Smith Sarbacher Relationship

Much has been written over the last few years about the relationship between Wilbert Smith and U.S. engineer Dr. Robert Sarbacher. There have in these posts been discussions about Smith's Project Magnet.

Here are some items that I wish to add. These can be found in " UFOs, MJ-12 , and the Government " which I co-authored with Scott Crain. All the documents I will quote are also found there. The material covers 20-30 pages.

To fully understand the relationship between Smith and Sarbacher it is important to know that when Smith was ill with lower bowel cancer, he made sure that his files would be hidden from the government after his death. If it had not been for this no one would ever have heard of Sarbacher, because it was in Smith's files that file custodian Arthur Bray discovered the handwritten notes describing the September 1950 meeting with Sarbacher.

The Smith files contain a number of other documents that are never discussed. All this was pointed out to Mr. Chris Allen in the late 80s by myself, and yet he chose to write an article that agreed with his flat earth vision of things. I am sad to see that at this late date I am forced to re-hash this whole thing.

The Top Secret Smith Memo was stamped Top Secret by Smith. Place yourself in his position. You have just been to Washington where you have been told of a " new " area of research that is considered by the U.S. to be its most highly classified subject. You prepare a memo to pass this information on to the top of your department ( C.G. Edwards who was the deputy minister of Transport ).

Are you going to send it unclassified so that everyone in the department can read it on the way up? The classification given by Smith was appropriate. It limited the number of people who were in on the possible new development.

Dr. Millman, chairman of Project Second Storey (the Canadian defense UFO study), for example, told me he had never seen the Top Secret Smith memo.

If you read all the documents in the file (that the top secret memo is from) you will see that they are all found with handwritten notations on the top. This is nothing out of the ordinary. Note also that DMA also puts a notation on the documents concurring. ( I used to know who that was)

Most importantly for those who believe that the document shouldn't have been Top Secret - please explain why it remained Secret until 1969, and at that point wasn't even declassified.

There was found in Smith's file a second Top Secret memo requesting Edwards to obtain clearance for Smith to talk with US authorities about the subject. This was because Sarbacher had told him he had to be cleared to get further information.

Dr. Solandt, who was head of the Defense Research Board, and the one who questioned the Top Secret marking on the Smith memo, admitted in writing that Smith's theory was discussed with Vannevar Bush. Therefore it is safe to assume that the clearance went thru' and there are a number of documents that we have not seen.

The Top Secret memo asking for clearance is not in government files. Where is it? Where are the documents of discussions with the Canadian Embassy that were found in Smith's files stamped Secret? A quote from one of the documents: " We have three engineers working full time on the program, together with two technicians...Incidentally, our program is now official within the Department of Transport and is know as Project Magnet. It is classified as Secret until we know where we stand..."

Is this a bit different than the story told by Allen in his article? He was provided with this material. The Canadian government line is that Project Magnet was some sort of part time project by some misguided employee. Now you know why Smith hid his files, and insisted to his wife that under no circumstances was she to give or lend them to any government agency. They did attempt to get them but failed.

Smith was responsible for the Canadian government opening up Suffield for a UFO to land in 1954. Where are those documents?

Do you thing that these documents would have been anything lower than TOP Secret? In 1967 the Canadian Defense minister actually admitted most of this story. When I contacted the minister about it, he replied that as hard as he tried, he could not remember who told him the story.

There is a lot to the Smith story that has never been written, and none of it makes Smith look like a wacko. Smith ran Radio Ottawa, and therefore was working at a high security level most of the time.

One more small point on the Top Secret Memo. Smith had another high level source in Washington besides Sarbacher.

In the Top Secret memo you will read that Vannevar Bush headed a small group working on the UFO problem, and that the Americans were every interested in mental phenomena. These items did not come from Sarbacher, as Smith does not include them in his review of the Sarbacher conversation which was " as verbatim as possible."

As to Sarbacher. Sarbacher said on a number of occasions that his involvement was very little, but it seems no one wants to believe him. Sarbacher heard first hand accounts from scientists from the R&DB who had gone to Wright field from briefing on a crashed saucer. That's it.

The Canadians talked to him probably because they had had dealings with him. Bremner who set up the interview for Smith probably talked to a number of people looking for leads. Sarbacher's office was also just down the street from the Embassy.

Sarbacher was not the Head of the Guided Missiles Committee. He was a consultant, and not even that. The head of the committee was Fred Darwin who Crain and I talked to. He told us he had hired Sarbacher, but when Sarbacher didn't come to any meeting, replaced him.

Sarbacher was mostly a brilliant inventor who hung around the military offices in Washington looking for programs to consult on. The biggest contributions made by Sarbacher were 1) confirming that there had been a briefing on crashed saucers at Wright Field attended by members of the R&DB 2) identifying Dr. Eric Walker as one of those who attended all the briefings.

When William Steinman tracked Dr. Walker down and asked him whether or not he had attended the crashed saucer briefings at Wright Field - Dr. Walker replied " Yes, I attended meetings concerning that subject matter; why do you want to know about that?"