by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
While J. Allen Hynek was bringing the invisible college out into the open, he became involved with a documentary that has Rod Serling as its main host, along with Burgess Meredith, José Ferrer, and Vallée. The movie makes a compelling argument that UFOs should be taken seriously and includes appearances by former Blue Book heads Robert Friend and Hector Quintanilla.
In its release in 1974 it was titled UFOs: Past, Present, and Future, which was changed to UFOs: It Has Begun for its release in 1976 and 1979. Besides being informative and entertaining and preserving a bit of UFO history for future researchers, the story behind its production has become a part of UFO history as well, as its producers were reportedly misled by the Pentagon into believing they would receive classified footage of a UFO landing at Holloman AFB in May of 1971.
The footage was described as showing a meeting between the UFO occupants and Air Force officials. According to producer, main writer, and composer Robert Emenegger, it was going to be the finale of the documentary until the DoD withdrew the offer at the last minute.
Robert Emenegger was interviewed by Mel Fabregas in 2009. According to him, he and Allen 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 at Norton Air Force Base, Paul Shartle. Shartle, Security Manager and Chief of Requirements for the Audio-Visual Program at the base, said that he had seen a film of an alien craft landing at Holloman AFB in 1971. 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.[1]
Watching the film, the cooperation of the DoD is apparent. Besides the appearance of two former Blue Book directors, former Air Force Public Information Officer for Project Blue Book Col. William Coleman describes the military’s involvement with UFOs while walking through the inner ring of the Pentagon.
Robert Friend seems particularly pro-UFO as he tells of a bizarre contactee case involving a Naval Intelligence Officer who was 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.
What should be of interest to historians is a discussion among J. Allen Hynek, Robert Friend, Hector Quintanilla, and Al Chop. Al Chop was a press liaison at the pentagon who dealt with UFO inquiries and was in the radar room during the 1952 UFO flap in Washington, D.C. 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, who was infamous as a hardened skeptic and debunker during his time at Blue Book, 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.” It shows the purported landing and the meeting. According to Emenegger, this was based on the film footage that was promised by the Air Force. Just before the illustrated sequence is 8 seconds of what Shartle and Emenegger claimed on the 1988 television show UFO Cover-Up?: Live! is footage of the UFO descending before it landed.
During his interview with 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 Grey Advertising Company, which had done work for the Nixon administration.
Emenegger 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.
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, which came about in 1988 with the television show, 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.
The twist in the story is that is that UFO Cover-Up: Live? has also become part of UFO history because of the involvement of Richard Doty, a self-proclaimed, CIA-trained Air Force Office of Special Investigations disinformation agent. Doty is the face on the movie poster for the 2013 documentary Mirage Men where he admits/claims he was the key player starting in 1980, in a AFOSI disinformation operation primarily targeting APRO members Paul Bennewitz and William Moore (who also participated according to him and Doty), along with investigative journalist and documentary film maker Linda Moulton Howe.
Doty appears on the show in shadow with his voice disguised, identified as a government insider with the code name “Falcon” (he denies it was him but his distinctive glasses and vocal inflections say otherwise), and informs the viewing audience that the U.S. is housing an alien guest that likes ancient Tibetan music and strawberry ice cream.
As far as this writer can find, Allan Sandler has never publicly commented on the documentary or the validity of Emenegger’s claims. As for his involvement with any sort of intelligence organization, there is one that is definite; he was a producer as part of Sandler-Burns-Marmer Productions 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 (produced by Sandler Institutional Films), so the nature of their creative involvement puts their background, in this writer’s mind, in a less serious light than that portrayed by Emenegger when talking about Holloman.[2]
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?
As it turns out, Sandler did address these sorts of questions privately with Vallée, who made several journal entries during his and Hynek’s involvement with the production. In the May 25, 1974 entry in Forbidden Science 2, Vallée recounts a discussion at Emenegger’s house between him, Emenegger, and Sandler, with Hynek sitting silent while smoking his pipe.
According to Vallée, Sandler said he was hired “to make routine documentaries on cancer treatment by radiation and brain computer linkage.” This was a “pet project” of Dr. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, who was head of the Advanced Research Project Agency’s information processing office. Sandler told Vallée that “the client” told him, in Vallée’s words, “to include a UFO film in the series, to his astonishment.”
Sandler said they started interviewing military people and were followed everywhere by a “real down-to-earth” and “jovial fellow” who said he worked for what could be thought of as “the internal spies of the Air Force,” which Vallée identifies as the Office of Special Investigations. Note that Doty was not in AFOSI at this time.
Vallée asked if Sandler thought they were being used and Emenegger replied “Of course, but what are they using us for?” He speculates that Nixon might be using disclosure as “a desperate way to stay in power in spite of Watergate.” Sandler added that Nixon could declare a state of emergency if he could make the public believe that “the Aliens are here.”
After Vallée calls that idea “pretty far-fetched,” Sandler speculates that the U.S. government has decided it was time “to get closer to the Soviets” and that “a claim of UFO news could be a convenient excuse to talk.” He elaborates: “You know, ‘the planet has got to be united against the external threat,’ all that Iron Mountain stuff.”
Vallée closes the entry saying that Emenegger believes the Holloman landing actually happened and that he was advised by five sociologists “he’s hiring” that the way to avoid panic, in Emenegger’s words, “is to emphasize the Aliens’ resemblance with us humans, and to minimize our physical differences in the mind of the public.”
Adding to the intrigue is a segment of Vallée’s entry date June 16, 1974 concerning information given to him over dinner at “the Lake Ann Restaurant in Reston” by CIA insider Christopher “Kit” Green: “Kit told me about Sandler: ‘Yes, something’s going on at the Pentagon. No, we don’t want Vallée to warn Hynek. Everything’s just fine,’ he was told when he made enquiries. More puzzle, more obfuscation.”
[1] Retrieved June 23, 2025 from: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/veritas-w-mel-hostalrich-non-m-9389/episodes/robert-emenegger-the-ufo-landi-49712298
[2] Retrieved June 23, 2025 from: https://archive.org/details/CraggLive-WithOurGuestAllanSandler