Part 2 Eisenhower's Close Encounters ...The Vermont Key? ... Palm Springs, not Warm Springs

Eisenhower's Close Encounters 

By Paul Blake Smith

CHAPTER THREE 

The Vermont Key? 

“What I've heard was that Truman was at the first meeting, not Eisenhower.” 

— a MUFON source 

Two middle-aged men named “Paul H.” were old friends and well funded campaign supporters of Dwight Eisenhower, residing at times within a somewhat-upscale resort in Palm Springs called “The Smoke Tree Ranch.” For fully understanding the overall preparation for the 1954 Eisenhower summit with aliens, we must examine how Dwight came to hang out with these two specific businessmen on the outskirts of the peaceful desert community. 

Paul Hoy Helms, Jr. (1889-1957) was a Kansas-born, wealthy president of his own baking company and has been described as “a local sports philanthropist.” He hosted the First Couple at his place, but likely knew nothing of any sort of ulterior motive for the president’s visit. 

Paul Gray Hoffman (1891-1974), of Pasadena, California, was an Illinois-born Army soldier in WWI; a past president of the Ford Foundation; and the then-current chairman of the struggling Studebaker Corporation. Mr. Hoffman is a key name in this affair, and he was no innocent babe in the government woods. According to www.smokershistory.com, the elite corporate exec once served as an OSS officer during WWII. The long-defunct “Office of Strategic Services” was the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, meaning Hoffman was once a spy, to put it simply. Sneaky subterfuge could, at times, be his business. 

Paul G. Hoffman served President Truman as an economic administrator of the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1950. He once headed up “Democrats and Independents for Eisenhower” in the 1952 presidential campaign, which upset his old boss Harry. Just a week after Dwight’s big November '52 electoral victory, the Palm Springs newspaper Desert Sun reported that Hoffman “has rented a home at Smoke Tree, and plans to spend most of the winter here,” and was part of rumors “that the president-elect is planning to stop over here,” even before he took office, possibly. Evidently that pre inaugural visit ’did not happen, although a December edition of that same local newspaper reported Eisenhower’s appointed new White House chief of staff, Llewelyn Sherman Adams (1899-1986) personally visited and inspected Smoke Tree. Such a long, long way from D.C., when critical preparations for the new presidency were of prime importance in that limited timeframe. 

It is obvious that via Hoffman and perhaps Vermont-born Adams, setting up President Eisenhower to idyll in Palm Springs, not too terribly far from Edwards Airbase, was imperative, right from the start. It was supposedly to go golfing, right? Why couldn’t the president stay at Hoffman’s Pasadena home, and hit the links in the L.A. area? Or, say, warm-weather Florida, or Augusta, Georgia? Dwight was a member of the Augusta Golf Club, site of perhaps the finest course in the world, where “The Masters” tournament is annually played. A much shorter, less taxing trip from D.C. Dwight loved to golf, hunt, and fish in that rural area and did so repeatedly. He went there so often a house was built on the Augusta course, just for him! 

President Eisenhower would never have just allowed Paul Hoffman to foster this “Visit Beautiful Palm Springs” idea on his own; it would seem much more likely Dwight instigated the plan and his close friend Paul agreed to help, quickly renting a Smoke Tree Ranch home to create the pretext of the president’s “just happening” to stop by on a visit out in the desert, all while ET radio wave space communication was apparently going on in private in 1953, with extraterrestrials and U.S. military brass both supposedly searching for a sound, specific date and remote setting for a historic “first contact” landing. It would be a special private event filmed and become “one for the history books,” sure to get Ike re-elected in '56. 

In the aftermath of the 2/19/54 Eisenhower-ET encounter, globalminded Hoffman was named by the president as a delegate to the United Nations, 1956-’57, and managing director of the special United Nations Development Program from ’59 to ’72. He had the free time to pal around with Eisenhower; in 1954, Hoffman’s Studebaker Company merged with Packard, then both cars quickly went out of style and business. But sturdy metallic vehicles with complex engines, the ability to comfortably hold passengers, and travel long distances was Paul’s expertise. Was it to be applied in assessing landed UFOs?

Hoffman’s Smoke Tree rental house was eventually dumped as the host site, however, and Paul Helms' renovated home was selected for “security reasons,” something that happened to a famous friend of Ike's successor when planning his presidential visit to Palm Springs in 1962 (see Chapter Eleven). 

To get a better grip on the true ulterior reason for President Eisenhower’s suspicious Palm Springs trip and ET adventure, we have to backtrack first by zeroing in on the mid-summer of 1949 - by way of 2017... 

Its authenticity is debated, but in June of 2017, an anonymous source leaked a shocking 47-page briefing document to syndicated radio podcast host Heather Wade. The congenial and candid Miss Wade soon went public with the report and it initially drew a few skeptical detractors, while many researchers feel it was/is authentic, deserving of great, serious scrutiny. It's a detailed January 1989 Defense Intelligence Agency summary of the extraterrestrial situation in America, likely drawn up during the Ronald Reagan administration, likely intended for the incoming new team of President-Elect George H. W. Bush (the Vice President) and his top advisers. {See Appendix.} One date on an early page of the DIA report is January 1, 1989, when President Reagan was vacationing in – of all places – Palm Springs. A second date, listed for an “Operation Majestic-12 preliminary briefing” with the data enclosed, was for Sunday, January 8, when Reagan had just returned from this southern California trip (and recent ring finger surgery). He then received a National Security briefing promptly at 9:30 a.m. in the Oval Office on Monday the 9. Within an hour, Vice President Bush met with the affable chief executive, for an hour’s discussion, digitized records currently reveal. Was it about the shocking, topsecret DIA report? 

A key part of the dazzling government document explains in amazing detail that March 1948 UFO crash in Aztec, New Mexico, where almost all ETs on board were killed. However, a still-living alien being - named “Setimus” - was pulled from the damaged craft, deeply asleep in a kind of pod. He was revived and given a home within Los Alamos National Laboratories in that southwestern state. Human-like Setimus allegedly spoke English surprisingly well and was versed in homo sapien behavior, modern geopolitics, and the planet earth’s troubled environment. He gave interviews to scientists at Los Alamos, portions of which were included in the '89 DIA report. The captured ET was said to be so peaceful and helpful, he was eventually granted diplomatic status! But here’s the document’s upshot: Setimus and his advanced ET species had “decided on a long-term program of carefully calculated” contact with certain humans, including those in the highest levels of American government - like President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

The shocking '89 report added: “With the advent of the Atomic Age, this program escalated to include eventual diplomatic contact with many of Earth’s governments.” So the USA was not alone in receiving the alien representatives, allegedly. Thanks to the recent “explosion of technical progress” by humanity, it was now evidently important enough to risk injury or even death to establish critical sustained communications with humans at this point in history. This mind-boggling advent was of course kept hushed up by the U.S. government and military. America was/is a world leader in every sense, especially when creating and test-detonating vastly devastating atomic weaponry, first under the dictates of the recent Roosevelt and Truman administrations, so apparently, the United States government was the first to be contacted. But historical facts show us that Dwight Eisenhower was not only stepping up the testing but also sending nuclear weapons out to installations around the world, arming it and imperiling the globe at an alarming, astounding rate. Did that alone draw in concerned alien observers? 

So, back in 1948 (when Ike was still a top general), agreeable Setimus remained at Los Alamos Labs for a full year, then was moved, and during this time gave interviews and allowed himself to be examined by military scientists and doctors. It's quite a blockbuster story if true. Certainly, nothing stands out today to make one believe it is a hoaxed fantasy. 

We must remember that no government document is perfect, as no writer or secretarial employee is perfect, nor completely in the know on the subject of extraterrestrial visitation, which is quite compartmentalized and top-secret at the highest levels of the federal government. Sources dictating material are of course only human and make mistakes, too. Thus, criticism of the 1989 report for a few mistakes or changes in normal DIA style – such as front cover dates and “Top Secret” stamps - seems a bit unfair. The '89 DIA report was mostly on the findings of the secretive “Majestic Twelve” covert UFO study group, and may well have been a first or second draft, with small errors remaining to be corrected in a later re-typing. No one expected it to be leaked and exposed publicly decades later, instead, it was probably to have been polished after proofing, to remove errors. Someone evidently smuggled out a first draft or second-run copy. It is this author’s belief we can take its content as authentic. 

Anyway... in 1948, cooperative visitor Setimus was said to have been an “adult, Earth-like humanoid male” who “spoke perfect English with a slight and untraceable accent and exhibited many telepathic and psychic skills as well.” The closely-examined alien was “in his general appearance, completely human. Internally there were slight differences.” Setimus's landing debacle near Aztec, and his subsequent induced awakening, it should be noted, took place just a few weeks before the first of three major atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific, approved of by President Truman and his then Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower. 

According to the 1989 report, the kindly alien survived his Los Alamos captivity just fine, but in March of 1949, he was taken away for some reason and placed in an obscure “rural Vermont safe house,” operated by U.S. Army Intelligence. 

Vermont? Of all the new places to go for six months, what was in Vermont that was so appealing? And out in the woods? 

As it turned out, that mid-summer of 1949, Dwight Eisenhower was out somewhere, away from work, and facts are that at times in his life he used to go fly-fishing in... rural Vermont! So much so, the state’s fishing museum later created its own exhibit of Eisenhower fishing gear, and in 2009, changed the title of a specific Vermont installation and re-dubbed it “The Dwight D. Eisenhower National Fish Hatchery” after the man who so enjoyed fishing in the state’s chilly waters. Also, a Vermont mountain-top hotel has named a room after the Eisenhower’s, following their stay there in 1955, if not earlier. 

In August of '49, diplomat Setimus was finally returned to New Mexico, via Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, where he was picked up on some remote desert property nearby, on the 21st by an extraterrestrial craft. Setimus was quietly returned to his kind. Before leaving our planet, the '89 report claimed, leading administration figures and President Truman himself were said to have visited the peaceful spaceman in secret that summer in Vermont! 

Is this incredible blockbuster true? And if it so, was ex-Chief of Staff of the Army for Truman – General Dwight Eisenhower – involved with sustaining, questioning, and examining the Vermont based humanoid? 

In August of 2019, an older male caller to a Heather Wade podcast that this author took part in - discussing the crashed UFO recovered in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in late April of 1941 - wanted to pass along his first-hand information on the late March 1948 crashed alien ship in Aztec, New Mexico, and its revived lone survivor. The surprise anonymous caller stated that he worked for the U.S. government in that era, and learned that the “guest” humanoid was quite intelligent and considered to be “a mechanic on board the ship.” The ET was able to fashion a communications device from some of the wreckage of the craft over the following year, and sometime in 1949 contact the members of his race to set a time and date for some of them to come back to Earth and pick him up. The caller said he would like to tell more about the remarkable saga, but he was still afraid of violating national security codes and what repercussions it might bring him, even to this day. In what he relayed the anonymous caller perfectly backed up data in the 1989 briefing document, which Wade assured was sent to her by a completely separate source. 

Speculation: as 1948 and '49 went by, cooperative Setimus conversed privately with U.S. scientists in sizzling New Mexico and gave them information as he saw fit, and was rewarded. He was moved to cooler, more open spaces in shady Vermont, surrounded by the rich, full trees and lush nature that he professed to love (mentioned within the '89 summary). “Green things must be respected above all else,” Setimus once declared, according to transcripts. 

According to the DIA report, Setimus needed a special diet as he was “less able to process the wide range of foods that earthmen are used to.” So it is logical to assume special food and drink was at times trucked to the ETs shady Vermont compound along with anything else he needed. Special Army Intelligence forces were likely active in and out of rural Vermont, raising some eyebrows, no doubt. 

Here is where the plot thickens, or at least jells... 

Harry Truman’s White House appointment logs for Monday, August 1, 1949, reveal that the Republican Governor of Vermont, of all people, had called Vermont’s Republican Senator George David Aiken (1892-1984) the previous week and asked Aiken to set up an appointment with the president for 12:15 p.m. that day in the Oval Office. It had to have been about something pretty darn important, considering these circumstances. Calling or writing Truman wouldn’t do. Conservative Governor Ernest William Gibson, Jr. (1901-1969) – a former decorated Army infantryman from rural, small-town Vermont – traveled a long way to chat in private with liberal Harry “off the record,” which means no notes were taken due to the highly sensitive nature of their secretive conversation. This confab was unusual, although Governor Gibson also asked to see (and did) Harry back on May 18th . The August man-to-man meeting was only for fifteen minutes, but something big was up, it is logical to assume. 

In late July of '49, records show a U.S. congressman from Vermont also huddled with Harry in the Oval Office. 

In a Thursday, August 4 th press conference in his Oval Office, President Truman was asked a question by a reporter about something Paul G. Hoffman and Secretary of Commerce Charles W. Sawyer (1887-1979) were up to together. Truman told the assembled press corps that Sawyer “has reported to me on his visit to New England.” Certainly, Vermont is part of that region. Later that same Thursday afternoon, Truman’s Secretary of State and his Defense Secretary took up Oval Office time, and then they took off somewhere, unusually not appearing at a cabinet meeting the next morning, and in fact, not showing up at the White House West Wing until August 9th. One can certainly argue that the Setimus situation was both a matter of “foreign affairs” and for Defense (Army Intelligence), which set up the alien’s move to Vermont. 

In his daily West Wing routine, President Truman was close to his correspondence secretary, former newspaper reporter William D. Hassett (1880-1965), who hailed from a small town in rural Vermont, naturally. Amazingly, Mr. Hassett had taken more than forty “secret trips with the president” - Franklin D. Roosevelt – in the late '30s and 1940s! He and the Roosevelts would quietly travel north to rural Hyde Park, New York, usually leaving on Friday and coming back Monday morning, according to a female associate (who was friends with Mrs. Edwin G. Nourse, a name we'll see later). Could Bill have done the same with the Truman’s, heading north this time to his beloved rural Vermont? He would have been the perfect, experienced shepherd for such an elicit trip. {Source: Harry S Truman Library archives interviews.} 

By the mid-summer of 1949 Vermont was within a day trip for the D.C.-based liberal president, who seemed to enjoy travel and did so quite often. Long auto and train trips were par for Mr. Truman’s course, never better shown than via his cross-country automobile road trip he undertook with only wife Bess, starting from Independence, Missouri, to New York City, in the summer of 1953, made into a popular 2009 book. 

Keeping that in mind... on Friday, August 5, 1949, Harry and Bess Truman supposedly “motored (the President driving) to Shangri-La for the weekend,” Oval Office logs declared. 

Say what now? First, the president drove himself seventy miles in summer traffic, often on dangerous two-lane rural roads?! This was nearly unheard of. He should have been chauffeured by the protective Secret Service, with treasury agents in follow-up cars. And secondly, Harry Truman had told friends that the un-air-conditioned, rustic Shangri-La was “boring, and needed more work inside and out,” and that he “didn’t want to spend time there,” having nothing to do or see. {Source: Camp David’s website.} And third, Harry had supposedly just gone alone to Shangri-La on Friday, July 29th , with no visitors noted in his logs. He did not surface again for the record until Sunday, July 31st , when he picked up arriving Bess Truman at a train station in Silver Springs, Maryland. Something sure seems fishy here... 

“Shangri-La” was of course the original name for rural Maryland’s “Camp David” - officially it was titled “Naval Support Facility at Thurmont” - but was the whole notation of Harry traveling there – on either recent weekend - a bit of a ruse? Did the president briefly go there... then actually take off for Vermont in secret, instead? No appointments were listed for Harry’s Saturday or Sunday, no notes at all for both critical summer weekends. What would restless Mr. Truman be doing at the hot, undeveloped presidential retreat for nearly three days with no one to talk to? He didn’t even like to fish, not in cold streams. Such a described trip seems ludicrous. Rural Vermont was about five-hundred driving or train-trip miles away, or more likely, just a short plane flight. But another thought: could Setimus have been imported for a spell, from Vermont to Camp David? It was a very similar, shaded, secure atmosphere for talks between presidents and world leaders, and the captive alien humanoid was now that, in a sense, was he not? A de facto ambassador. The United States was locked in a Cold War with the ruthless Soviet Union and recently-communist China; good relations with diplomatic ETs possessing superior technology was likely critical, to keep them “on our side.” A smart president couldn’t just ignore advanced, off-world visitors – a policy President Eisenhower adopted, as we will see. 

In 2013, an online forum source posted this gem: “I spent a little time of my life as a MUFON Field Investigator, and in that time, I've heard of these {presidential-ET} meetings. What I've heard was that Truman was at the first meeting, not Eisenhower.” Later, another poster chimed in: “From what I was told, though, it was Truman that met with the visitors.” 

All we know for certain is that ol' Harry was back in his Oval Office on Monday morning, both August 1st and 8th , for business as usual. Truman’s chosen head of Economic Cooperation Administration, Mr. Paul G. Hoffman, was a Tuesday, August 9 th , 1949, visitor to Harry’s Oval Office for a private fifteen-minute meeting. And we must recall, Hoffman and Eisenhower were very close friends. 

To be sure, there’s no hard proof or smoking gun here, at least within President Truman’s White House appointments records, of any trip to Vermont. However, if genuinely undertaken, it would naturally have been kept off the books, a hushed state secret, as one would reasonably guess of such a classified journey. And one thing is for certain: Truman White House logs show various visits by Hoffman and George Allen, two figures who strangely latched onto Eisenhower during this extraterrestrial plotting, as we will see. 

{Truman’s complete office/home telephone records and full access to his mail for this period are not available, and visitors to his Blair House residence in '48 and '49 could well have gone unrecorded, it should be noted. Thus much more contact by those individuals involved, mentioned herein, during the period of noisy White House reconstruction, seems very possible.} 

Elsewhere in the '89 DIA briefing report, it was stated about Setimus at Kirtland AFB on 8/21/49: “...arrangements were made for a future meeting at the same location, to open diplomatic relations.” Another shocking statement, leading to more questions. First, the author of the DIA briefing document mistakenly placed Kirtland Airbase in “Texas” when it was/is located in central New Mexico, but are we not all human and prone to the occasional miscue? Is every detail of every government report always immaculately correct? {A typed April 1966 White House letter to President Lyndon Johnson’s close aide mistakenly called the base “Kirkland,” as a classic example.} And secondly, how did humans – or Setimus - communicate with other ETs to decide the proper site for picking him up, at a specific earth time and date? The document didn’t specify. Thirdly, how did the U.S. government “open diplomatic relations” with alien humanoids, exactly? Certainly, Kirtland AFB has built up its reputation over the decades of having hosted some very strange sounding UFO affairs; did the U.S. government conduct secret backchannel communications there as of 1949 utilizing the Aztec crashed disc’s recovered ET communications device? Even with congenial Setimus gone, and then Truman out of office, was sustained secret U.S.-alien contact ongoing, with this technology now understood by our top scientists, leading to the optimistic document that Congressman McElroy read? {See previous chapter.} And lastly, if so, did it all eventually lead to Eisenhower’s carefully prearranged southern California alien contact in February of '54? 

All of this may sound pretty speculative at first, but the clues seem to add up nicely. And it all dovetails almost perfectly with the names and dates accumulated by dogged research of UFO investigator William S. Steinman, who had privately published an obscure 1987 book on the hotly-debated '48 New Mexico canyon UFO “crash,” before being dreadfully harassed right out of “the UFO business.” Since then, other investigative authors have also confirmed with impressive details the authenticity of the Aztec case. 

In focusing on August of 1949, a visit on the 9th by Paul Hoffman with President Truman is noteworthy also for the other guests that showed up at that West Wing office that day, according to the president’s daily appointment logs. Dr. Edwin Griswold Nourse, Ph.D. (1883-1974) visited Harry at 11:00 a.m. (along with two others); Nourse is a name we'll see later as allegedly visiting aliens in California in the aftermath of the '54 Eisenhower-ET summit. 

At 11:30 a.m. on 8/9/49, the New Hampshire-based former Navy Secretary also dropped by the Oval Office, likely still having a family home not far from neighboring Vermont. At 12:20 p.m., another key figure in the later Eisenhower-ET saga makes his first appearance. Multi-millionaire businessman George Edward Allen (1896-1973), officially a counselor at a D.C. firm and an oil company executive as well. He arrived around lunchtime to meet with his old pal Harry; humorous and heavyset Mr. Allen would later “just happen” to show up with President Eisenhower repeatedly during his February '54 Palm Springs vacation. Liberal George was supposedly a jovial friend of conservative Dwight, whom we must remember was President Truman’s “Presiding Officer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” at the Pentagon in much of 1949, albeit somewhat a part-time job. Mr. Allen was so close to Eisenhower he bought a home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to be Ike's next-door neighbor. {Trusty George eventually died in Palm Desert, California, of a heart attack, in 1973, having been a good friend to widow Mamie in his last four years.} Mr. Allen was intrigued by flight; after the 1940s, he joined the executive board of some successful companies, including two aviation ventures. Like his good friend Hoffman, Allen was patriotic, intelligent, educated, helpful, wealthy, and had the free time available to answer a presidential call to pitch in on various projects, behind the scenes. Discreet Hoffman and Allen were like two well-to-do peas in a pod, good and trusted men who got along well with figures in both political parties. 

In returning to that early 8/9/49 afternoon, Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray (1909-1982) arrived to see Truman as well, bringing along the Secretary of Defense and another adviser. Gray was listed in both the leaked 1952 and 1989 UFO briefing papers as a member of a presidential advisory committee on ongoing ET studies, called “Majestic-12.” He went on to be named National Security Adviser to President Eisenhower. Obviously, something cosmic was up. 

Oval Office appointment records show that on the morning of August 11th , Harry Truman stopped what he was doing to dictate a special letter to his former Army Chief of Staff, Mr. Eisenhower, “thanking him for his services.” Truman dictated: “I appreciate all that you have done, as well as that you will do in the future as a consultant and adviser... The nation is extremely fortunate to have had the benefit of this most recent service by you.” 

So we know that Dwight Eisenhower loved rural Vermont; was an immensely popular, powerful, and respected figure in the late '40s; had access to Army Intelligence files, and could write his own ticket on any exciting-sounding project. The '89 DIA document explained that “top government and military administrators” visited the alien Setimus. Reliable “Ike” would certainly be all that. He handled very sensitive military intelligence matters regularly as part of his jobs for Truman in the late 1940s. 

Officially, Mr. Eisenhower was away from his Columbia University presidency post in July and August of 1949 for “a two-month vacation out of state.” To take off for two whole months was a bit unusual, even for Eisenhower, who cited unspecified “health problems” he needed to recover from – somewhere else. If he did go to Vermont to relax – as he had done in the past – and monitor or visit Setimus, was this the foundation to future alien contact, the whole key to fully unlocking a greater understanding of the eventual February 1954 ET encounter in California?

Yes, admittedly, it seems comical on the surface, rich for satire, the idea that Dwight Eisenhower secretly went fishing and foraging in the thick Vermont woods in 1949 with a tree-hugging alien, chatting the lazy days away in the shade and beating the mid-summer heat, far from the nearest town. That probably didn’t happen. But it doesn’t mean that General Eisenhower wasn’t a helpful part in setting up the rewarded humanoid ET and perhaps communicating with him personally – possibly even at the same time his old boss, President Truman, did too? 

Speculation: the U.S. Army might have used troops – local one–? - to quarantine the “sequestered” alien’s countryside “safe-house” and escort any American visitors, perhaps under Eisenhower’s supervision. Maybe the Vermont National Guard? This would pique the interest of Governor Gibson, who then called and met with President Truman on 8/1/49 as Oval Office logs show. A governor is in charge of his state’s National Guard reserve, and such mysterious road-blocking, house-guarding, perimeter-patrolling procedures would have taken up manpower and money. 

Before we go any further, let's also bear in mind this nonfiction oddity: Vermont’s Glastenbury Mountain and its surrounding property has been subject to mysterious disappearances for centuries, with a specific round of citizen vanishings between 1945 and 1950, when six people strangely disappeared without a trace in six different cases. The general locale is called “The Bennington Triangle,” since it covers the Bennington, Vermont, surrounding area. Vermont paranormal researcher/author Joseph A. Citro feels this large triangular patch features “special energy that attracts outer space visitors” (source: Reader’s Digest). Other UFO buffs who have spoken to locals have also wondered if the disappearances are part of ET abductions since there are often sightings of unexplained lights in the unique area’s skies around the same time as the vanishings. 2018 national statistics allegedly show that “California alone has reported more than 23,400 UFO sightings since 1940, though the odds of seeing a strange flying object are highest in Wyoming and Vermont.” Thus overall, it now seems that rural Vermont was – and still is - a most fascinating yet fitting locale for an alien to reside in. 

At last, Sunday, August 21, 1949, arrived. This was the DIA document’s specific day of assigned transfer. Setimus was set free, supposedly. Vermont was a distant memory. The ET left planet Earth entirely, it was said, from a New Mexico airbase... just days after New Mexico Senator Clinton Presba Anderson (1895-1975), of all people, visited President Truman in the Oval Office. Anderson would befriend another Democrat president in 1962, showing him around some classified parts of Los Alamos National Labs – yes, Setimus's old home, allegedly - and Kirtland Air Force Base (see Chapter Eleven). And what is more, records show that Senator Anderson met with Eisenhower at 12:15, alone in Oval Office, the day before the president left for Palm Springs in February of '54. 

Just eight days after the “diplomat” Setimus departed the planet, the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb, although they did so in relative secrecy with no public announcement, despite its enormity. On September 3rd , 1949, startled American scientists picked up the resulting radiation in the atmosphere, and Truman was informed. He kept it quiet until a speech on September 23rd . In between Harry referred to the Soviet secret by a special code name: “Vermont.” The American public was stunned and frightened in response, to put it lightly. Was the Soviet atomic test controversy warned about by Setimus the friendly alien in Vermont with supposed “psychic” or “clairvoyant” abilities? 

To back up a bit, White House logs show that on Friday, 8/19/49, President Truman left his office at 4:45 p.m. to go to the D.C. Naval Shipyards to take a cruise with George E. Allen and seven listed friends, aboard the S.S. Williamsburg, where the chief executive stayed out of the public eye all weekend. Among those friends going along with Harry and George was the Secretary of the Air Force and Senator Anderson from New Mexico (who was also an Albuquerque insurance company owner). Perhaps with USAF help, Setimus was to have been scooped up by his alien brethren at Kirtland Airbase in Albuquerque on that Sunday, as mentioned. 

No official White House notations were recorded on Saturday and Sunday. All we know is that Harry was seen publicly next giving a speech in Miami on Monday, August 22nd . And on Thursday, August 25th , two members of the “Majestic-12” UFO group came to see Harry for a confidential “off the record” Oval Office meeting: CIA Director Admiral Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter (1897-1982) and his CIA predecessor, Admiral Sidney William Souers (1892-1973). And added to that, the next day, Dr. Edwin Nourse returned for a presidential chat. We'll examine him more closely in Chapter Nine. 

Existing appointment logs show that Paul G. Hoffman again returned to visit Harry S Truman at 3:00 p.m. in D.C., at Blair House, on a quiet Saturday, August 27, 1949, regarding a private matter not explained within the appointments diary, just six days after the alleged time of the alien Setimus was “returned” while in New Mexico. On August 31st the other senator from New Mexico, Dennis Chavez (1888-1962), got a sit-down, face-to-face with Harry for over half an hour in the Oval Office, which was rather unusual. This same senator called President Truman, according to records, on the very day of the UFO crash near Aztec, New Mexico, the one that the military reached and pulled survivor Setimus from (March 25, 1948), and then he met with Harry at 12:15 p.m. in the Oval Office the very next day then, something was so important. Senator Chavez met again with Truman on a quiet Saturday, 3/27/48, for ninety minutes. Dennis was also familiar with the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash – according to researchers - and may have participated in its cover-up. Records also show that Chavez had also met with Truman in the Oval Office on July 25, 1949, just a few minutes after another visitor huddled with Harry: a congressman from Vermont! 

Again, is all of this mere coincidence? It hardly seems possible now, in light of all that has been unearthed and chained together herein. Thus it seems like we can put real faith in the contents of the 1989 DIA briefing document, even if its cover page has some errors or changes in format that might upset some so-called “experts” today. 

Let's quickly review what earthy President Harry S Truman had to say about alien visitation on the afternoon of July 20, 1952 - during a famous Washington D.C. “UFO flap” - when a reporter asked him: “Do the Joint Chiefs of Staff talk to you or concern you about the unknown...unidentified flying objects?” Harry replied on camera: “Oh yes. We discussed it at every conference we had with the military... There are always things like that going on. Ah, flying saucers and we’ve had other things, if I’m not mistaken.” It was an astonishing, often-overlooked admission, one that can be seen on YouTube to this day. Truman knew he had only six months left in his presidency, but rather carelessly let slip that the ET issue was actually being taken seriously and carefully examined behind the scenes, for why else would a president bother his top military staff with such an issue? And again: who was his top military adviser overall? General Dwight Eisenhower. 

Thus the '48 alien crash and mysterious humanoid Setimus almost assuredly had to have been well known to Eisenhower, who was likely already familiar with the '47 Roswell affair and now busy readying his campaign for Truman’s job at the time of the recorded television interview that summer of '52. Dwight said he felt in his heart he was the only man in the country who could handle the job; now we may understand that seemingly arrogant sentiment more fully, at last. 

For what it is worth, the controversial former U.S. Air Force “Office of Special Investigations” member, Richard C. Doty (1950-) said he once worked for the government in smearing and sabotaging civilian claims about UFOs and ETs, including hoaxing documents to preserve and protect ongoing secret classified secret American alien recovery/contact programs. After a few years following his retirement from the service, Doty has supposedly “come clean,” repeatedly confessing his sins. He has stated that the American military/government does indeed possess recovered alien spaceships and dead ET bodies they have examined in military base labs... and that also a few living humanoid extraterrestrials have been kept in covert conditions at Los Alamos National Laboratories, as far back as the 1940s, since they proved to be peaceful and communicative. Just what was mentioned about the Setimus claim in the 1989 document, leaked in 2017. However, some in the so-called “UFO community” still don't trust ex-Sergeant Doty – who was often based out of Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque. 

Again, let's reference the 1989 DIA briefing document, which described the increase of UFO sightings since 1947: “A long-term program of carefully calculated contact” was undertaken by intelligent otherworldly beings, “with the eventual goal of raising of awareness of our place in the galactic community.” This included the U.S. presidency: “This program was escalated to include diplomatic contact with many of Earth’s governments,” a startling sentence later mentioning “the case of the United States of America.” Once more: first Truman, then Eisenhower? 

Just after June of 1952, when President Truman gave General Eisenhower an award at the White House, Democrat Harry and Republican Dwight became grumpy rivals. The Eisenhower National Historic Site put it this way online: “Eisenhower had begun to regard Truman as an inept, undignified leader who had surrounded himself with crooks and cronies. Truman, in turn, was furious with Eisenhower’s claim there was a "mess" in Washington. He was incensed that Eisenhower would undermine Harry’s efforts to end the Korean War by promising to go there himself. And he certainly was not pleased with the candidate’s criticism of his foreign policy, particularly since Eisenhower appeared to be in total accord with it before the campaign. Eisenhower even refused Truman’s invitation to join him for coffee in the White House on Inauguration Day.” There was an ongoing feud by the early 1950s, and the competitive spirit within Eisenhower might well have played a part in his decision to meet with ETs on a much grander scale than Truman. 

In just one example of subterfuge and scheming (if not outright lying) Mr. Eisenhower was capable of, albeit for a noble cause, he directed his staff to tell the press in mid-November of '52, after his election win, that he was holed up in a New York City residence, interviewing candidates for his cabinet. In front of dazzled reporters on the front stoop, appointed new cabinet officials and political bigshots paraded past the cameras. Instead, Dwight had taken off on a secret trip halfway across the world, to Korea, to inspect the ground situation there, in person, as he promised during the fall campaign. Everyone around him in New York stayed mum for days to help pull off the ruse. The world’s media had been distracted and duped. But this was ever-planning Dwight’s way of doing things, meeting folks in-person to resolve issues. A late 1953 dinner speech, found online today, has President Eisenhower addressing a group with a story of how his hometown of Abilene, Kansas, had a “code” that people lived by: always resolve your differences with people “face to face.” Meet them head-on, look them in the eye, and talk out your problems or disputes, he said. Korea got a small taste of that. 

So we can see that after he was sworn in, new-President Eisenhower likely covertly encouraged and shaped a year of private, ongoing ET communications, negotiations, deliberations, and Smoke Tree home construction. Remarkably remote Edwards Airbase in the arid desert of southern California was chosen as the most ideal, secure locale for such a private “summit conference.” Dwight needed a cover story in which to attend the distant event without the press or the public getting wise. So a “much-need golf vacation” was the concocted ruse, the excuse or premise needed to make history - perhaps much like Truman telling the press he was off to ShangriLa? 

Yes, the transcontinental trip was rather tiring, aboard sleek Columbine II that February 17, 1954, but the public airport greeting on Wednesday night for the First Couple in Palm Springs was refreshing and energizing. Dwight and Mamie were quickly met on the runway at the plane’s steps by Paul Hoffman (and Paul Helms), then whisked away to their 400-acre “Smoke Tree Ranch,” located just outside city limits at 1850 Smoke Tree Lane. Life there seemed pretty guarded, remote, and sedate. Since its early days the place featured a community clubhouse and dining hall, a swimming pool and sun deck, tennis courts, riding stables, trails, a dude ranch, guest cottages, and seventy-five homes, added in number over the years. Five low-key days total, leaving Monday for the return flight to D.C.—that was the plan, originally. 

By all reckoning for extraordinary, otherworldly, “first landing contact” the right man was now in the right place – well, close - at the right time, with everything going to plan. Perhaps that was also because a second Dwight Eisenhower had arrived in town as well.

CHAPTER FOUR 

Palm Springs, not Warm Springs 

“Ike broke off a porcelain cap from a tooth.” 

— Press Secretary 

James Haggerty 

By the first vacation morning in Palm Springs - Thursday, February the 18th , golf-greedy Dwight was out a Smoke Tree Ranch door to a chauffeured car, to go play a brisk round at 9:30 with Paul Hoffman and Paul Helms at the Tamarisk Country Club. George E. Allen joined them for lunch in the clubhouse. Tourists, locals, and the press weren't exactly encouraged to go along, although the exclusive site wasn't walled or well-fenced, nor lined with tremendous security. A new rule was put in place, however: no one was allowed to film or photograph the president while golfing, supposedly because he was so worried about an errant shot on the links. The Secret Service grimly enforced this policy, along with course officials, by snatching cameras out of the hands of gawking fans. Very few photos overall were permitted taken during the president's desert golf excursions that week. As the media reported, during the president's vacation, the assembled treasury men – “casing Palm Springs for three months ahead of time,” according to one newspaper account - were not just tough, serious, and armed under their suit jackets, they also kept machine guns in their golf bags, as if expecting possible big trouble. 

But there were more than just hidden weapons going on below the surface of this southern California vacation. Let's take a look at some more fascinating facts regarding the president's northeast-of Los Angeles visit... 

Popular journalist Walter Winchell (1879-1972) wrote in the local papers that he flew with industrialist Howard Hughes, on Tuesday the 16th , from Beverly Hills to Palm Springs. Did Hughes and Eisenhower hook up in any way during the visit? Intriguing! But Winchell made another interesting discovery, revealed in the Desert Sun on Monday, February 22nd: “President Eisenhower's dead-ringer look-alike is in town. New Yorker Chester Miller. Same balding pate, height, and grin.” Huh! Now why in the world would the president need to bring in a doppelganger? This was an innocent “golf vacation,” remember?

If body-double Chet Miller was there quite innocently, what are the odds he “just happened” to fly from New York City to show up in the exact remote town precisely when Eisenhower did? Knowing what we know now about the possibility of aliens arriving nearby in great secrecy... and Ike's penchant for secret planning... the double's presence simply couldn't have been an accidental twist of fate. Was cunning, strategy-loving Dwight plotting some possible subterfuge while visiting Edwards Airbase, or while staying in Palm Springs? Mr. Miller was spotted with his wife on Sunday night the 21st at a supper club in town, as reported in another local newspaper article, and he was described as “an independent filmmaker.” It is unknown how long Chester Miller had been in town, or when he finally left. But something fishy sure seems to have been up. 

Various Treasury Department agents had been in the Palm Springs area “for more than a week” leading up to the February 17th arrival of the president, a San Bernardino newspaper noted. “Secret Service agents have been combing the desert resort region for signs of danger,” such as checking out members of the exclusive ranch community (including servants) and the places Dwight was planning on going (mainly two clubs and a church). The region was swarming with federal agents, it would seem in hindsight. 

Paul Gray Hoffman seemed to hover around Dwight now just like a T-man, every day on this vacation, media stories revealed. One syndicated newspaper columnist even wondered if their closeness, and Hoffman's influence, was good for the nation. And of course, the ubiquitous George Edward Allen was often orbiting the president, too. Perhaps reporters were growing jealous. No one, however, seemed to question why low-key “Ike” needed another vacation, so soon after his last, and why he had to travel thousands of miles at taxpayers' expense just to do so. There was no campaign event involved, no fundraisers or special dinners on the Palm Springs presidential schedule, despite the wealthy local residents and visitors, many from Hollywood. 

By 9:00 that Thursday morning, February the 18th , the president's press secretary - crusty James Campbell Hagerty (1909-1981) - held a press conference at the Spanish-Colonial-style “El Mirador Hotel.” That's where the media was bivouacked, far from Smoke Tree. The confab was designed to brief local, national, and international news reporters and photographers on the planned vacation schedule for the chief executive and his wife, and it certainly lured the press away from the president, allegedly golfing across town. There was little of substance to report at El Mirador (which means “watchtower”). Big Jim Hagerty was an imposing former New York Times reporter who knew how to manipulate the press and shape issues Eisenhower's way. Therefore, in theory, Hagerty could have told the assembled media that Eisenhower was out golfing and would be out of contact with the press for some time, while Chet Miller could have then stood in for him, taking his swings on the exclusive country club courses, freeing the famous president for something else far away. Remember, no photographs or film allowed, at least after that first morning's outing – with Helms, Hoffman, and pro Ben Hogan - at Tamarisk. Some media and public photographs were taken for a while that day, to get that pesky curiosity factor out of the way. Don't bother good ol' Ike on his vacation, was the general theme for the remainder of the desert idyll. 

And there was something else unusual going on at this time: Columbine II was noticed missing at the airport! Hagerty explained to reporters that the president's plane had been flown to Burbank, for servicing at a factory there. A cover story? Or the simple truth? 

As always in matters of covering the activities of a sitting president, competing reporters, photographers, and newsreel cameramen - estimated to be around 120 in total - kept up the best coverage they were allowed, again usually at arm's length. In this case, the press - which arrived in a separate plane Wednesday night - likely got bored with El Mirador, which was in town. {The hotel closed in 1973 and some of it was sold off. What remained burned to the ground in 1989. Since the structure’s bell tower was a local landmark, in 1991 it was rebuilt as part of a medical center and remains in place to this day.} 

A large ballroom in the hotel was specially prepared and decorated in advance, with tables and chairs set up for reporters working on stories, and at least one telegraph, for sending out information deemed important or urgent. A teletype machine was also hooked up, in addition to plenty of El Mirador ashtrays, cigarettes, drinks, and snacks. The media's hotel rooms were reserved well in advance at first by Paul Helms, who originally told management it was for a baker's convention coming up, keeping the president's visit a secret for as long as possible. 

Around 5:00 p.m. that Thursday afternoon, James Hagerty returned at El Mirador, this time to the assembled media that Dwight's vacation would likely be extended beyond the original planned four-and-a-half days. Was this deliberately done to give aliens an extended chance to show at Edwards Airbase? Had someone glimpsed or heard about a “sneak preview” UFO in the area? In the Burbank/Los Angeles area that very day – the 18th – an astronomer reported spotting “a huge ellipsoidal object that was first seen flying towards the west.” Abruptly, the spindle-shaped UFO made a quick turn “to the north at an estimated speed of 120 m.p.h.,” and disappeared from view. {Source: Loren Gross, UFOs: A History, 1954: January-May.} 

On Friday the 19th , James Hagerty held yet another press conference at the El Mirador at 9:00 a.m. and encouraged media attendance at the planned party that night. And Eisenhower again supposedly played golf, this time at the restricted Thunderbird Country Club, opened in 1951 in the Rancho Mirage part of town. The aging president used an electric golf cart for the back nine, the Secret Service walking fast nearby to keep up. Dwight played with three locals, unknown to the rest of the nation; it was a joy to feel the warm sun, as opposed to the cold, damp, bird-hunting vacation outside of Thomasville, Georgia, the previous week. Again, “press photographers were denied the privilege of taking pictures,” a local newspaper reported of the golf outing. 

Records show that at 1:00 on that Friday, Dwight enjoyed lunch at the Thunderbird Club with several friends, including arriving Paul G. Hoffman and George E. Allen. Evidently, it was the real Eisenhower, too, chatting with folks in the clubhouse dining hall. But that wasn't enough time with Mr. Allen; records show that the president motored to George's attractive home in La Quinta for a visit there between 4:00 and 6:15 p.m. 

Now then... guess who else might have arrived on the scene as well? They weren't even on good terms, but ex-President Harry S Truman. Citizen Harry just might have been lurking in the 'hood, but the clues for this are admittedly scant. The Desert Sun newspaper once reported ex-President Truman visited Palm Springs in 1959 (true) and that he also arrived in town sometime earlier in the 1950s to stay at La Quinta, right where his close friend Mr. Allen had a home. In recalling the Eisenhower’s' ballyhooed February 1954 visit decades later in his 1987 memoirs, the former “cowboy mayor” of Palm Springs - Frank Mitchell Bogert (1910-2009) – wrote something most intriguing: “Harry Truman also spent considerable time in the village during this period.” {Then the author promptly named the Palm Springs house Harry stayed at in 1959, instead. Memory merge?} While there is admittedly no smoking gun record of Truman's presence in La Quinta, to this day there is an elementary school in town named after him (and a public park named for Eisenhower). 

Theory: if ex-President Truman was in the sprawling desert community, separated by twenty miles from Eisenhower's Smoke Tree guest quarters, it raises the chances that something really big was up. And that Dwight secretly met with Harry at George Edward Allen's estate at this time, the very day of the prearranged alien landing, far from the public eye. {The official record says Eisenhower was driven back to Smoke Tree at 6:45, then that's it for the day – was this part fudged? Or is that when “Ike” truly took off for Edwards AFB?} Perhaps just as Eisenhower was a supporting player to Truman's ET visit to Vermont (or Camp David) in August of '49, perhaps now Truman was playing that smaller part to Eisenhower's starring role in California in February of '54. That's purely conjecture, however. 

If mildly cantankerous Harry Truman truly was bunking with George Allen in La Quinta, he could simply say to any prying busybody he was in town to raise funds from the local well-heeled residents for his planned presidential library. If something went wrong with the “runway summit” – like Dwight's possible death, incapacitation, or kidnapping by suddenly-sinister aliens – then Harry's presence was a very viable contingency plan. Truman in La Quinta could quickly step in and act as a very informed, experienced president to handle the reins of government. That certainly wasn't constitutional, but possible in such a 1950s emergency as youthful Vice President Nixon, back in D.C., likely had no clue what was going on in the California desert, and perhaps even knew nothing about any alien visitation in general at this point. {Veeps were traditionally told very little of secret government ops in those days; V.P. Truman didn't even know about FDR's atomic bomb development, not told until just after President Roosevelt's death.} 

Assuredly, if human-like, peaceable aliens had landed at Edwards Airbase that Friday afternoon, some telephone calls were doubtlessly made to and from the sprawling desert air facility, to find out exactly what was going on, and how safe it was for a president – or two. Going to George E. Allen's house was frankly the perfect place with complete privacy to take care of just such classified calls and commands. No suspicious press; no prying Palm Springs dignitaries; no curious citizens visiting; and no wives or hangers-on were around. 

We know that if Paul Hoffman was still with Eisenhower at this point, he inevitably left to head over to El Mirador to co-host a party for the idle media, held inside and out, on their Starlight Patio as nighttime set in. The Helms/Hoffman cocktail party officially started at 6:00 p.m. and was considered “an outstanding event,” as the area papers later raved. James Hagerty was there, bantering with the large crowd of reporters, who were focused on the hotel goings-on, allowing the president to operate in complete secrecy that Friday night. This deliberate ploy to distract the press was effectively utilized again by Dwight in February of 1955, as we'll see in a later chapter. Reports say even members of the First Couple's entourage were partying there on 2/19/54, like Mamie's personal secretary, making one wonder if Mrs. Eisenhower also dropped by at one point. Therefore, Dwight's Smoke Tree set-up was left virtually vacant that critical evening. Reporters had no clue what was really going on. 

Remember Eisenhower's Korean trip secrecy? Distract the press, that was key to letting Dwight undertake his secret mission by plane. 

Theory: while at George Allen's place that late Friday afternoon, the president finalized by phone his plans to be driven to an intermediate airbase, and then flown under the cover of darkness for Edwards AFB. Bermuda Dunes Airfield or Thermal Airport might have been utilized for this covert flight, at least during daylight hours, to discretely aid Mr. Eisenhower in strict silence, no one the wiser. Perhaps Dwight even sent lookalike Chet Miller in a dark sedan at 6:15 back to his Smoke Tree ranch guest house or office, where there were nearly no eyewitnesses, everyone out socializing. Then, some hours later, the same small airfield handled Dwight's hushed arrival back in the Coachella Valley and the real president was hustled straight home. 

To flash forward a bit: after dawn, Saturday the 20th , the president reportedly arrived at 7:45 a.m. at a special office set up for him at Smoke Tree, a block or so from the Helms residence. Had he even slept a wink that night? What was so important that he needed to get to his secure ranch office, with its special phone lines, away from everyone else as soon as the sun fully came up? He knew he had to be there, bright and early as the media was scheduled to arrive soon. During the Cold War, America's leaders had to appear calm and in control, which was also helpful for the stock market. 

In privacy, the president scribbled a quick letter that Saturday morning to his son, John, describing his previous two days of golf. He swiftly signed some 19 minor bills into law, then smilingly spoke to the press pool, which had arrived by bus from El Mirador. “Sixty camera and newsmen” covered this “event,” held outdoors, where the president was awkwardly but comically locked out of his small office for a while. Later, keeping up scheduled appearances, he played golf at Thunderbird yet again with pals Helms, Hoffman, and Allen. The familiar foursome had lunch at the club. The president almost had to do this; golf was the whole public reason he came to Palm Springs. If he didn't hit the links as scheduled, the bored press would get antsy and curious, if not suspicious. Meanwhile, Mamie socialized with some wives and guests, keeping an eye on her elderly mother Elivera, both likely without an extraterrestrial clue. 

Dwight was recorded as having gone back to Smoke Tree from Thunderbird on Saturday at 2:45 p.m., the rest of his day strangely left wide open. From 3:00 to 7:00 was undescribed downtime; likely the aging chief executive took a nap to catch up on his likely sleeplessness from the night before, and handled more phone calls, monitoring any ensuing Edwards AFB matters from a distance. He'd get up and attend a scrumptious dinner, though, with a handful of excited guests, around 7:00 p.m. This meal was held within the Smoke Tree Ranch's cozy, rustic banquet hall that evening when some dental woes occurred. This is the point where many Ike-ET story-tellers go a little off track, feeling Eisenhower “disappeared” from his vacation to secretly head to Edwards Airbase; he did not as his tooth emergency was real. 

To explain further: a few invited guests showed up in the Saturday sunset's glow for supper with the Eisenhower’s, hosted by Smoke Tree's Bailey family, founding members of the colony. According to some rather loose secretarial notes of the president’s daily appointment calendar, the meal was supposed to start around 8:00 p.m. and was likely scheduled to last for an hour or two at the most. Mrs. Bailey was basically in charge of preparing and doling out the big meal utilizing some ranch staffers. 

{According to author and “MJ-12” document investigator Ryan S. Wood, the 1952 Eisenhower briefing documents and a later-leaked 1954 “Special Operations Manual 1-01” were viewed by three different military sources for confirmation as authentic, including a Navy man named “Dale Bailey.” This man worked in the mid-1970s for an admiral who operated a weapons facility at Kirtland AFB in 1954. An online check of this name turns up “W. Dale Bailey,” with previous addresses listed at Palm Springs and Palm Desert, California. Coincidence? Or a blood relative of the Smoke Tree brood hosting Ike's dinner on Saturday?} 

All were served a slice of duck meat and scrumptious side dishes. Almost certainly there was cake ready for dessert and various breads doled out here and there, in slices and in rolls, provided by Paul Helms, the bakery executive who helped fund and promote Palm Springs civic programs and L.A.-area sports endeavors. Mr. Helms was bald and somewhat stocky but may have been ill at the time whether he knew it or not; he died of cancer at age 67 less than three years later. 

According to this author's source, the hostess for the evening meal proudly informed the assembled guests that the tasty tan fowl on the dinner table before them had been shot that very morning by hunters within her own family. The scene likely resembled Norman Rockwell's “Home for Thanksgiving” painting as all ages smiled around the table. President Eisenhower cut off a sizable portion of his roasted bird meat, stabbed it with a fork, and placed it in his mouth for chewing as likely many watched. 

Dwight Eisenhower's right hand let go of his fork and quickly shot up to his jaw as he stopped chewing and grimaced in pain. Asked what the problem was, the president replied that he had just bitten down on something quite unexpectedly hard, and hurt one of his teeth. All were taken aback, watching anxiously as “Ike” rubbed his jaw and likely spit out – as delicately as possible - his food and his incisor's busted crown into a napkin, the pain growing worse. 

“What's in this duck?" Eisenhower grumpily demanded to know. 

The nervous, apologetic hostess, Mrs. Bailey, replied, “Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. President! The boys used buckshot to bring them down,” explaining that perhaps bits of the small metallic balls – or “grapeshot” - were still within the roasted meat. 

“What kind of a sportsman uses buckshot to bring down a duck?!” the wincing president groused, pulling away from the table. The concerned chief executive described his dental dilemma briefly to the startled gathered guests, the hostess, and her kin mortified. Later that night the president's spokesman calmly explained that Dwight sought treatment via host Paul Helms' dentist, so the chief executive likely left the room with Mr. Helms sometime after the meal, searching for a telephone and an address book to call this specific oral medical professional. 

Various employees of the ranch, the small number of presidential aides scattered around Palm Springs, the media, Secret Service agents outside Smoke Tree, and residents of the local desert city were all somewhat - if not completely - in the dark as to the true nature of what was going on from this point forward. All some people knew was that President Eisenhower had left his dinner rather abruptly, and word slowly began to spread (accurately) that it was due to a “sudden medical emergency.” 

Somehow, during the course of the evening, word of the sudden departure filtered back to a few bored members of the fourth estate at El Mirador, and as one could expect, press speculation and gossip began to incubate in the fertile soil of utter boredom. Phone calls were placed by some reporters to a contact or two at Smoke Tree, and they were told “everything's fine.” Then a bit later it was learned that the president was now mysteriously “missing.” One witness's account described seeing Mr. Eisenhower grimacing in pain and leaving in a hurry to receive “immediate medical help” - so wow, what a story! Was the beloved president having a serious health crisis... perhaps even a heart attack? The media promptly rolled a snowball down a slippery slope; more rumors began to take shape and gather speed, growing outrageously out-sized and out of hand. While experienced reporters assembled at El Mirador excitedly postulated as to the true nature of the problem, many likely recalled that President Franklin Roosevelt abruptly died while on a quiet idyll in Warm Springs, Georgia, just nine years before. Since FDR died vacationing in Warm Springs... maybe Ike had just done the same while quietly vacationing in Palm Springs? 

One of the more respected dentists in the desert area in those days was indeed phoned at his home Saturday night, but according to one source looking back on the event for this author from the 1990s, the dentist in question answered his telephone, listened to his caller, gave a surly “Yeah, right, sure,” and then went right back to sleep. We can thus speculate reasonably President Eisenhower tried to carry on eating his meal and relaxing afterward for a couple of hours, but by nine or ten o'clock his affected tooth was throbbing and it was time to make a call for emergency dental assistance. 

It would seem likely that a Palm Springs area dentist being called and summoned to his office would include the phone requester’s phrase: “In order to work on the damaged tooth of the president.” Feeling he was being pranked, the disbelieving dentist allegedly went back to what he was doing, it can be safely stated... but if it was sleeping, then this indicates the dentist was probably not aroused until sometime after, say, 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. - perhaps even in the middle of the night/early morning. A Palm Springs source for this anecdote recalled to this author that the president's dental treatment “took practically half the night.” Temporary crown repair - for “tooth #9,” Ike's upper left central incisor, according to records - on any human being should take a competent dentist about an hour to undertake the preparation work, and after a break, require perhaps an hour or so to repair with a new crown. And this after the dentist was finally called back and urged to hurry up, the president was waiting at his Palm Springs office. Thus Dwight didn't get home from all of this delayed treatment until sometime around midnight (rather like the night before). It had to have been a rather humbling, frustrating way to spend the evening after the monumental ET summit just 24 hours before. 

Press secretary Jim Hagerty was finally contacted by someone (a presidential aide?) at the steak fry across town Saturday night. Scuttlebutt circulated that Mr. Hagerty abruptly left his dinner party tight-lipped. Further chin-wagging established he was heading to Smoke Tree, then to El Mirador to make an official statement on the president's enigmatic condition and mysterious whereabouts. To the unrestrained press, the electrifying inside scoop of the decade seemed forthcoming. 

A writer for Time magazine reporting a week later felt that odd Saturday night was extraordinary, all right, but for the wrong reasons. He labeled the increasing media frenzy that night “a demonstration of journalistic mob hysteria.” It seems another reporter at the time – aggressive Merriman Smith (1913-1970) - had phoned in an official United Press International story, back to New York headquarters, boldly (and foolishly) asserting that President Eisenhower had suddenly died of a massive heart attack! 

Just minutes later, the resulting, alarming UPI bulletin was duly retracted. Eisenhower was not dead after all (he suddenly got better, as the old joke goes). Mr. Hagerty had arrived, looking somewhat sour, irritated at having to set the record straight. “Folks, Ike bit into a chicken bone and broke a porcelain cap off a tooth,” Hagerty briefed the eager media mob. {Obviously this opening statement was slightly inaccurate as it was duck meat served, not chicken meat.} The crowd collectively groaned. 

The dour, dark-haired, gray-eyed press secretary further informed the assembled crestfallen journalists that the president had left the Smoke Tree Ranch simply to receive professional treatment in a Palm Springs dental office and would therefore be unavailable for comment as he recovered. All was well overall. “When the president goes to church tomorrow morning,” Hagerty made sure to tell reporters – in a quote mentioned in the New York Times - “his grin will look the same as ever.” Pencils went down fast. 

The entire evening’s pulse-quickening rumor-mongering was for nothing! 

The imposing Mr. Hagerty, age 45, further told the now-tamed press that host Paul Helms personally took the president to see his local dentist, Dr. Francis A. “Frank” Purcell, “who replaced the cap.” That was it, the whole honest story. The only hold-up - not told to the press - was that Dr. Purcell had ignored the first phone call and gone (back?) to bed; when he finally showed up the dental treatment simply took time. The president's official papers show genuine dental treatment from Dr. Purcell, left over to this day at his presidential library. End of story. 

To show how innocent it was, Dwight would indeed attend church services the next morning, with his wife and mother-in-law, grinning famously just as Hagerty foretold. 

Yes, this was Palm Springs, not Warm Springs. The vacationing president was fine, in general (pun intended). Records show his affected tooth’s porcelain cap applied by Dr. Purcell was eventually replaced more permanently in July by the president’s dentist. Dwight and Mamie enjoyed their church socializing Sunday, seated next to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Helms in their pew. Dwight “humbly prayed for divine guidance,” one news account claimed. A Palm Springs Desert Sun report for March 1954 stated that the president and his entourage – including three Secret Service vehicles – then left the church and were then seen driving about the village “surrounded by Secret Service men.” 

{According to the U.S. Surgeon General's notes on President Eisenhower's dental treatment records (strangely not opened to the public until 1991), the leader of the free world did indeed receive dental treatment from a “Dr. Francis A. Purcell” on the Saturday night in question for a chipped porcelain cap on his “upper left incisor.” One UFO researcher backed this up by discovering Eisenhower's secretary dutifully recorded the event in her diary. Dwight had experienced trouble with the same damaged tooth's crown in question, twice, two years before, the 1991 record-opening showed. For the past two decades, curators at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, laugh off the entire allegation as much ado about nothing, and on that particular Saturday, they are right.} 

That mid-Sunday the 21st , the president's group enjoyed a private light lunch and a substantial break. The media was likely scattered about the region, traditionally having an off-day in Washington, on a Sunday. Meanwhile, back at the ranch... a “real cowboy cookout” Sunday evening created a homey, western feel for the First Couple, the press not invited, only finding out later. {Source: Desert Sun newspaper, which published twice a week in 1954.} But there over a hundred witnesses that Dwight was looking happy and healthy, saying he wanted to come back to the facility next year (but didn't). The dinner party was a major, innocent, long-planned event that included the mayor and his wife; Helms and Hoffman; eight people named “Bailey;” comedian Bob Hope's wife and daughter, a U.S. senator, publisher and TV personality Bennett Cerf, radio star Freeman Gosden, two noted Hollywood movie producers, and “Dr. and Mrs. Frank Purcell.” Yup, Dwight's impromptu dentist from the night before. Dr. Purcell's widow June, some twenty-five years after the fact, did plainly remember attending the Smoke Tree Ranch steak fry on Sunday, February 21st , '54, and hearing her husband being introduced to all - including some reporters present - as the “dentist who had treated the president.” 

Author Larry Holcombe (1943-) in his popular 2015 book “The Presidents and UFOs” reinforced the notion that a U.S. president would not have been able to use his fairly busy Saturday and Sunday schedules in public with so many eyewitnesses for wedging in a vitally important, top-secret ET landing event. Hence, we can say that the entire Edwards Airbase alien affair was likely not pretimed to definite standards, but if scheduled or at least deemed possible before the chief executive left Washington D.C. for California then it was probably rather loosely plotted to happen “some time Friday.” Thus flights were restricted in advance to Edwards Airbase on that date, as mentioned earlier. And that the dental story is superfluous. Not relevant. 

A reminder: a U.S. president doesn't have to make up any sudden “dental cover story” to leave for a few hours; he would simply tell his inner circle: “I've just learned I've got some important business to attend to, I'll be back in a few hours, you guys just go ahead with your meal.” And then leave without further explanation, and all would understand, largely unruffled. 

The desert weekend fun continued. But another noteworthy Palm Springs story might be important to highlight: a newspaper article (from 2/25/54) mentioned that retired Air Force Brigadier General Harold Arthur Bartron (1896-1975) was seen around town that weekend. One month after the July 1947 Roswell UFO crash, Harold was transferred to Wright Field's Air Materiel Command, near Dayton, Ohio, the home of so many rumors of recovered alien discs and wreckage, even bodies. It was not a shock to hear that Bartron and his wife were in a Palm Springs supper club that weekend, however; he once served at March Field in nearby Riverside (and eventually passed away two decades later there). Conjecture: Bartron might have been a very trusted, mature source who ferried Dwight by plane from the region, out to Edwards (or nearby Palmdale) on 2/19/54. Or perhaps he merely arranged it, and some tight airfield security measures, with one of Eisenhower's regular Columbine II pilots tagging along to handle the extra aviation. 

One employee of the Palm Springs airport reported to this author in the mid-'90s that there were “no side trips” from the city's public airfield for Eisenhower during his week-long vacation, confirming Dwight didn't utilize the airport in town Friday. Plus, we know Columbine II wasn't there anyway. This indicates once again his utilizing a smaller, more restricted military base in the immediate area, such as in Palm Desert (Thermal Airport), or one in Desert Hot Springs, or perhaps Bermuda Dunes. March, Norton, George... there were plenty of small local military airfields for a pilot to choose from. It's possible such a minor base or airport would be classified or “unofficial” and a covert military operation, not open or even known to the public. 

At any rate, we can reasonably assume that perhaps just after sundown on Friday night, history was made. A sitting United States president found himself speaking candidly but politely with alien beings on a flat airplane runway, over ninety miles from “home.” It was, in fact, the whole reason for traveling to Palm Springs in the first place, plotted since at least November of 1952. The president, his top, trusted advisers, and a handful of bodyguards brought it off and kept it hushed, largely, for the rest of their lives. 

By sticking around afterward for four more days in Palm Springs, the president would be available to monitor and handle any alien related complications at Edwards or in the general area, should it arise. And of course, he could golf, his daily obsession. It was good exercise and took his mind off his problems. He had to show the country – and any foreign agents around - that nothing was out of place, that all was right in his world. If there was a second possible suspicious time-gap in Dwight's schedule for something secretive, such as another trip to Edwards Airbase, it would have been on Monday evening, the 22nd . That was after President Eisenhower golfed around noon at the Tamarisk Country Club, with Paul Hoffman and George Allen. {That pair again! How often do two men like this remain close to first a president from one political party, then a second from the other party?} Golf was followed by lunch there and a few kindly remarks, likely until around 2:00. Dwight's daily schedule the rest of that day is oddly blank, while a second special party was staged for the distracted press, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the local Biltmore Hotel this time, hosted by someone named Sam Levin. 

{Trivia: a curious tidbit to ponder: on February 21st , at 11:00 p.m. in the Van Nuys section of the Los Angeles region, a local retired USAF pilot and his wife and mother “observed an object described as a flying saucer.” It disappeared to the west. Joined by neighbors, they “then saw another flying object coming out of the north.” The soaring disc “made three circles over the area and disappeared to the east,” likely in the general direction of Edwards Airbase. {Source: Loren Gross, UFOs: A History, 1954: January-May.} Coincidence?} 

Tuesday the 23rd's schedule was fairly busy for the president, with more golf for the president at Tamarisk with Paul Hoffman, and by nightfall, the Eisenhower entourage packed and cheerfully blew town for D.C., surrounded by well-wishers and a dutiful press corps. 

One strange story emerged back on Sunday afternoon, however. A news account stated that press secretary Hagerty arrived at the newspaper's offices and purchased “six copies of each issue which detailed the president's visit,” which he claimed was “for the president.” Six would be the number of men said to have protected Dwight Eisenhower at the alien meeting, coincidence or not. {Hagerty also ordered six copies apiece for the upcoming March 18th and 22nd editions, long after the vacationing Eisenhower’s were to have left town. Why?} Also, a local newspaper article a few days before the First Couple landed on the 17th had James Hagerty admitting that Paul G. Hoffman was the key man behind arranging the presidential vacation in California. News accounts during the president's stay kept mentioning Hoffman's presence. Again, his influence, like Allen's, on events that week cannot be downplayed. 

Looking back, one must now wonder candidly if lookalike Chester Miller was originally imported to bring along at the critical time, to step up at Edwards Airbase and present himself to landed ETs as the American president, at least if the landing situation was felt to be somewhat dangerous. How would aliens know the difference? If this “Plan B” speculation sounds a bit far-fetched, then remember again that Army man Dwight Eisenhower was a revered planner, and employed great subterfuge, trickery, and secret plots to aid the allied war effort in WWII Europe. Had Ike ever used a body double before? The answer is still uncertain and likely a military secret, but many world leaders have utilized them in the past, including Eisenhower's enemies Hitler and Stalin, and his allied friend, British General Bernard Montgomery, during the war. {In fact, the “Monty” double was so convincing that fooled Nazi spies were reportedly plotting to assassinate him!} If a body-double ruse was somehow detected by the media and called out in Palm Springs, the president could just say it was just a joke on the press corps, or perhaps a necessary security precaution. 

The press and the public certainly got a good look at the First Couple Tuesday night the 23rd at 8:00 or so at Palm Springs Airport, when the presidential party boarded Columbine II, evidently back in time from Burbank's Lockheed plant from those supposed repairs, or wherever it disappeared to. This “Air Force One” took off at 8:24 p.m., headed east, and officially took until 7:15 the next morning to land in D.C.! A grueling 11-hour trip; were there any unrecorded stops along the way? Or some sort of secret trouble? 

For all the world, Palm Springs appeared on the surface to be the most uneventful, even bland vacation a couple could take (although two intoxicated men were arrested with guns, attempting to get into the well-guarded ranch while the First Couple were packing to leave late Tuesday afternoon). Calm, dry weather and high temps in the eighties every day made for near-perfect conditions. But the planet didn't understand its very future was being secretly discussed that week, expostulated at some length with “foreigners” arrived from another world entirely. All of this took place on a vast dusty dry lakebed in the Mojave Desert, in front of a huge aircraft hangar. 

It was the only place in the whole world to be on a Friday night.

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Sherlock on Muroc

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