Mysterious UFO Satellites Orbiting Earth

About a month ago I discussed an extraterrestrial radio signal that was intercepted by the NSA in A Decoded NSA Extraterrestrial Radio Signal from Outer Space. This was only released in 2004 after the NSA lost a court case against a Freedom of Information Act. Two false stories floating around on the internet is that either (1) this was just a cryptographic exercise, or (2) this was intercepted from the Russian Sputnik satellite launched in 1957. The strange thing about this radio signal is that it includes information concerning the periodic table of the elements that was well ahead of our scientific knowledge at the time, which is why NSA had trouble deciphering it. Internally, the radio message may date to the year 1953, and its possible origin I discussed in The Origin of the NSA Extraterrestrial Radio Signal. My research led me to this eccentric personality well known in ufology, Milton William Cooper. Why so? In 1989, well before the NSA released information on this extraterrestrial radio signal, he said the following in a speech at MUFON:

"In 1953 astronomers discovered large objects in space which were tracked moving toward the Earth. It was first believed that they were asteroids. Later evidence proved that the objects could only be spaceships. Project SIGMA intercepted alien radio communications. When the objects reached the Earth they took up very high geosynchronous orbit(s) around the equator. There were several huge ships, and their actual intent was unknown. Project SIGMA and a new project, PLATO, through radio communications using the computer binary language, were able to arrange a landing that resulted in face-to-face contact with alien beings from another planet. The landing took place in the desert."

So, were there strange objects in orbit around the earth in 1953? YES.
According to Eisenhower and His Alien Contacts: Part 2 in the fall of 1953 the U.S. government was tracking two large objects circling the earth since the fall of 1953. This soon became a well known event in mainstream media in 1954:

Perhaps due to public excitement, the August 23, 1954 issue of Aviation magazine clarified that these satellites were natural, not artificial:

"Pentagon scare over the observance of two previously unobserved satellites orbiting the earth has dissipated with the identification of the objects as natural, not artificial satellites. Dr. Lincoln La Paz, expert on extraterristrial bodies from the University of New Mexico, headed the identification project. One satellite is orbiting at about 400 mi. out, while the other track is 600 mi. from the earth. Pentagon thought momentarily the Russians had beaten the U.S. to space explorations."

What is interesting is Dr. Lincoln La Paz happened to be one of the witnesses of the UFO crash in Roswell New Mexico in 1947, and had done research for the U.S. Government. Other articles then followed in the media, including the New York Times, concerning the two mysterious satellites. According to Eisenhower and His Alien Contacts: Part 2

They referenced the work of an electrical engineer John P. Bagby who disclosed his findings in a paper he delivered at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Bagby reported that there were “more than fifty objects, some of which glowed dull red occasionally.” He calculated that the objects were orbiting at “about 475 miles from the earth...perhaps moving in an elongated elliptical orbit,” and that he had made his first observation of the objects in February 1954.[from Washington Evening Star, February 18, 1955] 

So indeed, in the mid-1950s multiple satellites were found orbiting the earth, and the question arose as to whether or not they were artificial or natural. John P. Bagby, who worked in the research division of Hughes Aircraft Company, wrote some follow up articles concerning these odd satellites that took a retrograde orbit around the earth. In the article "Evidence of an Ephemeral Earth Satellite" in the July 16, 1966 issue of Nature he wrote:

"During the mid-fifties I analysed evidence of two swarms of such objects in retrograde orbits. However, it has never been conclusively proved that such an ephemeral satellite, with a perigree in the upper atmosphere, has been observed while in orbit and before its final revolutions. I now suggest that the Earth has had such a satellite and that it was observed at least eight times during the period 1956-65."

So in 1966 the question was still out as to the true nature of these orbiting satellites that appeared in mid-fifties. Following that event, evidence of a retrograde satellite in orbit around the earth appeared during the years 1956-65. He is not clear at this point if it is the same one. In the same article, he makes this interesting statement:

"The brilliance of the objects to the naked eye caused most persons contacted to doubt that they were astronomical despite the fact that this was confirmed with optical aids."

So these particular satellites glow so brightly that many doubt that they are astronomical...that is another way of saying that people thought these were artificial satellites. And then they supposedly disappear, for he concludes:

"It is probable that the object decayed in the Earth's atmosphere during January 1966."

So did they disappear? Apparently not. Bagpy then writes a follow up article in the September 2, 1967 issue of Nature entitled "Radio Anomalies associated with an Ephemeral Satellite still in Orbit." Scientists had observed some strange radio anomalies in 1962, 1963 and 1965 where the signal was very strong, but could not trace its origin. Bagpy then analysed the data, but he could not correlate it with overhead passages of ECHO I and other artificial satellites. Eventually he was able to correlate it with the orbit of the "ephemeral satellite" previously noted in Nature:

"...the charged cloud associated with the passage of the body through the upper atmosphere would be large enough to reflect 16 and 18 Kc/s signals."

Bagpy was able to optically observe the object in January 1967, followed by further radio observations in April and May of that year. So whatever this thing is, it did not decay in 1966, and it glows brightly and reflects radio signals? And it is natural? In a 1969 issue of Icarus magazine (vol. 10) Bagpy published another article entitled "Terrestrial Satellites: Some Direct and Indirect Evidence." He then states the 1956 satellite is a remnant of the 1955 satellite:

"Research that I have been engaged in since 1956 now suggests that there may be several substantially large natural objects orbiting the Earth in similar orbits. These all appear to be fragments of a larger parent satellite which broke up about mid-December 1955."

Bagpy then notes something odd in the orbital data of known artificial (man-made) satellites:

"From an analysis of the considerable amount of published data on the orbits of artificial satellites, I have recently found that many sudden anomalies have been occurring in the orbital elements of a large number of the artificial bodies. These changes are often quite drastic and of a semipermanent nature. To my knowledge, they have not been previously noted or discussed. Inclinations have changed by up to tenths of a degree, apogee and perigree have fallen and increased from tens to hundreds of kilometers, and the lines of nodes and apsides have changed their orientation by up to 50% of the normal rate."

So what caused the artificial satellites to change their orbit? Bagpy states:

"The various anomalies all took place at times of intersection of the orbital paths of the artificial satellites with the paths of one of the natural object subgroups."

This is odd. In his analysis Bagpy excluded all Soviet and U.S. satellites which had known orbit changing capability. When the natural and artificial satellites come into close proximity, something is changing the orbit of the artificial satellite. Bagpy discusses various possibilities: gravitational force, electrostatic force, and finally: electromagnetic force. However the analysis in inconclusive, and Bagpy thinks that further direct observations of the "natural" retrograde satellites are needed to further determine their orbit.

In 1981 Bagby did yet another follow up article entitled "Natural Earth Satellites" in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (Vol. 34. #7, pp. 289-293, 1981). Despite all these observations, scientists were still rejecting the notion that earth could capture natural satellites that would take a retrograde orbit around the earth:

"...the main stream of science has either ignored or despised the idea of any natural satellites of the Earth other than the Moon but without producing any observational or dynamical evidence to support their disapproval. The advent of the space programme resulted in many more observers scanning the sky at both optical and radio frequencies, in order to recover or keep track of the numerous artificial Earth satellites and their debris. This has added to the mystery by providing numerous new 'unidentified' observations."

So after all those observations, the question is still not settled? Are you kidding me? Could it be that these retrograde satellites are not natural after all? And scientists do not want to risk their reputation and say that there are one or more UFOs orbiting the earth? Bagpy then clarifies that the retrograde satellites that appeared in 1953-1954 are perhaps different than those that appeared in retrograde orbit from 1956-1967:

"There are two general groups of retrograde natural Earth satellite suspects so far discovered. Additionally, there is one single object in a retrograde orbit. The first group are descendants of a parent body first discussed in Nature [1956-67 satellites] but the first evidence for several ablated fragments was presented much earlier [1953-1954 satellites]. ...In the two papers which appeared in Nature, there were presented orbital results for an ephemeral retrograde body, observed between 1956 and 1967. Since then, the orbits of several ablated ephemeral fragments of this body have been computed and published privately through the courtesy of friends."

So not only are there two groups of retrograde satellites in orbit around the earth, but in the year 1981 one of them was still orbiting the earth. How long has this been going on? Bagpy then notes that a retrograde satellite in orbit around the earth was noted as early as 1921:

"During August 1921, several observations were made throughout the world of a 'brilliant object.' These observations, some by recognized authorities, have remained unexplained over the years. I have recently analysed five of these observations as discussed by Baum and find that they all conform closely to the early orbital patternof the principal retrograde body described in Nature."

In order to make the 1921 satellite the same as the ones observed between 1956-67, Bagpy has to make a slight mathematical "adjustment" and I am not so sure if this is accurate. But then wait! He then reveals that this retrograde satellite may have been there as far back as the year 1880:

"As recently discussed editorially in Nature, a group of retrograde bodies was seen from Kattenau, Germany on 22 March 1880 and reported on in Nature at the time."

Again, to make the observations match he has to modify the orbit with a bit of math, attributing it to atmospheric drag. He then notes:

"In August 1960, the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation's Optical Surveillance System picked up an unknown retrograde body." 

Again he relates this to the same group of objects in retrograde orbit around the earth from 1956-67 Of these, only one remained in retrograde orbit in the year 1981. According to Polar Orbiters? these records are in Grumman
Report No.ADR 07-07-62.4. Back then, we did not have the technology to send satellites into a retrograde orbit. And if these are just rocks, I never heard of one reflecting radio signals.

UPDATE (10/3/2014): MORE EVIDENCE OF ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES

Found a NICAP report of an artificial satellite in a strange orbit from 1960. From Grumman Mystery Satellite (which has supporting documentation):

"Fran Ridge:
August 25, 1960; Grumman Aviation; Bethpage, New York
The National Space Surveillance Control Center, Air Force command and control development division, attempted to work out an orbit for a strange object reported several times. But the scientists had only one solid observation to go on,  ­ the photographing of the object by Grumman Aviation Engineering Corp. at Bethpage, N.Y.  I remember reading our preliminary report in the NICAP U.F.O. Investigator back in 1961, and later seeing the article and a picture in LIFE or LOOK.  This report has the Grumman report I was able to obtain a zerox copy of from Loy Pressley in June of 2002 which he had obtained a few years prior from Jan Aldrich. Mike Swords later provided the best image, a scanned version of Hynek's original *.
Joel Carpenter:
I have a copy of the Grumman satellite report, and I ran it by a guy who is a former CIA consultant on military satellite technology (Allen Thomson). He said that the data in the Grumman report don't add up to a real orbit, so he didn't know what to make of it. It seems that there was something fishy about the Grumman object, whatever it was.
Brad Sparks:
The Grumman object was in retrograde orbit, inclination angle to the equator about 135 degrees.  It would not show up on the next expected orbits every time.  Grumman put together a contract proposal to the AF to conduct an investigation.  I have not found any satellites launched in an inclination of about 135 degs, not because it's physically impossible but wasteful as it goes against the earth's rotational boost into orbit.  Best possibility of explanation is a Soviet Luna probe or upper stage that looped back around the earth but on the wrong side into retrograde orbit.  But that would be extraordinarily lucky, extremely difficult to do even by design.  Impossible to have been the Discoverer 5's polar orbiting Agena upper stage fired in the wrong direction or any polar orbiting Discoverer (CIA Corona).  Flatout absolute physical impossibility total nonsense and hogwash.  Cannot have enough propellant to go off at 45 degrees. You would have to have another Atlas or Thor first stage up there to do that."

Also this, from UNIDENTIFIED SATELLITES, on the earlier sighting from 1954:

"The mass-sightings of UFOs front at least 1944 onwards provided, we know, much food for thought. But what about the following item. translated from the West German magazine Lies Mit!, No. 7, of March 3, 1955?:

SENSATIONAL SPACE DEVELOPMENTS
The Earth has two new moons

Two sensational announcements recently captured peoples attention throughout the world. The first announcement said laconically that the U.S. Army had commissioned the well-known astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, dis­coverer of the planet Pluto, to look for a second moon believed to belong to our Earth. And, only a fortnight later, came the second, almost incredible, statement to the effect that Tombaugh had already located two new Earth satellites. These are allegedly fairly large meteors which have, in some unexplained manner, come into the neighbourhood of the Earth and are now in orbit around it. It is suspected, however, that they will probably lead to the solution of the mystery of the so­-called  Flying Saucers.  In the meantime, these two reports have provoked much discussion in learned circles and have led to the elaboration of various new projects, particularly where experts in rocketry and the exploration of space are concerned."

The article goes on to say that the two new "satellites" are from 430 to 650 miles from the Earth and between 60 feet and 300 feet in diameter.

This was, however, not the first intimation to appear in print, for an A.P. (Associated Press) item in the New York Herald Tribune of May 15, 1954, had already reported that in a radio net­work interview the day before, Major Donald Keyhoe, U.S. Marine Corps (Retd.), had declared that the Earth "was being circled by one or more artificial satellites," and that this very im­portant piece of news was being kept from the public. (Readers of Donald Keyhoe's second book, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, will re­member that, in Chapter 2, he related in detail how, in September, 1953, a slip of the tongue by an officer of the U.S. Armed Forces then on duty in the Pentagon had put him on to the scent which led eventually to his discovery of the secret and that the American authorities had first detected the presence of the two mystery satel­lites in the early summer of 1953 and had commissioned Clyde Tombaugh to confirm and make further investigations for them, and, incidentally, Keyhoe notes in passing that Clyde Tombaugh was at that time one of the very few prominent astronomers who would admit to having seen a UFO.)"

Also this:

"Finally, it may be worth while to repeat a state­ment alleged to have been made by Wernher von Braun. At any rate, the following appeared over his name in a West German paper, Neues Europa, on January 1, 1959:

Speaking of the deflection from course of the U.S. rocket Juno II, the article stated: "We find ourselves faced by powers which are far stronger than we had hitherto assumed, and whose base is at present unknown to us. More I cannot say at present. We are now engaged in entering into a closer contact with those powers, and in six or nine months' time it may be possible to speak with more precision on the matter.""

This would indicate an attempt at radio communication.

A MILITARY COVER-UP OF UFOs ORBITING EARTH?

In order to get published in a journal like Nature, you cannot say that earth is being orbited by a UFO. Any report of a UFO will get censored from a mainstream scientific journal. UFOs are just not "scientific", despite the enormous amount of observational and trace evidence that they are here. A natural ephemeral satellite sounds more probable. And yet, science does not accept the latter as fact. So what is going on? Is there evidence of a cover-up? Yes. From More on the 1954 UFO Satellites there was an article entitled "Captain Orville Hints Censorship of Satellites Story" from The UFO Investigator Vol. 1 #3 January 1958:

Capt. Howard T. Orville, USN, Ret., head of the President’s Weather Control Commission, says that he holds the same ideas on unknown satellites orbiting the earth as he expressed in 1954.
Interviewed by Lou Corbin on WFBR on October 24, 1957, Captain Orville was questioned about views he stated three years ago. A tape of the 1954 WFBR broadcast contains the following:
Mr. Corbin: Do you know of any condition under which two such objects could enter the earth’s atmosphere and pick up orbiting of 400 and 600 miles out?
Capt. Orville: Not that I know of. Your doubts are well justified.
Mr. Corbin: If there are two bodies circling, then they should be natural or unnatural?
Capt. Orville: If that should be true, military security would prevent discussion.
Mr. Corbin: Then is it not possible that the two bodies, if they are there, might well be space stations?
Capt. Orville: Well, that is an interesting thought. I don’t know of any set of circumstances that would account for these two objects orbiting around the earth.
Mr. Corbin: But we still have the puzzle of something circling the earth?
Capt. Orville: Yes
During the broadcast on October 24, 1957, when asked if there was any new information about the unknown satellites, Capt. Orville said it appeared that the military might have kept the matter from publication.
“From the American people,” asked Mr. Corbin.
In reply Capt. Orville said he did not wish to call it a deliberate cover-up. Then he added,
“But we didn’t hear any more about it did we?”

And then there is this on the wikipedia article on the ufologist Jacques Vallée:

"In May 1955, Vallée first sighted an unidentified flying object over his Pontoise home. Six years later in 1961, while working on the staff of the French Space Committee, Vallée witnessed the destruction of the tracking tapes of an unknown object orbiting the earth. The particular object was a retrograde satellite – that is, a satellite orbiting the earth in the opposite direction to the earth's rotation. At the time he observed this, there were no rockets powerful enough to launch such a satellite, so the team was quite excited as they assumed that the Earth's gravity had captured a natural satellite (asteroid). A superior came and erased the tape. These events contributed to Vallée's long-standing interest in the UFO phenomenon."

WOW. There you go. That probably belonged to the same set of retrograde satellite(s) whose orbits Bagpy had calculated in the articles mentioned above. If these were "natural" satellites in orbit around the earth, why would the military destroy the tracking tape? But there is more: other articles were published in 1960 concerning this retrograde satellite. The below article quotations are from SKY THING - occurred 1960:

Article #1: 8/31/60
THEY WONDER WHAT'S UP (Newsday)
Chicago (AP)   New sightings of a mysterious unidentified object circling the earth were reported yesterday.

Data concerning the object was being compiled by Robert L.  Johnson, director of Chicago's Adler Planetarium, who sighted the  object for the first time Friday with two assistants.  Johnson  said he had received reports of sightings Saturday and Sunday nights from Georgetown University observatory, Washington, and semi-official space associations.  Amateur astronomers from coast to coast and from Michigan to Missouri have reported seeing the object, Johnson added.

He said [ "the object appears to be 1/10 the size of the Echo I balloon satellite and traveling about twice as fast.  It isn't an artificial satellite or a meteor" he asserted.  ]
Article #2: 9/1/60
EXPERTS CLOUDY ON IDENTITY OF SKY THING
(Newsday) By: Bob Caro
It's not a satellite and it's not a meteor.  Any astronomer can tell you that.  And he can tell you its color and, to some extent, its speed.
[There's just one thing he can't tell you - what it is.  He can't even guess.]

That's the status at the moment of the "week-long nationwide attempt to identify the mysterious REDDISH object that has been circling the earth since last Thursday." Astronomers all over the country admit that they're puzzled.  One, Frank Judson of Chicago's famed Adler Planetarium says "I've been watching it for days and I don't have the faintest idea what it is."

Even taking a picture of the object hasn't helped.  [ The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. announced yesterday that a tracking camera at the Bethpage plant had photographed the object at 8:51 PM last Thursday.  But, a Grumman spokesman added, "all the picture shows is a white line, so we still can't even begin to make an identification." ]  The white line, difficult to detect, was barely visible even after the photo was enlarged.

Expert observers and just plain citizens have been catching glimpses of the mysterious object in Long Island, Chicago, Washington, Boston, New Haven, Chicago and points west.  But the few conclusions that they are able to draw about its behavior only heightens the mystery of what it is.

Judson, who has been studying the object in conjunction with Robert L. Johnson, director of the Adler Planetarium sums up the conclusions about the thing this way: "It's not a meteor because it's much too slow. And it's not an artificial man-made satellite, of that we're certain.  THE OBJECT TRAVELS FROM EAST TO WEST...EVERY ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE EVER PUT UP HAS TRAVELED FROM WEST TO EAST.  THAT'S THE ONLY WAY IN WHICH THEY CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE EARTH'S ROTATION."
" 'THE OBJECT,' JUDSON SAID, 'DOESN'T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO MAINTAIN A REGULAR SCHEDULE, LIKE ANY OTHER HEAVENLY OR MAN MADE OBJECT HE'S EVER SEEN.'  'WE DON'T KNOW WHEN TO WATCH FOR IT.' he says."  It appears some nights, and some nights it doesn't. Usually it appears at about the time (the) Echo I (balloon satellite) does going in the opposite direction and about twice as fast.

What could it possibly be:  "Between you and me, I just don't know," Judson said.  Then he was asked an inevitable question: "No,"  he replied, "Definitely not, I do not believe in flying saucers." 

Article #3: 9/1/60
GRUMMAN FILMS MYSTERY SPHERE (L.I. Press)
A mysterious REDDISH object circling the earth has been photographed by a tracking camera of the Grumman Aviation Engineering Corp., in Bethpage, it was disclosed today.

Grumman said the photograph was taken by a special tracking crew which has been on watch.

[ The flying object appears to be about a tenth the size of the Echo I balloon satellite and traveling about twice as fast.  Sightings from amateur astronomers and others have been received from throughout the United States.

Robert L. Johnson, director of Chicago's Adler Planetarium, is compiling data on the object.  He says it doesn't appear to be an artificial satellite or a meteor. ]

[ An added touch of the unusual is the east to west trajectory of the object.  Satellites launched by the United States and the Soviet Union have followed the opposite trajectory, west to east, to take advantage of extra speed provided by the earth's rotation.]

So there we have the answer to Bagpy's question as to why scientists do not accept that earth captured a natural satellite in retrograde orbit. Because whatever it is, it is not natural. Nor did it maintain a regular orbit. And it appears and disappears, and has an odd color to it. And it reflects radio signals! The only reason Bagpy got published in Nature is he did not mention that dreaded three letter word that is the bane of all science: UFO. Why is it the bane of all science? Because if any scientist starts to study it publicly, they will probably lose any chance of government funding. Strange things are afoot, because we now have multiple NASA videos which show various space shuttles being tracked by UFOs. If I were an extraterrestrial wanting to keep earth under observation, what better way to do that than to put a probe in orbit around the planet?

So why the secrecy? Did the NSA, in fact, establish radio contact with THIS object in retrograde orbit around the earth? It certainly fits the time period of the NSA article. Is that why the military destroyed the tracking tape? So that no one could point at it and listen for radio signals?

THE BLACK KNIGHT SATELLITE: YET MORE DISINFORMATION ON UFO SATELLLITES

Some of this information concerning a UFO in orbit around the earth is being circulated on the internet in a falsified hoax story called the "Black Knight Satellite". Either this is bad research, or yet another way to cover up the true story. It is a conflated story which combines several separate stories together:

1. A radio signal of unknown origin from the 1920s that was incorrectly interpreted by Duncan Lunan.
2. The incident of the 1954 satellite.
3. Debris from a satellite in polar orbit detected in 1960.
4. Modern NASA pictures of odd things in orbit above the earth.

Here is one video, which does mention the 1954 UFO satellite story, but combines it with some images of strange things in orbit from NASA pictures that are probably unrelated. The other inaccuracy is that it states that it is in a polar orbit - not true: all astronomers say whatever it was, it was in a retrograde orbit. The story of the "Black Knight Satellite" is a conflation of separate things. Here is an example of how truth is mixed in with falsehoods (and probably some black projects in orbit as well):



(As for those NASA photos that were deleted, I believe once they realized it was too late the photos simply reappeared but with a different URL). So now you have your falsified hoax story to cover up the truth. And then comes in the skeptic to demolish it: see The Black Knight Satellite from the skeptoid web site, which does some pretty good research against the conflated Black Knight satellite story. But in demolishing the hoax story, we have another false statement against the true story:

"Those 1954 newspaper reports of two satellites in orbit? It was merely tongue-in-cheek reporting of the wild claims of a UFO crank trying to sell a book. The Air Force officer cited was merely a guy who had seen a UFO once, but in no way corroborated the idea of unknown satellites orbiting Earth."

The above statement is COMPLETELY FALSE, and ignores the facts. The 1954 retrograde satellites in orbit around the earth was observed by many astronomers across the world, not just a "UFO crank" - and the references to prove it were quoted above in this blog post. The man he is refering to is Donald Keyhoe, an American Marine Corps naval aviator, who led the civilian NICAP organization (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) to research UFOs until he was maneuvered out of his position by the CIA. From Intelligence Agencies and NICAP

"Further evidence of CIA influence in NICAP developed during the periodimmediately before NICAP's decline. On December 3, 1969, Donald Keyhoe was ousted as NICAP's Director during a Board meeting. Who led the effort to remove Keyhoe? The Chairman of the Board, Col. Joesph Bryan, former Chief of the CIA's Psychological Warfare Staff (1947-1953). And who replaced Keyhoe? John Acuff, who was the head of the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers (SPSE), a frequent target of Russian spying attempts and a group that had many members involved in Defense Department intelligence units, including the CIA. His management of NICAP was financially "tight" (in the cheap sense) and totally inept in a research sense. Criticism of government UFO policy was gone, and NICAP merely served as a sighting collection center. Acuff's management drove loyal NICAP Board members away and ultmately led to Acuff's downfall in 1978.
Who replaced Acuff? None other than Alan Hall, a retired CIA employee, who accepted the position after a number of other CIA employees were offered the job. Support for Hall from the NICAP Board came from Charles Lombard, an aide to Senator Goldwater and former CIA covert employee.
NICAP eventually became so ineffective that it was dissolved, and the group's UFO files were absorbed by the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois."

Yet again, studies in UFOs and extraterrestrials lead back to the CIA. Why would they have an interest in destroying NICAP if there was nothing to investigate about UFOs?

THE ORIGIN OF THE NSA EXTRATERRESTRIAL RADIO SIGNAL?

To summarize, the NSA extraterrestrial radio signal previously discussed can be internally dated to 1953. This was the same year in which the British mathematician Hogben proposed sending out mathematical radio signals into outer space in order to make contact with extraterrestrials. There is a false story on the NSA extraterrestrial radio signal stating that it comes from the Russian satellite Sputnik. And then, coincidentally, before the NSA document of the signal was released to the public in 2004, it just so happens that William Cooper gave a speech to MUFON in 1989 declaring that we intercepted an extraterrestrial radio signal from an artificial satellite that began to enter earth's orbit in 1953. The name of this project to communicate with extraterrestrials, according to William Cooper, was "Project Sigma". I have not been able to find any information on "Project Sigma".  However I did find something called "Project Ozma". From Early SETI: Project Ozma, Arecibo Message:

In 1960, radioastronomer Frank D. Drake, then at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, carried out humanity's first attempt to detect interstellar radio transmissions. Project Ozma was named after the queen of L. Frank Baum's imaginary land of Oz -- a place "very far away, difficult to reach, and populated by strange and exotic beings." The stars chosen by Drake for the first SETI search were Tau Ceti in the Constellation Cetus (the Whale) and Epsilon Eridani in the Constellation Eridanus (the River), some eleven light years (66 trillion miles) away. Both stars are about the same age as our sun.

From April to July 1960, for six hours a day, Project Ozma's 85-foot NRAO radio telescope was tuned to the 21-centimeter emission (1420 MHz) coming from cold hydrogen gas in interstellar space. A single 100 Hz channel receiver scanned 400 kHz of bandwidth. The astronomers scanned the tapes for a repeated series of uniformly patterned pulses that would indicate an intelligent message or a series of prime numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 5 or 7. With the exception of an early false alarm caused by a secret military experiment, the only sound that came from the loudspeaker was static and no meaningful bumps superimposed themselves on the formless wiggles on the recording paper.

That is all I can find: a "false alarm" caused by a "secret military experiment".  What was the military doing with radio signals in 1960?  Could this in fact be related to the mysterious retrograde satellites that were in orbit in the year 1960? Was "Project Ozma" the public experiment to cover up the secret experiment known as "Project Sigma"?  Or did "Project Sigma" originate earlier with the 1953 satellite?  If anyone can help trace the radio signal further, do drop me a note. I found a lot on UFO satellites, but not enough on radio signals from outer space. My current assumption is that this NSA extraterrestrial radio signal from outer space came from not far away - perhaps from one of these orbiting satellites.