A UFO Landing at Holloman AFB?

by Charles Lear

UFO documentaries, besides being informative and entertaining, also serve to preserve UFO history for future researchers. However, one documentary, “UFOs: It Has Begun.” has itself become a part of UFO history. One of its producers has claimed that the U.S. Department of Defense offered him and his partner the use of some film footage taken by the Air Force at Holloman Air Force Base. According to him, it showed a UFO landing and a meeting between its occupants and Air Force officials, and it was going to be the finale of the documentary until the DoD withdrew the offer at the last minute.

The movie was originally released in 1974 as “UFOs: Past Present and Future.” It was written primarily by Robert Emenegger, who also produced it along with Allan Sandler. It has Rod Serling as its main narrator, and there are appearances by Burgess Meredith, Jose Ferrer, Jaques Vallée. and J. Allen Hynek. In 1976 and 1979 it was re-released under its new title.

The story of the film’s beginning is as follows: Emenegger and Sandler had originally set out to produce a series of films about advanced military technology but were diverted by an intriguing piece of information offered by their military contact, Paul Shartle, with whom they were working at Norton Air Force Base. Shartle, Security Manager and Chief of Requirements for the Audio-Visual Program at the base, said he had seen a film of an alien craft landing at Holloman AFB three years previous. As discussions about possible projects continued, the idea that one of them be about UFOs came up and was encouraged by military officials who offered the producers the use of the footage. Emenegger and Sandler decided to go ahead with a UFO documentary, and the film was made.

Watching the film, the cooperation of the DoD is apparent. Former Air Force Public Information Officer for Project Blue Book Col. William Coleman USAF, describes the military’s involvement with UFOs while walking through the inner ring of the Pentagon. Former Head of Project Blue Book Robert Friend makes an appearance and tells of a bizarre contactee case involving a Naval Intelligence Officer investigating it going into a trance and channeling a group of aliens. According to Friend, the aliens produced a flying disk for the officer’s fellow investigators on request. Friend is later seen interviewing the four-man Army Reserve crew who were involved in the Coyne Helicopter Incident, and the story is told of the how their helicopter was seemingly pulled up by a UFO from 1700 feet to 3800 feet in a matter of seconds.

What should be of interest to historians is a discussion among J. Allen Hynek, Robert Friend, Al Chop, and Hector Quintanilla. Quintanilla was a Project Blue Book director, Hynek was a scientific consultant for the project and Al Chop was a press liaison at the pentagon who dealt with UFO inquiries and was in the radar room during the 1952 Washington, D.C., UFO Incident. They all give their speculations on what might be behind the UFO mystery ranging from Hynek’s interdimensional theory to Chop’s belief that creatures from other planets are visiting Earth. Quintanilla, a noted skeptic and debunker, says that he believes ET is out there.

At the end of the film is an illustrated sequence that is described by Rod Serling as an event that “might happen in the future or, perhaps, could have happened already.” What is shown is a UFO landing at an Air Force base and a meeting between alien beings and U.S. military officials. According to Emenegger, this was based on the film footage that was promised by the Air Force.

Emenegger has spoken about his experience working on the film on different occasions, and one version of his story can be heard during an interview with Mel Fabregas. Emenegger begins by giving his background, which seems to offer credence to his being offered film footage that would, most likely, be highly classified. According to him, he was the creative director at the Gray Advertising Company, which had done work for the Nixon administration. He brings up his and Sandler’s earlier relationship with the U.S. Government saying they had made a film for the Navy to help sailors recognize an alcohol problem and had also made a series of promos in support of public funding for NASA’s shuttle program. He says he was a friend of Nixon’s Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman and that he, Emenegger, received a letter from Nixon asking for names of people he’d recommend to be a part of Nixon’s administration.

Researcher Robbie Graham, who wrote about this story for the website Mysterious Universe, provides some additional information about Sandler. According to Graham, Emenegger told him that Sandler “had very strange connections” and that he “did things for the CIA, and maybe even the FBI… they all seemed to work together.”

In the Fabregas interview, after giving the background information, Emenegger goes into the details of how the DoD’s offer of the film footage came about. He says that Shartle took him and Sandler into a “clean room,” which is a room free of mics and cameras, and told them about the Holloman film and how it had been sent to Norton. According to him, Shartle said that if they were interested, they should talk to a certain captain (Emenegger doesn’t remember his name) who would put them in touch with the Pentagon.

According to Emenegger, he and Sandler visited the Pentagon repeatedly and never signed in, which had also been the case at Norton. He speculates that this was for the purpose of plausible deniability. He says they met with Col. William Coleman, who okayed the use of the film and told them that the Air Force would sponsor the documentary. This was, according to Emenegger, for the purpose of improving public relations with the military in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Emenegger says there were production meetings at the Pentagon where no one questioned the section of the script dealing with Holloman. He said, “I couldn’t believe it but I said ‘well’ and went along with it.”

According to Emenegger, after a long wait, Coleman told the producers that the climate created by the Watergate scandal made it an inappropriate time to release the Holloman footage. The movie was finished and released in 1974 and the illustrated sequence was used in place of the Holloman film.

It’s quite a story, but the main source is Emenegger. One might dismiss it if there were any doubts as to Emenegger’s credibility but, as with many UFO tales, there is a twist. The twist in this tale came in 1988 on the television program, “UFO Cover-Up?: Live!,” hosted by Mike Farrell. Near the beginning of the program, Coleman and Friend appear, and Coleman tells of being in a B-25 while chasing a 70-foot disk over Alabama in 1955. Later, just after the 46-minute mark, after talking with William Moore, Stanton Friedman, and Jesse Marcel Jr. about Roswell, Farrell walks over to sit down with Emenegger and Shartle. Emenegger tells the story of how Shartle brought up the Holloman film and then Farrell asks: “What did you see, Mr. Shartle?” Shartle describes seeing “three disk-shaped craft.” According to him, one seemed to be having problems and it landed while the other two left. He says that three aliens came out, at which point a chuckle escapes from Farrell as he asks what they looked like. Shartle describes them this way:

Well, they were human size, had an odd gray complexion and a pronounced nose. They wore tight fitting jump suits, thin headdresses that appeared to be communications devices, and in their hand they held a translator, I was told. A Holloman base commander and other Air Force officials went out to meet them.

Emenegger tells Farrell: “Well, although the Pentagon had been very, very cooperative all the way, at the last minute the film was confiscated and we lost the whole finale of our show.” He says that what he “saw and heard” convinced him that the UFO phenomenon is real.

Farrell asks Shartle what he was told by his superiors and Shartle tells him he was told the film was “theatrical footage” purchased by the Air Force to make a training film. Farrell suggests this is a plausible explanation and Shartle tells him it was his job to keep accurate records of such purchases and that he didn’t have one for the footage in question.

As far as this writer can find, Allan Sandler has never commented on this story. As for his involvement with any sort of intelligence organization, there is one that is definite; he was the producer of “Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp,” a show he describes as like “Get Smart” with an entire cast of chimps. Emengger worked on the show as the composer. Both men were also involved in the creation of several B grade science fiction movies, so their choices of creative involvement puts their background, in this writer’s mind, in a less serious light than that portrayed by Emenegger when talking about Holloman.

While it might seem likely that Emenegger made up the story, why would Shartle back him up in front of a television audience?  It the story is true, does the DoD actually have footage of aliens and their craft or did they just say they did, and if so, to what purpose? What adds to the mystery is that “UFO Cover-Up: Live?” has also become part of UFO history because of the involvement of Richard Doty, a self-confessed disinformation agent. Curiouser and curiouser.