Section 12
Secret Things From Outer Space
Considering Marilyn’s incredible fame and the fanatical, almost fetish-like fascination with her tragic death, was it not just a matter of time before a conspiracist created an amalgamation, a unified theory of Marilyn’s murder that included flying silver disks and the possible existence of little green men? During May of 2001, an article entitled “Is There a Connection? Marilyn Monroe and UFOs” appeared in the MUFON UFO Journal. Two years later in 2003, a brief ninety-five page progeny of that brief two page article appeared in the Realm of Marilyn. The article’s author, Donald R. Burleson, PhD, published UFOs and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe; and therein, the erudite PhD explained in precise detail just how UFOs impacted the life and the death of America’s favorite blonde actress.
Since Burleson’s publication appeared before I became MO, Marilyn Overwhelmed, I cannot comment on the ripples it might have caused across the ether of the Marilyn Universe; but according to commentary regarding the PhD’s book, his publication was, and I assume still is, the most controversial publication ever written about the famous actress. Recently, a documentary entitled Unacknowledged advanced the addlepated theory proffered by Burleson and featured the revelations of Dr. Steven Greer, a retired emergency room physician and a goofy impresario in the world of UFO conspiracies and conspiracists. Greer’s opinions and odd assertions will appear later in this section; but Burleson’s goofy book and Greer’s goofy assertions are, in my opinion, of course, a cockeyed union of The Outer Limits or The X-Files.
I realize that a person’s opinion of Burleson’s opinion regarding why Marilyn was allegedly murdered and my opinion of his opinion will be effected by their opinion of UFOs and extraterrestrials, their belief or disbelief thereof. I confess that I am currently a skeptic and essentially a denier of what I call The Alieata. Yet, when I was less old than I am now, I was a believer, prompted to be so by the spooky stories published in LOOK and TIME magazines about the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill from their Chevy Bel Air as they drove along a lonely and empty stretch of New Hampshire highway.
A teenager at the time, I was a Cold War Kid, steeped in the flying saucer movies Hollywood produced by the dozens in the 1950s, black and white, usually lucrative talkies about aliens visiting and attacking Earth in flying saucers or silver intergalactic disc-shaped crafts. I watched some of those movies inside dark movie houses; but in our small darkened living room, where they were displayed on my family’s tiny square television set, is where I watched most of them. I recall one movie in which the aliens were large grasshoppers with virtually no hands; but then, at the time, I was not analytical enough to question how a handless creature could possibly fabricate an elegantly complex and beautiful space craft. Perhaps the aliens constructed those crafts telekinetically using their big brains. But then, I digress, as I often do.
Sightings and reports of odd lights in the sky began long before the Roswell Incident occurred in 1947. Some UFOlogists claim that Ezekiel’s biblical flaming wheel was, in fact, a space vehicle. In 1953, the United States Air Force created the term Unidentified Flying Object as a general term to replace the more commonly used and more specific, descriptive term, flying saucer. Obviously the Air Force wanted to avoid the assumption by observers on the ground that any strange object observed flying in the sky was necessarily a flying saucer piloted by little green men. Unfortunately, this logical position regarding UFOs did not have the desired effect. By 1962, fifteen years after the Roswell occurrence, regular appearances of UFOs had become a significant part of the American experience. The acronym UFO had become entrenched in the American lexicon; but, for the most part, in 1962, UFO meant a flying saucer piloted by little green men. Essentially, most Americans believed by then that flying saucers and their occupants were real. No revelation from nor confirmation by Marilyn Monroe was required. Here in 2025, the situation is not that much different than it was in 1962; however, the conspiracists have attached to the UFO conspiracy plot of 1947 the names of Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy, along with an alleged intelligence document, now known as the CIA-JFK-Monroe-UFO Wiretap Memorandum. They have also attached murder. What else could or would a UFO conspiracist, or any conspiracist for that matter, want or need? The secret of secrets associated with Marilyn Monroe’s murder.
The CIA knew, from the wiretaps and the almost innumerable other surveillance devices planted at Fifth Helena, that Marilyn planned to reveal the secret of secrets, not her extramarital relationships with the middle Kennedy brothers. O no. Quite the contrary, according to Donald Burleson. Marilyn had a much more significant and larger alien catfish to publicly fry. Marilyn planned to reveal the existence of UFOs and The Alieata. Therefore, the blonde actress had to be silenced to prevent her from plunging Western Civilization into fear and religious chaos.
The lineage of the murder theory advanced by Burleson can be traced back to Frank Capell’s unsubstantiated political pamphlet, Norman Mailer’s novel factoidal novel, Robert Slatzer’s 1974 apocrypha and James Hall’s ambulance story, an incredible yarn that Hall related to Deputy LADA Ronald Carroll in 1982. Add to that lineage, Anthony Summers and C. David Heymann: both authors presented the visits to Fifth Helena by Robert Kennedy and Peter Lawford which appeared in Anthony Summers’ and Clem Heymann’s 1985 and 1989 publications respectively. Donald Wolfe along with Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin later expanded Hall’s story and Robert Kennedy’s visits into what is now called The Ambulance Theory, a Kafkaesque tale that will appear in a later section; however, Donald Burleson was the first conspiracist to conflate all the preceding and UFOs with Marilyn’s purported politically motivated murder.
All things taken into consideration, according to PhD Burleson, Marilyn obviously did not commit suicide. She was silenced by a lethal injection administered by her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, directly into her heart, the same murder scenario proffered by Donald Wolfe and later by Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin. Burleson omitted the alleged romance between the psychiatrist and patient, however; and Burleson did not actually explain how Dr. Greenson was coerced into injecting Marilyn in the heart because she knew about UFOs and aliens or why Marilyn’s knowledge of UFOs would have concerned Dr. Greenson so much that he involved himself in murdering her. Even so, Burleson incanted the names of Sgt Jack Clemmons and Robert Slatzer, whose claim of a Marilyn marriage Burleson absolutely accepted. Burleson also incanted the names of Jeanne Laverne Carmen and Norman Jefferies, Anthony Summers and Donald Wolfe, each mentioned obviously to provide the author’s murder scenario with verity. The PhD also offered two pieces of evidence to support his injection theory: Marilyn’s autopsy report and the top secret, the deadly and allegedly still classified CIA-JFK-Monroe-UFO Wiretap Memorandum, hereafter the CIA-UFO-Memo.
An abnormally high concentration of the drugs pentobarbital (Nembutal) and Chloral hydrate in Marilyn’s tested blood convinced Burleson and, in his considered opinion, proved that she did not ingest the overdose that killed her. The concentrations noted on the toxicology reports of 4.5mg% barbiturates and 8mg% chloral hydrate could not have been reached, according to Burleson, because Marilyn would have died long before ingesting the quantity of pills required to attain that level of concentration, seventy-five or ninety or possibly even more than one-hundred capsules. That fact was revealed to writers Peter Brown and Patte Barham and also to Robert Slatzer when those three writers, at different times I presume, discussed those toxic blood levels with chemists at Abbot Laboratories and other representatives of that pharmaceutical manufacturer. Am I the only person who finds it odd that Abbot Laboratories has never issued a formal, public statement refuting the findings of Marilyn’s autopsy along with the toxicological tests and reports prepared by doctors Noguchi and Abernathy? Likewise, am I the only person who finds it odd that the commenting chemists at Abbot have never been identified?1
Burleson also repeated Slatzer’s published assertion that Marilyn could barely swallow an aspirin without gagging—even if she had a glass of water to drink. Slatzer knew that detail due to his lengthy friendship with and brief marriage to Marilyn, his intimate knowledge of her, an intimate knowledge that included her speech patterns and pill swallowing abilities. We now know, of course, the preceding boasts by Slatzer amounted to a pile of bunkum; and, with a weary reiteration of the conspiracist’s usual palaver, Burleson noted, a drinking vessel was not found in Marilyn’s bedroom on August the 5th. Also, Burleson additionally repeated, Marilyn had no access to water since the water supply to her house had been stopped due to her residential remodeling project, all of which we also now know, amounted to another pile of Slatzerian bunkum.
Burleson then proffered a scenario as a repudiation of the autopsy and toxicology reports prepared in 1962. He asked his readers to suppose that they wanted to generate in their own bodies the blood toxicity found in Marilyn’s. He advised his readers to fill a jorum or two with an ample supply of clean water and to surround themselves with an ample supply of the appropriate pills. Ready set. Start gobbling. In his opinion, very early into the grim gobbling process, his readers would most certainly die. Not only would his readers most certainly if not promptly die, asserted Burleson, but the toxicity level of their blood would not reach the level asserted by Marilyn’s autopsy reports; and his readers stomachs would be filled with undigested and unabsorbed capsules.
The preceding sounds plausible, sounds reasonable. Most persons who read Burleson’s book probably accepted his pill ingestion scenario and did not download a copy of Marilyn’s autopsy report and thereby learned that the concentration of pentobarbital in Marilyn’s liver, 13.0mg%, was essentially three times the concentration in her tested blood. A convenient omission by Burleson and a fine example of cherry picking; but then, an explanation of why the concentration in Marilyn’s liver was that high would have severely diminished the legitimacy of his pill ingestion scenario and argument. This subject appeared with more detail in the preceding section dedicated to Marilyn’s autopsy and the resultant toxicology reports; but to briefly recap here, if Marilyn had died long before her blood reached that high toxicity level with unabsorbed capsules remaining in her stomach, then the level of barbiturates in her liver would not have been three times the toxicity level of her blood; and the fact that the level of toxicity in her liver exceeded the level of toxicity in her blood precludes the use of an injection, a hot shot, as the method of introducing the barbiturates into Marilyn’s body.
The now famous CIA-UFO-Memo, which figured prominently in Burleson’s murder hypothesis, was revealed to the world in 1995 during a press conference called by Milo Speriglio, a somewhat dubious private detective once hired by Robert Slatzer to ostensibly investigate Marilyn’s death and substantiate what Slatzer claimed in his 1974 faux memoir and I-married-Marilyn-Monroe reveal. Milo also wrote three books about Marilyn’s death: Marilyn Monroe: Murder Cover-up, published in 1982; The Marilyn Conspiracy, published in 1986; and Crypt 33: The Saga of Marilyn Monroe: The Final Word, published with Adela Gregory in 1993, one year after Robert Slatzer’s second book, The Marilyn Files, plopped out of the publishers printing presses. Regrettably, Milo relied heavily on his former boss as a source; and reliance on Slatzer as a source resulted in more than reasonable doubt.
In 1995 Milo, labeled a publicity hound by his detractors, convened a press conference during which he revealed the CIA-UFO-Memo to the world. Since the memorandum appeared to memorialize two wiretapped telephone chats, one between Dorothy Kilgallen and her friend Howard Rothberg, and another telephone chat, allegedly between Marilyn and her lover, Robert Kennedy, that now infamous memorandum figured prominently in Burleson’s murder hypothesis and his brief publication. The memorandum also mentions President John Kennedy, things from outer space, dead bodies, Marilyn’s anger with the middle Kennedy brothers, her diary of secrets and an explosive press conference Marilyn planned to announce or had already announced.
The memorandum displayed a curious date, the 3rd of August in 1962, and a curious signature, that of the legendary James Jesus Angleton. Angleton’s signature appeared in the lower right hand corner. The date alone, only one day before the day of Marilyn’s death, caused reasonable doubt in my mind; but by virtue of Angleton’s signature and several other factors, conspiracists and UFOlogists accepted the document as authentic.
Enter Dr. Greer.
Dr. Steven Greer is the founder and international director of the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, CSETI. An impresario in the world of UFOlogy and the related endeavors, Dr. Greer appeared in Donald Burleson’s Marilyn-Was-Murdered book; and he resoundingly proclaimed the authenticity of the CIA-UFO-Memo; Dr. Greer also declared that the document amounted to poor Marilyn Monroe’s death warrant.
Apparently Dr. Greer received what amounted to poor Marilyn’s death warrant one day in 1994 quite out of the blue, a year before Speriglio revealed the death warrant to humanity. Dr. Greer received it, he claimed, from a man who helped create the National Security Agency. To whom was Dr. Greer referring? Herbert Yardley? Harry Truman? Anyway, this unidentified man who helped create the NSA and delivered the CIA-UFO-Memo to Dr. Greer also supported the doctor’s work with extraterrestrials. That’s right: Dr. Greer’s work with actual other worldly beings. According to the man who works with extraterrestrials, the best document researcher and authenticator in the world proclaimed the CIA-UFO-Memo document real and tiptop secret along with being dangerous to possess, even though Dr. Greer possessed the dangerous death warrant document and appeared to still be alive. This proclaimer who proclaimed the document authentic was the senior aide to retired General William E. Odom, the former director of the NSA. General Odom’s mysterious senior aide, you have probably already concluded, conveniently requested anonymity, of course, and as usual.
Even though Dr. Greer is, as I have already stated, an impresario, even a totem to some denizens in the world of UFOs, aliens and all the associated endeavors, like organizing expensive seminars and cosmic training sessions, more than a few websites across Al Gore’s Amazing Internet, Act For Libraries, for instance, along with OccupyTheory along with The Angry UFOlogist, posted articles critical of Dr. Greer, articles that unabashedly labeled the good doctor a fraud and PhD grifter.
For example, Act For Libraries published an article with no by-line entitled, “Dr Steven Greer is a Fraud.” The article began by comparing Steven to L. Ron Hubbard. Evidently, during a 1950s party, before the cult and quasi-religion of Scientology became Hubbard’s central focus, L. Ron apparently commented that religion is where the money is. At that moment, the unnamed writer asserted, the largest financial endeavor ever to be disguised as a modern religion was born. In the writers’ opinion, Dr. Greer was simply trodding down the same well-trodden grifter’s path, deceiving his naïve seminar attendees with fraudulent promises of learning how to remote view with a cosmic consciousness, and to be precognitive, meaning an ability to see the future. All through meditation techniques. Supernatural, psychic powers. All for the small fee of $995. Of course, Dr. Greer, the grifter, requires his students to purchase the doctor’s many books as a prerequisite for seminar admission. Finally, in the end, the author noted, Dr. Greer was only engaging in a shady business, one which demanded faith without proof and a collective faith at that, collective faith in a Religion—and religion is where the money is, right, Dr. Greer?2Similar articles pilloried Dr. Greer as a grifter and a prevaricator whose many and varied stories could not withstand any actual scrutiny. One such article asserted that Dr. Greer exaggerated to establish a dubious credibility and then added that the doctor offered zero verifiable facts. The article then stated unequivocally that Dr. Steven Greer was committing a large hoax on a gullible public. Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman, panned Dr. Greer the science-whiz P.T. Barnum of alien visitation, a role he seems to relish all the way to the bank, a deceptive man who will go the extra mile to sell his snake oil. To me, the good doctor sounds like any televangelist who simply needs a new yacht or a new Rolls Royce or a new Lear jet.3
But … why all the animus and hostility? More than just a few members of the UFO Community consider Dr. Greer to be an emblem of phoniness and a distributor of disinformation that actually clouds the issue of the government’s UFO stonewalling and obfuscation, phoniness that actually inhibits real UFO research. Dr. Greer’s detractors believe that he only wants to aggrandize and enrich himself while failing to offer anything tangible. Gleiberman observed that Dr. Greer is afflicted with a prattling-on-at-the-mouth touch of New Age narcissism.4It seems, however, that Dr. Greer’s most egregious transgression involved an acting Director of the CIA under President Bill Clinton, a dinner party and and Dr. Greer’s assertions about, and his assessment of, that dinner party.
In an article posted on OccupyTheory‘s website, dated the 18th of December in 2014, an unnamed writer stated:
Greer is known for making up a lot of excuses, but the problem is that there are no facts behind the statements that he has publicly made. […] At one point, Greer says that he briefed the CIA director about the Disclosure Project and that the whole conspiracy was going to be exposed. The only problem is that no one remembers such a briefing.5
In an article posted on the website, Writing Wrong, Ryan Moorwood noted:
Greer claims that he spent many hours briefing CIA director James Woolsey about extraterrestrials and has since gone to accuse Woolsey of blocking inventors from going forward with their inventions. A former associate of Greer’s, who states that the briefing was actually just Mr. Woolsey making the mistake of inviting Dr. Greer and three other people to dinner, has objected to this claim.6
In short, Dr. Steven Greer’s credibility was abducted by what appears to be a monstrous alien lie; and thus Dr. Greer’s critics, and those skeptical of his veracity, do not trust anything that exits his prattling-on mouth.
In 1993, the alien aficionado evidently attended a dinner party also attended by R. James Woolsey, Jr., who was then the acting Director of the CIA. Woolsey’s wife, Suzanne, John L. Petersen, founder of the Arlington Institute and acclaimed futurist, along with his wife, Diane Petersen, also attended. Dr. Greer and wife, along with the Woolseys and the Petersens, apparently found themselves seated at the same table that evening. According to Dr. Greer, he used that opportunity to discuss extraterrestrials with the CIA chief; and the man who works with aliens recounted the Woolsey contact in the introduction to his book, Extraterrestrial Contact. That introduction prompted the following letter, dated September 16, 1999. First, a copy of the actual letter.
Now a transcription of the letter’s body:
Dear Dr. Greer:
It has come to the attention of the four of us that you have, without giving any of us the opportunity to comment, published a distorted account of a dinner party of some six years ago at which the four of us, you, and your wife were seated together.
In the introduction to your book, Extraterrestrial Contact, published earlier this year you portray this dinner party conversation during which the four of us listened to your view and politely asked questions as a “briefing” with a “cover story.” You further assert that Mr. and Mrs. Woolsey reported a UFO sighting to you and agreed with your views. You include specific alleged quotations from them.
None of this is accurate. You have portrayed politeness as acquiescence and questions as affirmations. Your conduct in this matter contravenes both accuracy and simple manners.
Eventually, Dr. Greer penned a response to the complaint letter dispatched by the offended quartet; and during one of his many taped seminars, the doctor also addressed the issue of his close encounter with James Woolsey and the resultant controversy. As you might have already concluded, Dr. Greer maintained that his assessment of the dinner party, the Woolsey briefing, and the topics discussed that evening were the correct and forthright ones. What else, in fact, could Dr. Greer possibly maintain without admitting that he was a liar?
For true, I could continue to quote website articles that question Dr. Greer’s veracity. A few even question his sanity; however, engaging in such a continuation is not the main issue of this section. Certainly the veracity of Dr. Steven Greer along with the veracity of PhD Donald Burleson are important; but the crux of the main issue is whether or not Marilyn Monroe was murdered because she knew and planned to reveal that extraterrestrial beings were, and therefore are, living among us?
Recently I watched a YouTube video of Dr. Steven Greer as he lectured on the subjects of the nefarious Central Intelligence Agency and the CIA-UFO-Memo, along with the truth about the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and President Kennedy. It was during this lecture, at what I assume was a seminar about alien contact, that he conflated the CIA-UFO-Memo with Marilyn’s death warrant, a death warrant that eventually expanded to include the president. Dr. Greer also invoked the terms MJ-12 and Moon Dust Project, both essential components of UFOlogy.
In the version of history unfolded by Dr. Steven Greer, President Kennedy, who had great affection for Marilyn, was incredibly distraught over her murder, a murder perpetrated by the CIA. Dr. Greer claimed to have an audio recording of a conversation between John Kennedy and an unnamed Air Force officer recorded during June of 1963, a conversation during which Kennedy expressed anger over Marilyn’s death and expressed a vow to reveal the truth to the American people. Greer did not play or even offer to play that tape; and a fellow can easily conclude why. The UFO impresario also asserted that during John Kennedy’s second term in the Oval Office, had he survived his first term, he intended not only to reveal the facts regarding Marilyn’s murder, but also the existence of UFOs and the Alieata, not the little green ones, of course, but the little gray ones. Also, a second-term-President-Kennedy planned and intended to disentangle America from the Vietnam War, to destroy both the CIA and the military industrial complex and to make peace with the Soviets, as if the Soviets actually wanted to make peace with the US. Those taped threats, sayeth Greer, led to John Kennedy’s assassination just six months later.
As proof that Marilyn did not commit suicide, Greer invoked the name of Burl Ives, a beloved actor and folk singer who died in 1995. According to Greer, Ives was Marilyn’s close buddy; Ives did not believe Marilyn committed suicide, of course. Even though I have read at least ten-thousand times that this or that person was Marilyn’s close buddy, I have never read nor seen reported in any way that Marilyn and Burl Ives were buddies, that Burl Ives was a scientific authority on Marilyn’s death, or anybody else’s death for that matter, or that opinions pronounced by the lovable actor represented proof. Frankly, Greer’s assessment of the relationship between Marilyn and John Kennedy and what he asserted about President Kennedy’s future intentions, not to mention his insertion of Burl Ives into Marilyn’s suicide conundrum, lack both a factual and a historical basis; and his unfounded pronouncements revealed a dubious veracity if not an obvious propensity to exaggerate.
On the significant point of who actually ordered the elimination of Marilyn, Burleson and Greer diverged. According to Burleson, fearing that Marilyn’s revelations during her scheduled press conference would include the existence of aliens, the attorney general ordered her murder; Greer, however, asserted that Robert Kennedy did not order Marilyn’s murder: that order was given by the CIA’s legendary counter-intelligence expert, James Jesus Angleton.
Please, allow me to digress briefly.
Several conspiracists have asserted that Angleton also ordered the murder of Mary Meyer, the ex-wife of Cord Meyer, a high-ranking member and associate of James Angleton’s in the CIA. Mary Eno Meyer (née Pinchot) was allegedly one of John Kennedy’s many lovers; and during the last fourteen months of his short presidency and life, John Kennedy saw Mary more frequently than any of his other paramours, both outside and inside the presidential quarters of the White House. Mary was unique at least in two respects, according to unproven rumor, that is. President Kennedy confessed that he was in love with Mary and he envisioned them sharing a life together after he divorced Jacqueline. Allegedly also, Jacqueline knew about John’s romance and affair with Mary; but since the two women were friends, Jacqueline did not object or even seem to care.
An unidentified assailant shot Mary Meyer twice in broad daylight during her usual midday Georgetown stroll on October the 12th in 1964, virtually a year after John Kennedy’s assassination. Mary’s story is not only tragic but also curious. It also involves a mysterious diary, one she allegedly kept about her relationship with John Kennedy. One theory posits that Mary’s murder, like Marilyn’s murder, was directly connected to Mary’s diary. Protecting the legacy and memory of President Kennedy are strands of the connecting twine along with protecting the secrets about the CIA that President Kennedy revealed to his lover. (John Kennedy must have been one loose lipped politician and powerful world leader.) Putatively the CIA’s legendary counterintelligence expert, Angleton, discovered Mary’s diary and possessed it briefly before he returned it to Mary’s sister who then destroyed it, which begs this question: if that diary was explosive enough to motivate murder, why did Angleton return it to Mary’s family and risk exposure?
Several critics have asserted that the CIA-UFO-Memo is actually a hoax, meaning that Angleton’s participation in Marilyn’s death would, of course, be a part of the hoax. One such critic is Anthony Bragalia. In an article written for the website UFO Explorations entitled “Famous JFK-Marilyn-UFO Wiretap Memo Is A Hoax”, Bragalia noted that prominent UFOlogists and conspiracist writers have referenced the infamous memorandum for years. It has been featured in books, magazines and on websites, Bragalia asserted. Twenty years later it can now be revealed that this potentially explosive piece of documentary evidence is a hoax.7 According to Bragalia, the private eye, Milo Speriglio, who, as noted earlier, initially presented the CIA-UFO-Memo publicly, was not only a publicity seeker, but he was also a lover of the good life and often took money from the tabloids. Apparently, Speriglio constantly tried to insert himself into the lives of celebrities and high-profile cases involving them, such as the O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown murder case. Speriglio was, according to Bragalia, a notorious gossip, too.
Speriglio received the CIA-UFO-Memo from Tim Cooper, Bragalia revealed, a security officer living in California who graduated from the Nick Harris Detective Academy, a school to train private eyes managed by Speriglio. Apparently Tim Cooper and the private detective were the tightest of pals. According to the website, The Majestic Documents, managed by Robert Wood, PhD, and his son, Ryan Wood, the CIA-UFO-Memo appeared in Tim Cooper’s PO box as normal mail. Later, Tim provided it to Milo Speriglio who ran the Nick Harris detective agency where Milo first published it. According to Bragalia, the document and everything associated with it was disavowed by Cooper in a 2009 email to UFO researcher Robert Hastings. Cooper disavowed all the UFO and Roswell documents he once promoted because they were either questionable or outright fabrications. Thus the person who provided the CIA-UFO-Memo to Speriglio, who then revealed it to the world, conceded that the document was not authentic, that it was quite frankly bull shit. According to Bragalia, Cooper’s email to Hastings, and his referenced admission, was archived on The UFO Chronicles website. A diligent search of that site never uncovered the archived email.
Bragalia is not the only UFOlogist who believes the CIA-UFO-Memo is a forgery. On the website, Top Secret Writers, a frequent contributor, Seamus Coogan,8also a John Kennedy assassination researcher, asserted that he systematically destroyed the baloney linking JFK to MJ-12 and his supposed confession to Marilyn Monroe about the existence of UFO’s.
In Coogan’s opinion any sane person would recognize that the document was dishonest, fantastical bull. […] The originator of the documents was a bloke called Timothy S. Cooper. In my research, Cooper began hawking his records in 1992 a year after Oliver Stone’s film ‘JFK’ hit the headlines. Coogan believes, based on the evidence he uncovered, that Cooper was the original source for the document.9
Finally, for the website Mysterious Universe, an article written by Nick Redfern identified several aspects of the dubious memorandum that are certainly revealing. Redfern also wrote The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing A Shocking and Sinister Secret, published in 2017. His book relates to his opinions regarding the CIA-UFO-Memo. Before proceeding, a copy of the actual document.10
Now, a transcription of the memorandum downloaded from Al Gore’s Amazing Internet:
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
TOP SECRET NOT FOR PUBLICATION
COUNTRY: New York, US REPORT NO.: [Redacted]
SUBJECT: Marilyn Monroe XXX DATE: 3 August 1962
REFERENCES: MOON DUST Project [Illegible]
NO PAGES: [Redacted]Wiretap of telephone conversation between reporter Dorothy Kilgallen and her close friend, Howard Rothberg (A); from wiretap of telephone conversation of Marilyn Monroe and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (B). Appraisal of Content: [Redacted]
1. Rothberg discussed the apparent comeback of subject with Kilgallen and the break up with the Kennedys. Rothberg told Kilgallen that she was attending Hollywood parties hosted by the “inner circle” among Hollywood’s elite and was becoming the talk of the town again. Rothberg indicated in so many words, that she had secrets to tell, no doubt arising from her trists [sic] with the President and the Attorney General. One such “secret” mentions the visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space. Kilgallen replied that she knew what might be the source of visit. In the mid-fifties Kilgallen learned of secret effort by US and UK governments to identify the origins of crashed spacecraft and dead bodies, from a British government official. Kilgallen believed the story may have come from the New Mexico story in the late forties. Kilgallen said that if the story is true, it would cause terrible embarrassment for Jack and his plans to have NASA put men on the moon.
2. Subject repeatedly called the Attorney General and complained about the way she was being ignored by the President and his brother.
3. Subject threatened to hold a press conference and would tell all.
4. Subject made reference to “bases” in Cuba and knew of the President’s plan to kill Castro.
5. Subject made reference to her “diary of secrets” and what the newspapers would do with such disclosures.
Dorothy Kilgallen appeared prominently in a previous section regarding how the legends surrounding Marilyn’s murder actually began; and Howard Rothberg, according to Donald Spoto, had no relationship or association with Marilyn at all. Most certainly he was not Marilyn’s friend or privy to otherwise unknown facts about Marilyn’s personal life. So that fact alone renders the document suspicious; but the contents of the memorandum are particularly suspicious because of what is missing there from.
Within the text of the CIA-UFO-Memo, neither the word alien nor extraterrestrials nor flying saucers nor the acronym UFO are actually used. In Redfern’s opinion and belief, the curious wording could actually push the whole thing down a very different path.11
For instance, Redfern found the following statement attributed to Dorothy Kilgallen suspicious: if the story is true, it would cause terrible embarrassment for Jack and his plans to have NASA put men on the moon. Why would some dead aliens and a crashed flying saucer have provoked embarrassment from President Kennedy, Redfern wondered, or have caused his NASA space program problems? As Redfern stated in his article, that obvious question should have posed a problem for the UFOlogists who were actually paying attention.
Redfern acknowledged that discovering dead aliens certainly would have caused fear, wonder and amazement among the public and the government as well; but he doubted that discovering dead aliens would have provoked embarrassment from John Kennedy or NASA? Redfern then opined: if the dead bodies were Soviet cosmonauts; if the spacecraft which fell to Earth was a failed Russian rocket; if the Soviets had experienced a number of unsuccessful manned missions that predated cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s successful launch into orbit in April of 1961; and if that information threatened to surface during the Kennedy Administration, then yes, that would have caused significant embarrassment for Kennedy, his administration and NASA.12
In 1959, the December 14th issue of The Gadsden Times contained a story entitled, “Oberth Believes Astronauts Lost”. Hermann Oberth, a German scientist working with the US Army, stated that he believed the Soviets had lost five cosmonauts during attempts to launch them into space, one of which was a woman. All of those failed attempts were prior to Cosmonaut Gagarin’s successful orbit around Mother Earth. Is it possible that the bodies recovered at Roswell, Redfern wondered, were actually human?13
A misspelled word, tryst, is an interesting feature of the CIA-UFO-Memo noted by Redfern and others. According to several websites dedicated to UFO research and several articles dedicated to the disinformation program instigated by the United States Air Force, Richard Doty, a former agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, a sanctioned, professional document hoaxer, created many fraudulent documents. A website owned and operated by KGPE CBS47 in Fresno, California, published an article on February the 20th of 2020 pertaining to Richard Doty and his distribution of bogus information within the UFO community. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, noted the article’s author, George Knapp, for a period, spread disinformation about UFO cases and sent operatives to UFO conventions to gather intelligence. How do we know? The answer to that question, according to the article, is
One of the OSI agents who did it has admitted as much. Richard Doty is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the UFO. Doty had a 20-year career with the Air Force, including years as a special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). During that time, he was assigned to conduct surveillance on a scientist, Paul Bennewitz, who had inadvertently acquired information about a classified Air Force program. Doty admits he fed disinformation to Bennewitz and to other UFO researchers, forged documents, and muddied the waters.14
Six years earlier, in August of 2014, The Guardian had published a similar article, entitled, “The Real Men In Black, Hollywood and the Great UFO Cover-Up,” written by Steve Rose, who opined:
If there really is a UFO conspiracy, it’s surely the worst-kept secret in history. Roswell, Area 51, flashing lights, little green men, abductions―it’s all been fed through the pop culture mill to the point of fatigue. […] But a new documentary, Mirage Men, unearths compelling evidence that UFO folklore was actually fabricated by the US government. Rather than covering up the existence of aliens, could it be that the real conspiracy has been persuading us to believe in them? […] The classic case, well-known to conspiracy aficionados, is Paul Bennewitz, a successful electronics entrepreneur in New Mexico.15
The Guardian article then recounts the curious story of Paul Bennewitz who, in 1979, lived near the Kirkland Air Force Base. While eavesdropping and spying on the Air Force with some of his electronics equipment, Bennewitz received some inexplicable transmissions and observed some inexplicable lights during the day and the night. Convinced these phenomena indicated the presence of aliens, like a good patriotic American, Bennewitz reported his observations to the Air Force. Realizing that their neighbor had been surveilling them, the Air Force began surveilling him, began to encourage him, through Doty and other officers, to dig deeper. Doty gave Bennewitz computer software that putatively interpreted the inexplicable signals Bennewitz had overheard; and eventually, the Air Force’s inquisitive neighbor began interpreting alien languages, noticing crashed alien crafts in the nearby hills and sounding the alert for a full-scale alien invasion. Bennewitz became so obsessed with the Alieata that his family had him placed in a mental facility in 1988. The preceding surely suggests, if not proves, that members of the UFO community, as obsessed as they are with finding ET, can be easily led and deceived.
Even though Doty is recognized as being an expert document hoaxer and distributor of bogus information, he is also a notoriously poor speller, a fact which points, possibly, to the actual creator of the CIA-UFO-Memo. Still, the debated document provided UFOlogists and UFO conspiracists with the imagery they desired, images which pointed directly to Roswell, Area 51 and the conspiracy of conspiracies. Redfern added: The JFK-UFO angle reinforces the belief in some quarters that Kennedy was whacked because of what he knew about Roswell. The same with Marilyn, too.16Redfern equated the story and its imagery to the X-Files meeting Dark-Skies meeting Oliver Stone’s JFK.
Counting some fingers on the other hand, there are persons within the UFO community who maintain that Dwight Eisenhower was the last United States president actually briefed about the existence of flying saucers and aliens, meaning that John Kennedy would never have received any UFO information through official channels: what he knew about the alien phenomenon he would have learned in the same manner as a common ordinary citizen or as the result of strategic leaks. Skeptics assert that the Eisenhower Briefing Document is itself a fraudulent creation by Richard Doty and that MJ-12 is an elaborate disinformation scheme perpetrated by the US government but primarily the United States Air Force, with assistance from the FBI and the CIA, to misdirect and inhibit real UFO investigations and research.
Allegedly created by an executive order issued by President Harry Truman in 1947, UFOlogists have asserted that Truman and MJ-12 were both interested in and dedicated to confirming the existence of UFOs and not the more realistic endeavor and function of recovering crashed Soviet hardware; but be that as it may, the general knowledge of MJ-12’s alleged existence resulted from some government documents which first appeared in 1984 after UFOlogist Jaime Shandera mysteriously received a roll of undeveloped film concealed in an envelope. When developed, the film delivered eight documents which revealed the creation and the purpose of Operation Majestic Twelve; however, after examining and investigating those documents, the FBI dismissed them as forgeries, part of an elaborate hoax perpetrated by members of the UFO community in order to create a fertile economic environment for the UFO industry. Additionally, the USAF’s Office of Special Investigations asserted that no such committee was ever formed; therefore, MJ-12 never existed. The USAF also dismissed the documents as forgeries. The conspiracists interpreted the dismissal and forgery pronouncements by the FBI and the USAF as certain verification that MJ-12 existed―and still exists. Honestly, a fellow soon realizes, once he becomes involved in the world of flying silver discs and the Alieata, that UFOlogy is like a muddy bottom lake into which he must wade: initially the waters might have a certain clarity, but with each step taken, the waters grow muddier and muddier.
What can be written about James Jesus Angleton that has not already been written in the many articles, books and memoirs dedicated to the man many considered to possess a brilliance and an encyclopedic knowledge of history, particularly Soviet history, but who was also paranoid, suspicious and secretive. His métier was slick trickery. Deception is a state of mind, he has been quoted as saying, and the mind of the state, suggesting strongly that the actual purpose of the State is deception. Angleton earned many monikers while at the CIA, including the Gray Ghost, the Black Knight and Scarecrow. Many of the super spies that have appeared, and still appear, in American movies have been patterned after Angleton; to many of his colleagues, Angleton was the spy’s spy. From the CIA’s website Library and an article written by David Robarge:
Angleton looms so large in modern American intelligence that he has transcended mere history and entered the realm of book and film fiction. One reason why the conventional wisdom about him is so tenaciously held is that the clichéd image of him purveyed in several novels and films has reached a wider audience than nonfiction works. Literary license has obscured historical reality and made achieving an understanding of him all the harder.17
The CIA’s website proclaims that Norman Mailer used Angleton as a pattern for certain characters in Harlot’s Ghost, as did David Morrell in The Brotherhood of the Rose, as did Chris Petit in The Passenger. But then, fiction and fact are easily blended in novels along with movies like The Company, in which Michael Keaton portrayed Angleton, or The Good Shepherd, whose main character, Edward Wilson, was fashioned after the spy’s spy. Like most legends, his life and character have been distorted and embellished so much so that the mythologized Angleton no longer resembles the actual man: he has become a fictionalized character, undoubtedly a mish mash of falsity and fact, something he has in common with Marilyn Monroe.
According to the CIA’s website Library and the article written by David Robarge, one hundred questions posed to Angleton’s colleagues would elicit one hundred lightly shaded different replies that ranged from utter denunciation to unadulterated hero worship. One member of the CIA commented that listening to Angleton speak was like looking into an impressionist’s painting. Obviously, Angleton was a slippery guy. However, his tendency to evade, his slippery propensity does not prove that he involved himself in or ordered assassinations; and more importantly, neither PhD Burleson nor Dr. Greer offered any actual evidence that might have proven what they asserted about Angleton’s involvement in the death of the world’s most famous blonde-headed Marilyn.
Could James Jesus Angleton have ordered the murder of his friend Mary Meyer, whose sons he befriended after her divorce from Cord Meyer, the boy’s father and also Angleton’s friend? Could Angleton have ordered the murder of the internationally famous Marilyn Monroe? Is it possible that he dispatched a shadow from the catacombs of Langley to gun down Mary Meyer in broad daylight in October of 1964? Is it possible that he dispatched a shadow to poison Marilyn with barbiturates on August the 4th in 1962? The only honest answers to those questions are: I do not know, for true, if Angleton’s propensities included ordering such nefarious actions; but based on several articles, biographical sketches and obituaries, along with the illuminating information about Angleton on the CIA’s website, it does not appear that murder of American citizens was an activity in which he ever engaged and is not an element of Angleton’s legacy. He was the master of disinformation and counter-intelligence; and perhaps his fingerprints are on the CIA-UFO-Memo in that regard and that regard only.
Certainly, all the conflicting opinions about the authenticity of the CIA-UFO-Memo generates more than a reasonable doubt about its authenticity; and when a fellow considers all the other facts regarding the dubious and fishy persons involved in the mythology of Marilyn’s murder, her alleged lengthy affair with John Kennedy, her Little Red Diary and the revelatory press conference she intended to announce, then reasonable doubt only expands. Include the fact that PhD Burleson did not explain Dr. Greenson’s association with UFOs and aliens along with the numerous, generally negative opinions expressed about the verity of Dr. Steven Greer, then a reasonable person will only be confronted with unshakable disbelief. Each UFO conspiracist delivered his unsubstantiated assertions with conviction, hoping mere conviction would transform their pronouncements into proven facts accepted by their many neophyte readers and observers. Similarly, they hoped the pseudonym of a shadowy organization, MJ-12, which appears to have been rubber stamped on the CIA-UFO-Memo, would render the document for those same neophyte readers and observers undeniably authentic.
Not unlike the forged documents that Lawrence X. Cusak the 3rd revealed to the world in 1991, which were accepted by Seymour Hersh and many others at the time, some of them alleged experts, Dr. Greer’s acceptance of the CIA-UFO-Memo, along with Burleson’s acceptance, does not authenticate nor validate it; neither does the signature of James Jesus Angleton; neither does the reference to MJ-12, an organization whose existence can only be termed questionable; and neither does the reference to the Moon Dust Project, a covert operation whose real purpose is still debated today. Was the project created to recover flying saucers and aliens, both dead and alive; or was it created to collect and dissect captured Soviet hardware during the Cold War? There is indecision and controversy and debate.
Based not only on certain evidence but also a certain lack thereof, it is my opinion and belief that UFOs, aliens and secret things from outer space had absolutely nothing to do with Marilyn’s death; and her murder was not ordered by James Jesus Angleton. Besides, as I have previously stated, I find the memorandum’s date, August the 3rd, along with the memorandum itself, more than suspicious, which leads me to the following question: how did Howard Perry Rothberg, a Manhattan interior decorator with no connection to Marilyn or her coterie of close friends, know all of John Kennedy’s UFO secrets? Answer: Ron Pataki.18
A Scripps-Howard journalist, Pataki was a good friend of Rothberg’s; and Pataki was also a good friend of Robert Slatzer’s, at least according to Anthony Summers and Donald Wolfe. So, Rothberg allegedly received Marilyn’s secrets about John Kennedy’s UFO secrets via Pataki and Marilyn’s ever present but shady weekend husband; and, as usual, there is a problem with the alleged Slatzer connection.
If revealing the UFO secrets originated with Slatzer prior to August of 1962 and the composition of the CIA-UFO-Memo, why did Slatzer fail to mention that monumental secret, and murder motive, along with all the other monumental secrets, and murder motives, that he revealed on the pages of his two publications about his weekend bride, her life and her death. I am positive that you, like me, find that incredible omission, the secret of secrets, extremely odd, an omission we are expected to ignore. And too, since Dorothy Kilgallen was also a friend of Slatzer’s, why did she rely on Howard Perry Rothberg, a man with no connection to Marilyn at all, for a major story and major gossip, a story that she could have received directly from her friend Robert Slatzer, Marilyn’s best friend and former hubbie? Odd. Extremely odd, to say the least.
Finally, regarding the assertion by a few in the UFO community that actual aliens killed Marilyn, I offer this: why would highly advanced beings from another world murder Marilyn Monroe and then manipulate the murder scene to suggest suicide? As any real UFO conspiracy theorist should know, the aliens would simply abscond with her body to Krypton! Beam me up Skinny Bob: there is very little intelligent life down here.
