Stanton T. Friedman - Canadian Government and UFOs

 

In this never-before-seen outtake from an interview with Stan Friedman for my 2004 film Do You Believe in Majic, he discusses Wilbert Smith and the Canadian government's policy over the years towards UFOs, including its relationship with the US on the issue. 

Paul Kimball

Wilbert Smith and Otis Carr

One of the more imaginative and successful con-men in flying saucer history was Otis T. Carr, who managed to dupe more than a few people in the 1950s with his claims of free energy technology, until he was finally convicted in 1961 of "the crime of selling securities without registering the same" in Oklahoma (he eventually served 14 months in prison). Carr passed away in 1982, and although he is largely forgotten today, he still has a few acolytes - while speaking at the 2007 Retro-Con at the Integratron in Landers, California, I shared the bill with Ralph Ring, who once worked with Carr and still professes to believe that Carr was a genius, or something like that.

Wilbert Smith, like many others within the Contactee movement in the 1950s, took Carr seriously, at least for a time. Eventually, however, Smith soured on Carr when he realized that what Carr was selling was nothing but a load of hot air. Here is just a glimpse of the interaction between the two - Carr was clearly interested in using Smith's connections and credibility as a real engineer in order to bolster his own claims, in much the same way as Steven Greer would later appear on the same stage as men like Stan Friedman or John Mack, and look for a similar "rub of authenticity".

The correspondence after the failed Carr test is with contactee David Middleton, with whom Smith maintained a regular correspondence.

Smith was certainly open-minded, but while he was willing to give Carr the benefit of the doubt at first, even he could see through Carr's bogus claims when he had a closer look at them.

None of this stopped him from making his own claims of contact with the "boys topside". So then the question remains - was he just a Canadian version of Otis Carr, was he delusional, or was there possibly something real going on with him?

Paul Kimball

Gesner to Smith: Flying Saucer photo!

As I make my way through the Wilbert Smith files, I've come across this envelope and enclosure from contactee Harry Gesner, with whom Smith maintained a very cordial correspondence in the 1950s.

My good friend Greg Bishop, an afficianado of all things related to the Contactees, will no doubt be amused. For my part, I look at it and think to myself that it was a simpler, and more charming, time period.

Paul Kimball

Reassessing Wilbert Smith

Over the years, I've had a great deal to say about Wilbert Smith, most of it negative, but I've been reviewing the Smith files and materials contained at the National Archives of Canada over the past couple of years, and I've reassessed my opinion of Smith, at least in part. While I'm still convinced that he overemphasized his role in Canada's official investigations of the UFO phenomenon in the early 1950s, I am now much more sympathetic to his personal journey, and the possibility that he may have had actual contact with a non-human intelligence of some sort (or, as he called it, "the boys topside").

I'll be writing a great deal more about my reassessment of Smith later this year, but for the time being, I leave you with this correspondence between Keyhoe and Smith from 1952 - a small piece of UFO history.

Paul Kimball

What The Public Doesn't Know... Vol. I

This blog is over three years old now. In the early days, when a lot of my research into Wilbert Smith was published, there weren't more than a few dozen readers per day; the numbers have increased significantly since then. I've decided, largely as a result of Stan Friedman's accusation in his latest book Flying Saucers and Science that my views on Smith are nothing more than character assassination, to re-publish those old columns as an ongoing series under the title "What the Public Doesn't Know...", based on one of Friedman's four rules for debunkers (what the public doesn't know, don't tell them), which he himself employs on a regular basis. Friedman misrepresents my views and research (as well as the research of Brad Sparks), and then labels it as character assassination, instead of confronting the facts that he doesn't want you to know about. I figure you should hear the other side of the truth, as it were.

If after weighing all of the evidence, people still want to accept that Smith was the recipient of legitimate super-secret information about flying saucers from Dr. Robert Sarbacher, and that he really did run a super-secret flying saucer program in Canada, as Friedman would have you believe, that's fine - everyone is entitled to their opinion. But unlike Friedman, I'm a big believer that it should be an informed opinion, where all of the evidence is looked at in context.

So here is part 1 of the facts that Stan Friedman doesn't want you to know about when it comes to Wilbert Smith.

Wilbert Smith & the Department of Transport in 1950
(originally published 17 June, 2005)

I think it's important for people to understand just where Wilbert B. Smith fit in the governmental pecking order in 1950 when he met with Dr. Robert Sarbacher and was supposedly given information that was classified even higher than the H-Bomb.

On the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, and because some ufologists have to be both led to the water, and then made to drink (and, in some cases, told what the water is), here is an organizational chart I put together of the Canadian Department of Transport in 1950, showing exactly where Smith fit in.

Note that this chart does not include all of the various civil servants from the other sections, like Meteorology or Canal Services, that would have been further up the proverbial food chain than Smith.

Now, I admit that we do things a bit different up here in Canada than our cousins in the United States, but not so differently that we would put someone like Wilbert Smith, a mid level (to be generous) civil servant in the Department of Transport, in charge of our flying saucer study. The fellas in the Department of Defence, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (in charge of foreign and domestic intelligence) would have been, to say the least, a little "miffed."

So, one more time, here is what the pro-Smith ufologists are saying - Wilbert Smith, senior radio regulations engineer, was "in the know" about the biggest secret out there, while hundreds of senior American generals, admirals, scientists and officials were not.

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing...

Wilbert Smith & The Department of Transport - Expenditures, 1950
(originally published 17 June, 2005)

As the old journalistic axiom goes, if you want to find the truth, follow the money.

If the question relates to just how important Wilbert Smith's work for the Department of Transport was in 1950, therefore, one should take a look at the Departmental expenditures, and see how much was devoted to Smith's section.

Here are the relevant figures from the Department of Transport (Canada) Annual Report, 1950 - 1951 (for the fiscal year ending 31 March 1951):

Total Department Expenditures - $ 78,901,296.55
Total Air Services Expenditures - $ 33,557,017.95
Total Telecommunications Division Expenditures - $ 10,458,484.61
Total Administration of Radio Act and Regulations Expenditures - $ 867,095.11

So, from the above we can see that the section in which Smith worked (Radio Act and Regulations) received the following:

- 1.10 % of total department expenditures
- 2.58 % of total section expenditures (Telecommunications Division being part of the Air Services Section)
- 8.29 % of total division expenditures (Radio Act and Regulations being a subsection of Telecommunications Division)

Contrast these expenditures with others that were far greater:

- $ 4,248,357.51 for Canal Services, Operation and Maintenance
- $ 4,064,678.03 for Aviation Radio Aids, Operation and Maintenance
- $ 1,216,860.25 for Telegraph and Telephone Service, Administration, Operation & Maintenance
- $ 6,413,037.11 for Airways and Airports, Construction and Improvement
- $ 1,087,573.81 for Departmental Administration

This is not to suggest that the work Smith's section did was unimportant; however, it does show that it was just a very small part of a very big operation. And remember - Smith wasn't even the head of the Radio Act and Regulations subsection.

Just the Canadian to whom I'd reveal the U.S. government's UFO secrets...

Paul Kimball