere, in a bar or anywhere, really, to talk about it.
And I told him, I said, we're obliged not to.
We've been ordered not to talk about it.
So I didn't.
I really wish I had.
Now that person, is he around?
You know, I don't recall his name.
I honestly don't.
I've tried to remember his name, and I have not heard from him since then.
Okay, and when this incident occurred, first of all, was there one incident or more than one?
Well, there was more than one.
Two of them we have documented in our book, Fated Giant.
One is the Echo flight incident, which we have specific evidence of the date that occurred.
That was the early morning of the 16th of March, 1967.
Now, in my book I state that I was at Oscar flight and my missiles also shut down.
And I state that the incident occurred on the same day.
Today, I'm considering the possibility that it didn't occur on the same day, but it occurred about a week later.
And the reason I say this is because there are other witnesses that have come forward since I wrote the book, which give a strong indication that the Oscar flight shutdown occurred on the 24th or thereabouts of March.
Meaning this was your memory that might have been faulty?
Well, the reason I had stated my book, our two flights went down on the same day, is because I did have a vivid memory of my commander, whose name is Fred Mywald, by the way.
He's still with us and he's living in Las Vegas right now.
Turned to me while we were reporting the incident to the command post and turned to me and said the same thing happened at Echo flight.
The same thing that happened to us with UFOs being sighted and missiles being shut down.
However, and that was a vivid memory I had of that day.
And however, he could have meant it happened previously.
And not that morning.
Oh, right.
Time works.
I have no records of when the Oscar flight went down.
Obviously, I turned those records over to the military investigator.
So they did investigate, they interviewed you and investigated both of these incidents?
Or just one?
Absolutely.
How many missiles were at OSCAR, as you call it?
Launch control facility controls 10 missiles.
Okay.
So ECHO is another launch control facility.
I was stationed at OSCAR flight at the time of my incident.
And again, memory is a big issue here because one of the things, if you have access to classified information, And, of course, you don't want to release it if you're under obligation not to release any classified information as I was.
The best thing to do is try to forget it.
Make a conscious effort of trying to forget that information that you know is classified, because you don't want to divulge it incidentally.
So, that's essentially Even after I left the Air Force...
How many years before you wrote your book?
Well, the first time I spoke out about this, I started researching it was in 1994.
And I left the Air Force in 1971.
And all that time, I never spoke about this incident.
But the reason I started speaking about it is because I read an excerpt from Timothy Good's book, Above Top Secret.
And in that statement that I happened to just by accident see, Timothy Good mentioned the Echo Flight shutdowns.
Now how he got that information, well, I have a strong suspicion how he got that information.
The Echo Flight incident was written up in the Christian Science Monitor Very shortly after it occurred.
Back in the 60s.
Back in the 60s.
I think in either late 67 or early 68.
It was written up actually in the Christian Science Monitor after they interviewed Ray Fowler.
Ray Fowler is another who happened to be working for Who had a contract with the Air Force to maintain some of the electrical equipment or the communications equipment, I can't remember which.
So was he out there at the time?
No, Ray was back east.
So he wasn't present during the incident?
No, but he had contact with some of the Air Force personnel, obviously, because they had a military contract with them at Boundstrand Air Force Base.
So he heard from somebody about this incident.
Gave an interview to the Christian Science Monitor.
Almost lost his job over it because the Air Force was very upset that, well, word leaked out he gave this interview.
But the Echo flight shutdowns with UFOs...
How many UFOs do you know were associated with that incident?
I have no way of knowing that.
I know that there was more than one launch facility where UFOs were sighted.
Now, whether or not that was the same UFO or multiple UFOs, I don't know.
And he, this guy, Fowler, wasn't under any kind of military secrecy, so he wasn't really breaking any law.
Basically, he was passing along a rumor, and no, he didn't.
He had no way of knowing that this was classified.
As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that the Air Force did classify the UFO aspect of it at the time for Echo Flight.
They did with me.
They told me not to talk about my incident.
Did you ever get a more, I guess, descriptive explanation of the way the UFOs looked?
Aside from, you know, red lights in the sky?
Like, how far away were they?
Because these men seemed to be shook up.
They must have been pretty close.
During the first call, they said they were lights, basically, and they weren't aircraft because of the maneuvers they were making.
With regard to the UFO that hovered over the front gate, I did ask him, you know, approximately the size and the shape And as I recall, I said it was very large.
And by that, you know, maybe 30 feet long, something like that.
And again, these are hazy memories, but I seem to recall I said about 30 feet long and it was glowing red and it was The distance from the front gate to the guardhouse, and I'm just guessing at this point, I'd say maybe between 50 and 100 feet, something like that.
It wasn't that far away, but...
Now, do you happen to feel that either during the incident or subsequent to the incident, did you feel any health effects and or mental, electromagnetic, any kind of a sense of the energy being different around you when this was happening?
Did your mind feel like it was operating, you know, normally or...
Any mention of anything like that?
I'll answer that in two ways.
I personally did not feel any electromagnetic effects.
Of course, we're, again, 60 feet underground in a concrete capsule, and so we probably wouldn't have felt something like that.
Well, your missiles did, right?
I think the missiles did, yeah.
But I can tell you that we do have a witness who was a lot closer And did feel those electromagnetic effects.
He felt the energy.
He certainly did.
And have you heard of any reported illnesses in those men?
Anything subsequent to this incident that they might have told you or reported at the time?
Again, this is word of mouth, but we did have one of the guards who was He observed the UFO, and I can't say whether he was at Oscar or Echo Flight.
He kind of went berserk.
He did some crazy things, and this was days later.
This was just word of mouth that we had heard.
Okay, but the word of mouth that you did hear was that it was a result of his having seen a UFO? Yes.
It was a very frightening experience for anyone who has ever come close to these objects.
I just felt quite shaken up by it.
Were you shaken up by it at the time?
I was not shaken up, but I remember being extremely curious after the incident occurred.
Like I said, when I went up and talked to the guard upstairs after I got relieved, I think I was almost angry.
I was very agitated and upset.
Angry, I guess, because we couldn't understand what the hell happened there.
We got these calls, and the guard was very upset, and our missiles shut down, which we couldn't figure out what was going on, and so I had a lot of questions, and I was really upset.
And when you were debriefed, did you attempt to question your superiors about the UFOs?
As I said, I questioned my squad commander, and again, I was still upset when I got back to the base, because I wanted to know what the hell was going on.
You have to understand, we were controlling very sensitive weapons.
These are nuclear-tipped weapons, and they have to be very secure, as you can imagine.
So did it alter your view of sort of the control that you have and or the military has over our national security from that point on?
As a result?
It didn't alter my view about whether or not the military had control over our national security.
Well, I guess that's a good point.
I guess you've probably seen the movie Failsafe, where an order is given to launch We had a nuclear attack, and here we had a mechanical problem where our missiles were affected.
But there's also been, it could have gone the other way, you know, the missiles could have been launched by some control that we had no control over.
So, yeah, it's got to give us concern whether or not our national security was affected.
So that's why, again, in my book I make the point of saying this should have been and must have been considered a national security incident.
And yet, the Air Force has continued to claim that no incident involving UFOs ever involved national security.
In the days you said some witnesses have come forward since you wrote your book, were these people that you knew at the time?
Not really.
Some of them, I recall their names, but I probably didn't know them personally.
Have they corroborated your story?
Or had their own experiences?
In various ways, yes.
One gentleman I'm thinking of was a targeting officer.
His name is Jameson.
And he corroborated the fact that the 10 missiles did go down at Oscar flight.
And he was sent out to retarget them, so there's a corroboration right there.
But of course, my commander has corroborated my story.
And is he still around?
He's still alive, he's still, as far as I know.
And the commander and deputy commander are still alive of EchoFly.
And there are many other witnesses out there who have corroborated my story and the EchoFly incident.
This should have been and must have been considered a national security incident.
And yet, the Air Force has continued to claim that no incident involving UFOs We're good to go.
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