From New Dawn 190 (Jan-Feb 2022)
The name Harry Turner has returned to prominence after David Grusch, the former US intelligence officer and UAP whistleblower, recently drew attention to Turner’s declassified 1971 Australian Joint Intelligence Organisation report. Here we present Bill Chalker’s article on his friend Harry Turner and Turner’s findings, which now appear to reveal the edges of a much larger cover-up of the UFO phenomenon.
Reading the recently released US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, I know we have been this way before. Exactly 67 years ago, right here in OZ. There are profound lessons for the Pentagon here.
The headline of Melbourne’s Argus newspaper in its Weekender section of 26 June 1954 read: “‘Saucers’ do exist and why!” The article was written by an “eminent Australian nuclear physicist, who has investigated ‘saucer’ reports since 1948,” whose name “must be withheld because of his link with high-level research.”
The Melbourne Argus was prominently reporting on a massive wave of UFO sightings in Victoria – the most significant of the early sighting waves in Australia that attracted official interest. A classified Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) file minute, dated 2 Nov 1955, reads:
A ministerial statement in the House (Australian parliament – B.C.) on 19 Nov 53 (indicates) that the RAAF make detailed investigations of every report received (which in truth we are not yet doing).
The Australian nuclear physicist stated:
From all corners of the world there have come thousands of reports of strange objects in the sky… over cities, deserts, mountains and oceans… Radar plots have checked with visual sightings. Jet fighter aircraft have attempted to intercept them and have been out manoeuvred. (Governments)… have set up investigation centres… there remain several hundred reports that can’t be explained…
Finally, I appeal to the Air Forces and Security Services of the Western World to release their suppressed information….
The Australian scientist hypothesised:
A certain remnant of reports of UFOs may only be explained by the assumption that machines controlled by some intelligence are being observed….. These machines are not manufactured on earth; that is, their origin is extraterrestrial.
O.H. (Oliver Harry) Turner
The scientist was O.H. (Oliver Harry) Turner, who at that time was working in the physics department of Melbourne University. In 1982, he elaborated on his secret role to me.
DAFI asked Turner to undertake a classified “scientific appreciation” of their files. He recommended greater official interest and specific interest in visual radar reports, concluding:
The evidence presented by the reports held by RAAF tend to support the… conclusion… that certain strange aircraft have been observed to behave in a manner suggestive of extraterrestrial origin.
DAFI questioned Turner’s findings. They instead followed misleading official US advice, concluding that his recommendations, notably the setting up of a scientific “investigating panel,” were impractical and not justified.
In studying the RAAF/DAFI UFO files, Turner also utilised retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe’s USAF reports, described in his bestselling book Flying Saucers from Outer Space, and suggested the RAAF seek official USAF confirmation of the legitimacy of Keyhoe’s data. Turner said of Keyhoe’s “USAF data” that “if one assumes these Intelligence Reports are authentic, then the evidence presented is such that it is difficult to assume any interpretation other than that UFOs are being observed.”
The disposition of Harry Turner’s controversial report is a revealing indictment of official handling of the UFO controversy. Faced with his provocative conclusions, with Keyhoe’s data as one cornerstone, the Director of Air Force Intelligence (RAAF) did seek official confirmation from America. The Australian Joint Service Staff (intelligence) in Washington wrote to him saying:
I have discussed with the USAF the status of Major Keyhoe. I understand that his book is written in such a way as to convey the impression that his statements are based on official documents, and there is some suggestion that he has made improper use of information to which he had access while he was serving with the Marine Corps. He has, however, no official status whatsoever and a dim view is taken officially of both him and his works.
When it came to considering Turner’s classified report, the Department of Air concluded:
Professor Turner accepted Keyhoe’s book as being authentic and based on official releases. Because Turner places so much weight on Keyhoe’s work he emphasised the need to check Keyhoe’s reliability. (The Australian Joint Service Staff communication) removes Keyhoe’s works as a prop for Turner’s work so that the value of the latter’s findings and recommendations is very much reduced.
Turner’s findings, including one in which he recommended setting up a scientific “investigating panel” in light of the “discrediting” of Keyhoe’s data, were found to be impractical and not justified.
The big problem with all this was that it was based on an act of conscious or unconscious misrepresentation on the part of the US Air Force. They were engaged in a misguided campaign to undermine the popularity of Donald Keyhoe’s books. While Keyhoe may have slightly “beat up” his USAF data, the intelligence reports quoted by Keyhoe and used by Turner to support his conclusions to DAFI were authentic! Eventually, the USAF admitted that Keyhoe’s material was indeed from official Air Force reports.
In both the US and Australian militaries, political myopia effectively scuttled Australia’s first serious flirtation with a scientific investigation of UFOs. Fortunately, Turner’s secret 1954 report was “located” in classified RAAF UFO policy files that I examined in 1982 with Squadron Leader Ian Frame from DAFI.
Opening Turner’s UFO Files
I first had contact with Harry Turner back in 1982. He opened his UFO files to me. Turner told me that the case which impressed him the most was when radar at the restricted Woomera rocket range facility in South Australia picked up a UFO on 5 May 1954.
At about 1600 on 5th May, an unidentified Target was observed on radar… The target appeared on High Beam at a range of about 60,000 yards… approaching ‘R’, described a Hyperbola over ‘R’ and went out at a bearing of approx. 90 degrees… I timed it over 15,000 yards 10 seconds which would make its speed approximately 3600 M.P.H.…
From ‘R’, “Vickers-Armstrong” indicated he was
standing by the Security Officer’s hut, and looking towards the radar post… observing one of our trials through binoculars. This object appeared to be travelling towards me or directly across a path of the approaching [RAAF] the Canberra [jet bomber capable of launching a nuclear strike]. When it got to the path of the Canberra it turned to my right and was going in the direction from which the Canberra had just come.
When it got directly over the Canberra it slowed down. During this time, I found it very hard to believe what I was seeing, so I shut my eyes and then looked again through the binoculars and the object was still stationary over the flight path of the Canberra… The object appeared to be travelling about three times as fast as the Canberra… It was perfectly circular all the time and a dark grey colour…
At the end of 1954, Turner went to England, working at Harwell, the British atomic energy research establishment. Returning to Australia in 1956, he was stationed at Maralinga, until 1964, as the Australian Health Physics representative during the controversial British atomic bomb trials.
By 1968, Harry Turner was working in the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB – later JIO, then DIO), becoming their head of the nuclear science section. He told me JIB did not want to be drawn on the “UFO problem” which they viewed as a complex conjectural matter that might drag them into the limelight.
In August 1968, Turner advised the JIB director that “DAFI is not anxious to retain responsibility for UFO analysis but would be prepared to continue collation responsibility” but due to “(a) lack of scientific capability, (b) no specific position has been established for UFO work which means additional duties for personnel allocated to other duties,” meant “many of the explanations offered by DAFI, usually under political pressure, impose a considerable scientific credibility gap.”
During May 1969, at Turner’s suggestion, a new RAAF UFO report form was devised, intended to give a more scientific slant to the reports. Turner was working secretly with other scientists to set up a “rapid intervention” team to investigate cases of UFO physical evidence (“landing” events) within the Defence Science and Technical Organisation (DSTO), with four or five scientists, and an aircraft on standby.
In a memo dated 8 November 1969 to the Director of JIB, Turner indicated that he had Dr Morton from ANU, Dr John Symonds from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, and Dr Michael Duggin, then of the National Standards Laboratory. George Barlow of Defence Science and Technology (DST) also offered to help his group. Arthur Wills, then Chief Defence Scientist, “had agreed to this.” Dr John Farrand, who became chief defence scientist, alerted me to the memo’s existence. The plans for the scientific team had been almost finalised. However, fate intervened.
Turner’s UFO Investigations Officially Discouraged
Radar report for the Cloverdale UFO incident on 23 May 1969.
In mid-1969, a major UFO flap broke out in Western Australia, centred in Perth, including an impressive visual radar event at Cloverdale, and tracked on Kalamunda radar on 23 May. DAFI asked the Defence “intervention” group to assist. It was not yet in place, so Harry Turner was seconded to help out. He found the radar case intriguing, concluding: “Neither the Kalamunda radar observation nor Mrs. C__’s sighting can be readily explained by conventional objects or phenomena.” He criticised the DAFI system, in particular referring to the lack of assistance given to local Air Force Intelligence officers. Air Force did not take kindly to criticism, particularly when it came from an “outsider” – a JIB scientist. Turner’s access to the DAFI UFO files was withdrawn.
Harry Turner’s JIB superior, Bob (R.H.) Mathams, the Director of Scientific Intelligence, told me that he didn’t encourage Turner’s UFO interests and that his access to DAFI files was an informal liaison agreement that became unworkable after Defence restructuring.
JIO’s “dance” with UFOs was almost entirely driven by Turner’s interest. His battle to establish the DSTO “rapid intervention” group continued, with numerous papers and memos in the period 1969 to 1971.
In a January 1970 submission, Turner even utilised Dr Jacque Vallee’s listing of 1,000 worldwide UFO landings or near landing reports (appended in Vallee’s 1969 watershed book Passport to Magonia) to highlight to JIB the potential military threats.
“The information suggests the existence of 3 ‘weapon systems’ – (1) a device to interfere with electrical circuits, (2) a device to induce paralysis, (3) a heat ray,” related Turner, continuing,
There is circumstantial evidence that these weapons are at times used deliberately, although mostly in a defensive role. A number of reports allege that a lone car at night has been followed, and after being stopped by a beam, some kind of interaction has developed between the car occupants and the landed craft occupants. Information is included which deals with residual effects on the environment of the landed craft. It is these residual effects which offer the greatest potential reward to scientific investigation at this stage.
Even reports of this nature failed to get Turner’s proposed study traction. (Recently, uninformed internet-based ‘researchers’ got excited when they ‘rediscovered’ this document, mistakenly thinking it was a secret official Australian policy document.)
The RAAF’s “UFO problem” continued as an unwanted burden. In July 1971, Captain R.S. Royston (DAFI) wrote:
Although I am directly concerned with any possible threat to Australian security, I am not particularly interested in the subject of UFOs, even though my directorate devotes valuable time to this problem. I accept the US assessments without question and consider that it would be a complete waste for we here in Australia to spend valuable time and money in further detailed investigations.
JIB deputy director and DSTI head Bob Mathams discussed Turner’s persistent “sub rosa” UFO crusade. Matham stated his position to Turner, specifically from a scientific intelligence point of view, that there were insufficient resources, and that he was not convinced of “a sufficient scientific intelligence component in the UFO problem,” and
that there is still considerable controversy concerning UFOs and this will undoubtedly continue until the subject is fully examined by some competent authority. Such an examination, however, would require a considerable effort to collect information on UFO sightings, to investigate reports of such sightings and to examine all information in an objective, scientific manner.
The deputy director agreed, revealing (in February 1970):
I am sure that there is an area for investigation that should be pursued by some authority. That authority, however, would need very considerable resources indeed. I am forced, therefore, whilst agreeing that the subject should be studied somewhere, to decide that JIO cannot be that somewhere. Without considerable back-up we would be wasting our time and the RAAF have apparently cancelled out the little that they were doing.
Lost Opportunities, OZ-style
Harry Turner persisted, even getting the JIO director to sign a May 1971 minute paper on the “Investigation of UFO sightings,” directed to the Deputy Secretary of Defence, that recommended passing on responsibility for the investigation of UFOs from the RAAF to Defence science, as distinct from DSTI (in JIO) which should focus on a limited number of select cases (say six per year) over a two to three year period, after which JIO could make a better determination if “a strategic intelligence interest exists.”
When DSTO came on the scene in 1974, Turner saw it as potential better home for his ideas. The UFO subject interested people like George Barlow (Defence Science No 2) and Dr John Farrands, the Chief Defence Scientist, but not enough for Turner’s plans to come under their direct remit. Turner’s secret “UFO science war” effort ended. The RAAF’s limited and stagnating approach continued.
Despite the secret UFO science wars orchestrated by Harry Turner, the situation was frustrated by perceptions of limited resources and politicking – a lost opportunity for some solid scientific examination of the UFO mystery, but a situation with powerful lessons for the shape-shifting spectre of more recent dances with the UFO phenomenon – now recast in the tight terminology of UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).
Skinwalker Ranch and the case of Mrs Klein
In October 2021, the book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders’ Account of the Government’s Secret UFO Program by James T. Lacatski, D.Eng., Colm A. Kelleher, PhD, and George Knapp revealed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)’s Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) and Utah businessman and space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow’s BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) program, had examined military and civilian UFO/UAP experiences, and possible “paranormal and correlates” that are strongly anchored in bizarre events at Bigelow’s Skinwalker ranch.
The broader and far stranger aspects of the UFO phenomena that Harry Turner had studied for decades in Australia was now getting a rare focus via the Pentagon.
Driven by Lacatski (DIA), who had his own bizarre experience at the Skinwalker ranch, DIA investigators got dragged into the very weird phenomena. One of the significant Pentagon players, given the pseudonym “Jonathan Axelrod,”
was also the lead investigator of the now infamous ‘Tic Tac’ case that had embroiled the Nimitz Aircraft Carrier Strike Group in a series of cat and mouse high stakes games off the coast of San Diego… the so-called Tic Tac [UFO] had out-maneuvered and out-performed multiple F/A-18 Hornets…
The book highlights the so-called bizarre “hitchhiker” effect, with “Jonathan Axelrod” and his family as “poster children”,
for the eruption of anomalies in the home following trips to Skinwalker Ranch… For more than a dozen years following his July 2009 and subsequent trips to the ranch, Axelrod’s wife and (then) teenage children were subjected to nightmarish “dogmen” appearing in their backyard; to blue, red, yellow and white orbs routinely floating through the home and in the yard; to black shadow people standing over their beds when they awoke; and to a relentless barrage of loud, unexplained footsteps walking up and down the stairs in their house… Axelrod and his family were certain that the trigger for this transformation was his first trip to Skinwalker Ranch.
These sorts of bizarre experiences feature in many places, but I’ll describe one from my focus here – Harry Turner.
In July 2002, he handed me ten pages of his handwritten notes about his investigation, in 1971 and 1972, of a Canberra woman, Mrs Klein. In an extraordinary way, these notes prefigured the extraordinary elements of the UFO abduction cases that are better known today. At the time of Harry Turner’s interview, they were completely unknown.
The hidden aspects of the alien abduction mystery would not become generally known until Budd Hopkins described them in his bestselling 1987 book Intruders. Mrs Klein’s story, as captured in Harry Turner’s notes, revealed a potent revelation of the alien abduction contact drama yet to come. Her story was relatively unpolluted by modern culture’s fixation on certain aspects of the phenomenon.
I described Vicki Klein’s strange experiences in detail in my 2005 book Hair of the Alien. Below I describe one bizarre episode that powerfully resonates with those of Axelrod and others in the 2021 Skinwalkers book:
The neighbour Mrs. Z. claimed that during the evening of September 7, 1971, she had gone to the rear of the house because her dog was playing up. Turner’s notes state, “as the dog retreated indoors, she noticed two figures in Mrs. Klein’s backyard… Mrs. Z. thought they must be Mr. and Mrs. Klein but was puzzled as to why they should be standing in that position and be so still. So she went towards them and shone her torch on them. They turned out to be a tall metal-meshed clad figure (like ‘Claude’ – the entity Vicki Klein had been interacting with, unknown at that point to the neighbour), with his ‘dog-faced’ companion. They… gradually faded away.” Harry Turner in his notes reports: “These two disparate types claim they are ‘one people’. The tall blonde… but the ‘dog-faced’ one has pointed ears, eyes with large pupils and no iris… longish flattened nose, thin mouth, dressed in blue-grey tunic with tight banded collar… The dog-faced type can appear to look more human-like if they wish to…”
Some of the contents of Skinwalkers at the Pentagon makes me think that James Lacatski and the BAASS/AAWSAP teams were shaping up similarly to the network Harry Turner developed in Australia back in the late 1960s and early 1970s from Defence Science and other scientists.
Perhaps they should consider in detail the legacy of Harry Turner and the secret UFO wars of OZ.
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