Msg#   : 4587   Sat 5 Aug 89  4:46p
From   : Michael Corbin
To     : All
Subject: Flying Saucers-Top Secret
Status :
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To All:

I have been reading a book by Major Donald Keyhoe titled 'Flying Saucers - Top
Secret'.  This book was copyrighted (C) 1960 by Donald Keyhoe.  As you may
know, Maj. Keyhoe was the Director of NICAP (National Investigations Committee
on Aerial Phenomenon) back in the late 50's and 60's.  I ran across a very
interesting chapter, Chapter 16, which deals with the Navy investigation of a
map which was discovered which caused them a great deal of concern.  I am
reprinting part of that chapter here for information.  I am also interested in
knowing if anyone might have further information on this map for discussion.

Major Keyhoe is in a meeting with Captain John Brent and Commander Larsen.
Captain Brent was one of Major Keyhoe's classmates at the Naval Academy.
Keyhoe has arranged the meeting to ask about reports that there had been UFOs
'observing rocket launchings at Cape Canaveral.  And another report, from a
missile technician at a different base, said they'd had to hold up launchings
several times because of UFO interference.'  During the discussion, the story
comes out about the map....

     "Why do you think UFOs are watching us?" I asked.
     "They may be afraid we'll cause trouble out in space," said Larsen.
"And they'd have reason to worry, if they were dealing with Soviet space
fleets."
     "Have you ever thought," Captain Brent asked me quietly, "that the earth
might be a colony started by another world?"
     I looked at him, startled.  "I've heard it suggested, but--do you
actually believe it?"
     "I'm certain of this much," replied Brent.  "A race far more technically
advanced than we are today was on earth thousands of years ago."
     He swung around to a cabinet, took out a folder.  "The Hydrographic
Office of the Navy has verified an ancient chart--it's called the Piri Reis
map--that goes back more than 5,000 years.  It's so accurate only one thing
could explain it--a worldwide aerial survey."
     "That's almost incredible!" I said.
     "The Hydrographic Office experts couldn't believe it, either, at first.
But they no only proved the map genuine, it's been used to correct errors in
some present day maps."
     Commander Larsen leaned forward.  "Tell him about the seismic
soundings."
     "All right."  The captain turned back to me.  "The Director of Weston
Observatory of Boston College is a top seismologist - Reverend Daniel Linehan,
Society of Jesuits.  He's so good that the Navy got him to help in the
Antarctic, to find where there was land under the ice.  The coast lines they
found were identical with those on the Piri Reis map.  So the map surveys
would have to have been made centuries ago, before the land was buried by that
deep ice.
     "Father Linehan revealed this on a Georgetown University Forum, as proof
that this map is genuine.  The forum transcript also contains statements by
the Hydrographic Office engineer in charge of the evaluation of the map--Mr.
M.I. Walters.  Other significant points were made by A.H. Mallery, a retired
sea captain--he's the man who persuaded the Navy to examine the Piri Reis map,
after he realized how important the old chart was."
     So far, Captain Brent told me, only part of the complete Piri Reis map
had been found, a section covering the coasts of South America, Africa and a
portion of Antarctica.  He showed me a copy of the ancient chart, then read
the main points of the transcript.
     Early in the sixteenth century, Admiral Piri Reis, Turkish Navy, had
acquired a map used by Columbus.  Combining it with Greek maps dating back to
Alexander the Great, he compiled a world chart in 1513.
     In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent the Piri Reis map to the Chief
Engineer of the United States Navy Hydrographic Office. To evaluate it, the
Chief Engineer asked the aid of Captain Mallery, an authority on old maps, who
had previously worked with him.  After a long study, Mallery discovered the
projection method used.  Confirming this and other technical points, the Navy
cartographers came to these conclusions:
     1.  Columbus had a map, on his historic voyage to America, which showed
the coasts of Yucatan, Guatemala, South America to the Straits of Magellan and
a large part of the Antarctic coast.
     2.  The original maps went back at least 5,000 years, and some data
shown went back even farther.  Part of the land areas shown had been buried
under ice for twenty centuries or more.
     3.  Only highly trained survey teams and cartographers could have
produced charts of such "amazing accuracy."  Their operations must have
covered the entire earth.
     "We don't know how they could do it so accurately without the airplane,"
Captain Mallery summed it up.
     Captain Brent put down the transcript.
     "Mallery was right.  They couldn't have done it without some type of
flying machine.  And there are other indications of a highly advanced
technology thousands of years before Christ."
     "But couldn't there have been an advanced earth race?"  I inquired.
"Archaeologists have found evidence of other lost civilizations."
     "Yes, but no trace of factories, laboratories or fuel plants.  It would
have taken a huge industry to build and maintain such an air fleet.  But
spaceships from another world wouldn't require any of that--they'd bring what
they needed, just as we intend to do in our own space explorations.
     "For the first stages, our men will live aboard their ships, after
landing on the moon and Mars.  This unknown space race could have done the
same thing, and from that point we've worked out several possible
developments."
     Using the Piri Reis map evaluations, Captain Brent and Larsen had
assumed spaceship landings at least 10,000 years ago. Before deciding on a
colony, said Brent, the unknown explorers undoubtedly would have tested our
atmosphere, gravity and other living conditions, to make sure their race could
adjust to life on earth.
     If overpopulation on their own planet had led them to plan a large scale
migration, they would plan a civilization like their own, as far as possible.
Technically trained groups would be brought in first, then basic equipment,
just as we plan for our own space colonies.  Following this, emigrants from
their own world would be ferried to earth in huge spaceships.
     "That's simple logic," said Captain Brent.  "Our own planners expect
giant spaceships, for this same purpose, within a century or two."
     "Yes," I said, "but if this had happened there'd surely be signs of
advanced construction--different and better than anything we have today."
     Captain Brent agreed.  "That's why we think something must have stopped
them during the early stages.  Possibly it was disaster on their own planet--
accidental nuclear explosions, or an epidemic, or interplanetary war.  Even if
their world survived, the earth colony might be almost forgotten as they
rebuilt.  It could be centuries before their descendants got around to
checking up."
     Meantime, Captain Brent continued, descendants of the first colony on
earth would have developed on entirely different lines. When the spaceships
failed to return, the colony members would be concerned mainly with survival.
Lacking machines and other technical equipment, they would be forced into a
primitive life, their advanced civilization but an unhappy memory.  To later
generations, struggling for existence, the link with another world would seem
only a myth--if thought of at all.
     "And the net result," concluded Brent, "would be the same if the first
group was deliberately abandoned here."
     "Abandoned?" I said.  "But why should they be?"
     "To get rid of undesirables."
     "That's an ugly thought."
     "I don't mean criminals necessarily," replied the captain. "Though
turning a planet into a Devil's Island isn't impossible."
     Commander Larsen grimaced.  "Bein banished like that - most people would
prefer a death sentence."

Further....

     As I went out to the parking lot, I thought of another angle to the
colony theory.
     What effect would this have upon religion?
     At first, it appeared to deny the Biblical story of man's creation.  But
the landing of spaceships on an already inhabited world would pose no such
problem, and the space race still could have played a vital part in our
civilization.
     Ten thousand years ago, spaceships could have landed with on opposition.
The primitive tribes then on earth would have been awed, probably frightened
into hiding. ....
     ...More and more, I realized the difficulties of preparing the public.
The most peaceful contact, even with beings like ourselves, would have a
tremendous impact, raising a hundred questions.
     Why wasn't the CIA, or whatever agency was in control, already at work
on a program of prepartion?

Perhaps they were working on preparation.  Recently, Don Ecker uploaded a file
(USAFTXT.FIL) which contains the chapter removed from USAF training manuals
dealing with the subject of UFOs.  In this manual,  there is discussion of
possible involvement with UFOs going back as far as 50,000 years.  This
material was being widely taught to cadets in prepartion for their military
careers until publicity after the Condon Committee's recommendation to disband
Project Bluebook brought unfavorable criticism to the Air Force for teaching
this despite the findings that UFOs are not real.  The main point here is that
apparently there was enough concern and curiousity on the part of the military
to study the Piri Reis maps and conclude that they were authentic and the
other conclusions that were derived from that study to indicate that they were
sufficiently concerned about the UFO phenomenon to connect them with the maps.
Another interesting note in this material is the conclusions that the
military was drawing out of it in regards to the ancient civilizations.

Mike

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