Harry Turner

“In the course of my research into the UFO phenomenon, I visited Oliver Harry Turner, a retired Australian government scientist, at his home in the summer of 2001.”

“A nuclear physicist, Turner was the chief health physics officer for the controversial Maralinga atomic bomb trials”

“In 1954, Harry Turner, a Melbourne University nuclear physics professor, approached the air force asking to read its UAP files. Because the air force was being hammered to provide an explanation, Turner (who already had a security clearance) was hired by DAFI to do a classified review of recent sightings.”

“Turner’s report to DAFI subsequently concluded that ‘The evidence presented by RAAF tends to support the conclusion . . . that certain strange aircraft have been observed to behave in a manner suggestive of extra-terrestrial origin.’”

“Turner had been rebuffed in 1954 when he made his controversial findings about UAPs being extra-terrestrial in his original report to the Royal Australian Air Force's intelligence branch.”

“because Harry Turner quoted US best-selling flying saucer author and National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena director Major Donald Keyhoe in his research, Australia’s Director of Air Force Intelligence dismissed Professor Turner’s findings, after consulting with the US Air Force”

“He said Professor Turner had ‘erred’ in quoting Keyhoe because the former marine major supposedly gave the misleading impression his books had some official US government sanction.”

“But the Royal Australian Air Force elected to heed its American ally and play down Turner’s ‘flying saucer’ ET hypothesis.”

“One of the scientists whom now-declassified files show took part in the British tests from 1956 to 1963 was a health physics officer named Oliver Harry Turner, the same Professor Harry Turner hired in 1954 to do the classified review of UAP sightings for Australia’s Defence Department.”

“Previously secret files in Australia’s National Archives reveal Turner investigated11 strange sightings of anomalous objects in the skies over Maralinga throughout the British atmospheric nuclear bomb testing.”

“whose curiosity had been piqued by the mysterious UAPs seen at Maralinga in the South Australian desert 11 years earlier”

“‘He is of the opinion that the light was not the result of a natural phenomenon but caused by an unidentified flying object, either a cone from a satellite or a “flying saucer”,’ the Range’s security officer wrote in his report.”

“He ignored Harry Turner’s conclusion and went instead with the safer option, speculating that it was either a meteor or static electricity.”

“By then he was a scientific analyst with the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence of the Joint Intelligence Bureau.”

“He was now the head of the nuclear science section of the then Australian Joint Intelligence Bureau's Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI).”

“By 1971, Australian Defence Department scientist Harry Turner, whose curiosity had been piqued by the mysterious UAPs seen at Maralinga in the South Australian desert 11 years earlier, was now firmly convinced the phenomenon was real and required urgent investigation.”

“Not long after that, Turner's plan for a rapid intervention team was also spiked.”

“His now declassified 1971 paper, *Scientific and Intelligence Aspects of the UFO Problem*, asserted not only that these unidentified objects were real”

“that there was also an ongoing deliberate official US policy to ridicule sighting events in order to stifle public awareness of the phenomenon.”

“'By erecting a façade of ridicule, the US hoped to allay public alarm, reduce the possibility of the Soviets taking advantage of UFO mass sightings for either psychological or actual warfare purposes, and act as a cover for the real US programme of developing vehicles that emulate UFO performance,' Turner declared.”

“He asserted that in 1953 the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations persuaded the US Air Force to use the Project Blue Book investigation into UAPs as a 'means of publicly "debunking" UFOs'”

“while at the same time the US was secretly launching a crash program into anti-gravity power.”

“Turner's paper eviscerated the 1968 Condon Committee Report, the US Air Force–funded study of UFOs under the direction of physicist Edward Condon.”

“'The conclusions of the Condon report conflict with its own contents and has been discredited by many reputable scientists . . . It would appear wrong for Australia to remain ignorant of the true situation.'”

“Turner also dismissed the official Project Blue Book UFO investigation shut down by the air force two years earlier in 1969.”

“'Many intelligence officers associated with the UFO problem,' he said, including former CIA boss Admiral Hillenkoetter, had 'stated that the US government knew UFOs were extra-terrestrial but was withholding this fact from the public'.”

“Turner also met the Project Blue Book expert Dr J. Allen Hynek when Hynek visited Australia.”

“'It is quite clear that Dr Hynek along with many other reputable scientists do not accept the USAF explanation of misidentification, hysteria or hoax,' Turner told his superiors.”

“Harry Turner obtained access to the Australian Air Force's UAP sightings reports.”

“He even proposed an Australian 'rapid intervention team' to investigate 'UFO' events, for which an aircraft was to be on standby.”

“says Turner had the approval of Australia's Chief Defence Scientist for this idea, so this was no idle flight of fancy on Turner's part.”

“His concern was being taken very seriously, possibly because the sightings of strange unidentified objects at the Woomera test site were still happening.”

“But there was bad blood with DAFI – air force intelligence – because Turner had criticised DAFI's past handling of sightings reports.”

“Eventually, the Australian Air Force withdrew his access to their sightings files.”

“Bill Chalker told me, 'Harry was actually arguing for the air force to be given more resources and more help to investigate UFOs. That way their reports would be a lot more scientific. They took that as a criticism. It was sheer bloody mindedness by DAFI to shut him out.'”

“Harry Turner’s notes of his interviews with Mrs. Klein do not record the date, but list the following information”

“Turner was privately pushing at the very highest levels of Australia's Defence Department for a scientific investigation by the military into the UAP phenomenon.”

“He befriended Harry Turner late in his life”

“says of Turner’s efforts, ‘Political myopia from both the US and Australian military effectively scuttled Australia’s first serious flirtation with scientific investigation of UFOs’.”

“During our discussions he handed me what turned out to be a particularly remarkable document—ten pages of his handwritten notes—devoted to his investigation during 1971 and 1972 of a Canberra woman named Mrs. Klein.”

“This activity had prompted Turner to contact the local civilian UFO society in Canberra, formed in 1967.”

“In the wake of Turner’s contact with the group, she privately made contact with him and, during a series of meetings at her home between July 1971 and February 1972, Vicki Klein described her unfolding alien contact calling.”

“Turner told me that while Vicki told the group of her sightings, she was careful not to mention the unfolding “alien” dynamic happening in her own house.”

“This brief description was supplemented in some detail via correspondence Harry Turner had with Dr. Michael Duggin, a fellow Australian scientist who also had a deep interest in the UFO phenomenon.”

“Harry Turner and Mike Duggin were part of the secret “invisible college” of scientists conducting research in the UFO mystery.”

“Turner wasn’t sure what to make of this information in the early seventies. At the time he was simply trying to make an accurate report of Vicki Klein’s claims.”

““The signal for the beginning of the end will be the disappearance of a small island followed by a larger one—she suspects the New Guinea area. The chaos itself will last three days getting progressively worse. The world has to be cleansed, and a new development will take place in lands newly arisen.””

“Ron graciously agreed to an interview. He confirmed the basic story that Vicki had revealed to Harry Turner.”

“It’s what follows in Harry Turner’s notes that really struck me—how the story strikingly resembles the alien abduction accounts that would come to dominate the UFO controversy fifteen years later.”

“Harry Turner's 1971-72 notes revealed that Mrs. Klein's bizarre experiences actually prefigured several extraordinary elements of the UFO abduction phenomenon that would not become public for more than a decade and a half, when researcher Budd Hopkins first described them in his 1987 best-selling book Intruders.”

“Turner was the chief health physics officer for the controversial Maralinga atomic bomb trials during the 1950s and early 1960s”

“During the late 1960s and early 1970s Turner had fought a secret battle to encourage a more scientific and comprehensive examination of the UFO mystery within the clandestine world of intelligence and the military.”