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after | retired from the army. But | went to work for Senator Strom Thurmond on the Foreign Relations Committee and then Senator Richard Russell on the Warren Commission instead. Our collective experience dodging the CIA and the KGB only meant that when General Trudeau wanted the CIA kept out of our deliberations at all cost, it was because he knew that everything we discussed would be a topic of conversation at the KGB within twenty four hours, faster if it were serious enough for the KGB to get their counterparts in the CIA to throw a monkey wrench into things. How do | know all this? The same way | knew how the KGB stayed one step ahead of us during the Korean War and were able to advise their friends, the North Koreans, how to hold POWs back during the exchange. We had leaks inside the Kremlin just like they had leaks inside the White House. What General Trudeau and | knew in Army R&D, our counterparts in the navy and air force also believed. The CIA was the enemy. You trust no one. So when it became clear to the general even before 1961 that no one remembered what the army had appropriated at Roswell, whatever we had was ours to develop according to our own strategy. But we had to do it so as not to allow the CIA, and ultimately our government's enemies, to appropriate it from us. So when General Trudeau said we have to run radio silent on the Roswell package, | knew exactly what he was talking about. Logic, and clearly not my military genius, dictated the obvious course. If nobody knows what you have, don't announce it. But if you think you can make something out of what you have, make it. Use any resources at your disposal, but don't say anything to anyone about what you're doing. The only people in the room when we came up with our plan were the general and myself, and he promised, "| won't say anything if you don't, Phil. " "Hypothetically, Phil, " Trudeau laid the question out. "What's the best way to exploit what we have without anybody knowing we're doing anything special?" "More of an idea than a plan, "| began. "But it starts like this. It's what you asked : If we don't want anybody to think we're doing anything out of the ordinary, we don't do anything out of the ordinary. When General Twining made his original recommendations to President Truman and the army, he didn't suggest they do anything with this nut file other than what they ordinarily do. Business as usual? That's how this whole secret group operated. Nobody did anything special. What they did was organize according to a business plan even though the operation was something that hadn't been done before. That's the camouflage: don't change a thing but use your same procedures to handle this alien technology. " "So how do you recommend we operate?" he asked. | think he already figured out what | was saying but wanted me to spell it out so we could start moving my nut file out of the Pentagon and out of the encroaching shadow of the CIA. "We start the same way this desk has always started : with reports, "I said. "I'll write up reports on the alien technology just like it's an intelligence report on any piece of foreign technology. What | see, what | think the potential may be, where we might be able to develop, what company we should take it to, and what kind of contract we should draw up." "I'll line up everything in the nut file, "| began. "Everything from what's obvious to what | can't make heads or tails out of. And I'll go to scientists with clearance who we can trust, Oberth and von Braun, for advice. " "| see what you mean, " Trudeau acknowledged. "Sure. We'll lineup our defense contractors, too. See which ones have ongoing development contracts that allow us to feed your development projects right into them. " "Exactly. That way the existing defense contract becomes the cover for what we're developing, " | said. "Nothing is ever out of the ordinary because we're never starting up anything that hasn't already been started up in a previous contract." "Only what we're doing, General, is mixing technology we're developing in with technology not of this earth, "| said. "And we'll let the companies we're contracting with apply for the patents themselves. " 38 "There's nobody in here but us brooms, General, "| answered. So we began to devise a strategy. "Simple, General, "| answered. "We don't do anything special. " "You have a plan?" he asked. "Where will you start?" the general asked. "It's just like a big mix and match, " Trudeau described it.