The Secret History of Twin Peaks Read online

  If that is indeed the case, Douglas survived the ordeal intact, because he next turns up at the Army air base in nearby Roswell, New Mexico, in July of 1947. Records indicate he was working at the base’s PX at the time, now a corporal in the Army Air Forces, but questions remain about what he was actually doing there.

  What is clear is that he was present on the base at the time of the infamous Roswell “UFO crash,” and his name appears on a list of people who were interviewed by military officers in the days after whatever happened out there happened.

  What follows is the only transcript of that interview with Douglas Milford this correspondent, through strenuous effort, has been able to obtain.5

  The interview was conducted on July 8, shortly after the “crash.” The interviewer appears to have been a regular Army lieutenant, but is not specifically identified in the fragment obtained. It also seems clear that, at the time, Douglas was being held in some kind of informal custody.

  6

  ARCHIVIST’S NOTE

  The transcript stops there, leaving us to wonder what Milford was referring to here--the incident at Pearl Lakes, perhaps? What happened when, or if, Milford went on to speak to the lieutenant’s superior, and how far up the chain of command did this climb?

  The presence of General Nathan Twining at the scene of the crash comes as no surprise. One of the most decorated officers of WWII, in the aftermath of Roswell he was closely involved with the formation of Project Sign in September of 1947, the first of three Air Force task forces dedicated to the official investigation of unidentified flying objects.7

  From what we know of what was about to happen to Douglas Milford, it’s probable that he may have turned a conversation--perhaps with General Twining himself--into a position with the group that was about to become known as Project Sign.

  Their work began with an immediate effort to alter public perception of what actually happened at Roswell. Initial reports after the incident included details that no military officials in their right minds would ever have authorized for public release, including mention of the wreckage of a “large metallic disk” and the recovery of unknown bodies. Within days all those reports were walked back, witnesses were silenced through intimidation or bribes, and the entire incident was now explained away as “the crash of a top-secret air balloon.” This debunking machinery would soon become standard operating procedure, and Doug Milford was right in the middle of it.8

  Milford’s life was about to take a drastic turn; as the reader shall see, he becomes a kind of Kilroy of esoteric phenomena. And because of a chain of strange events that occurred in the weeks just before Roswell--detailed below--Milford would very soon find himself returning to his home state of Washington.

  For a very specific reason, and in a very different role. It begins here:

  1 A section on the “wayward” brother, Douglas Milford, now follows—TP

  2 I can confirm that those charges were dismissed—although he was demoted—and Milford was transferred to the base mentioned below—TP

  3 White Sands was the site of the first atomic bomb testing in the late stages of WWII—TP

  4 Unconfirmed, but then the existence of this unit has never been officially verified—TP

  5 Verified as authentic—TP

  6 Milford may here be referring to his common-law wife, the aforementioned Pauline Cuyo, whom he had left behind in Twin Peaks at least 15 years earlier. I find no indication that Milford ever formally married anyone else in the interim—TP

  7 I can confirm that shortly after the Roswell incident, General Nathan Twining helped compile and analyze the Roswell data for the first serious report on UFO phenomena, which led to the formation of the program described above, which was officially known as Project Sign.

  Twining was later named chief of staff of the Air Force in 1953 and served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—TP

  8 I can verify from internal Air Force documents that there was legitimate panic within the entire military that the crashed “vehicle” they found was actually a Soviet spy plane, of an advanced technological nature unknown to the West. Secrecy and cover-up, in the context of mounting Cold War tensions between our nation and theirs, seems much more likely than a “saucer from outer space”—TP

  *** LIGHTS IN THE SKY:

  *1* THE KENNETH ARNOLD INCIDENT

  In December of 1946 a U.S. Marines transport plane disappeared and presumably crashed in heavy weather on Mt. Rainier. Ever since, military and volunteer civilian pilots in the region had been searching for the wreckage… and the $5,000 finder’s fee offered by the military. One of those pilots was Kenneth Arnold.1

  ARCHIVIST’S NOTE

  Occurring less than two weeks before Roswell, Kenneth Arnold’s UFO sighting was picked up by the newswire services and quickly made national and international headlines.

  Once again Army Intelligence and, in this instance--for the first time--FBI personnel were dispatched to investigate. The lead investigators filed this report, which has never been made publicly available:

  LOCATION: Hotel Owyhee, Boise, Idaho

  INCIDENT: 4AF 1208 I

  INTERVIEW CONDUCTED: 12 July 1947

  MEMORANDUM FOR THE OFFICER IN CHARGE:

  1. On 12 July 1947, Mr. Kenneth Arnold, Box 387, Boise, Idaho, was interviewed in regard to the report by Mr. Arnold that he saw 9 strange objects flying over the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington State on June 25th. Mr. Arnold voluntarily agreed to give the interviewer a written report of exactly what he had seen on the above-mentioned date. The written report of Mr. Arnold is attached to this report as Exhibit A.

  AGENT’S NOTES: Mr. Arnold is a man of 32 years of age, being married and the father of two children. He is well thought of in the community in which he lives, being very much the family man and from all appearances a very good provider for his family. Mr. Arnold has recently purchased a home on the outskirts of Boise, and recently purchased a $5,000 airplane in which to conduct his business, all of which is explained in the attached exhibit.

  It is the personal opinion of the interviewers that Mr. Arnold actually saw what he stated that he saw. It is difficult to believe that a man of Mr. Arnold’s character and integrity would state that he saw objects and write up a report to the extent that he did if he did not see them. To go further, if Mr. Arnold can write a report of the character that he did while not having seen the objects that he claimed he saw, it is the opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold is in the wrong business, that he should be writing Buck Rogers fiction. Mr. Arnold is very outspoken and somewhat bitter in his opinions of the leaders of the U.S. Army Air Forces and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for not having made an investigation of this matter sooner. To put all of the statements made by Mr. Arnold in this report would make it a voluminous volume. However, after having checked an aeronautical map of the area over which Mr. Arnold claims that he saw the objects it was determined that all statements made by Mr. Arnold in regard to the distances involved, speed of the objects, course of the objects and size of the objects, could very possibly be facts. The distances mentioned by Mr. Arnold in his report are within a short distance of the actual distances on aeronautical charts of this area, although Mr. Arnold has never consulted aeronautical charts of the type the Army uses.

  Mr. Arnold stated that his business had suffered greatly since his report on June 25 due to the fact that at every stop on his business routes, large crowds of people are waiting to question him as to just what he had seen. Mr. Arnold stated further that if he, at any time in the future, saw anything in the sky, to quote Mr. Arnold directly, “If I saw a ten-story building flying through the air I would never say a word about it,” due to the fact that he has been ridiculed by the press to such an extent that he is practically a moron in the eyes of the majority of the population of the United States.

  1 Incl. Exhibit “A”

  FREDERIC NATHAN, SPECIAL AGENT FBI

  DOUGLAS MILFORD. S/A CIC 4TH AF2

/>   ARCHIVIST’S NOTE

  The presence of Douglas Milford as one of the investigators--listed as a Special Agent for Continental Air Command, a unit that supplied many of the personnel who went on to work for Project Sign--confirms that he was now swimming in deeper waters.

  So we can surmise the following: Milford was immediately recruited and commissioned in some unspecified capacity in the aftermath of the Roswell incident--and sent north at once to investigate the recent Arnold incident. A memorandum from a July 8 meeting in the office of Chief of Air Force Intelligence orders that “saucer reports be investigated by more qualified observers of flying disks.” A description for which Doug Milford, since Roswell, appears to qualify.

  1 I’ve confirmed that the following story appeared in the June 25, 1947, edition of the Pendleton East Oregonian, on the bottom of page one—TP

  2 Verified; the previous memo is authentic. Leading one to believe that “The Archivist” must possess some level of government security clearance – TP

  *2* KENNETH ARNOLD AND EDWARD R. MURROW

  Shortly after the sightings, Ken Arnold was interviewed on radio by respected CBS newsman and radio personality Edward R. Murrow. The interview was heard nationwide. I’ve transcribed it here:

  ARNOLD: I never could understand at that time why the world got so upset about nine disks, as these things didn’t seem to be a menace. I first assumed that they had something to do with our Army and Air Force.

  MURROW: On three different occasions, then, you were questioned by military intelligence. They expressed doubt as to the accuracy of some of your reported observations.

  ARNOLD: That’s right. Now of course some of the reports they did take from newspapers, which did not quote me properly, and in the excitement of it all, one newspaper or another got it so snarled up that nobody knew just exactly what they were talking about, I guess.

  MURROW: But this is how the name “flying saucer” was born?

  ARNOLD: Yes. These objects more or less fluttered like they were, oh, I’d say, boats on very rough water or very rough air of some type, and when I described how they flew, I said that they flew like you’d take a saucer and skip it across the water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted that too. They said that I said that they were saucer-like; I said that they flew in a saucer-like fashion.

  MURROW: That was an historic misquote. While Mr. Arnold’s original explanation has been forgotten, the term “flying saucer” has become a household word. Few people realize, Mr. Arnold, that you’ve also since that time reported seeing these same strange objects in the sky on three other occasions.

  ARNOLD: Yes. Some pilots I know in the Northwest have reported seeing them on eight separate occasions.

  MURROW: What is your own personal opinion now on the nature of what you and the others had seen?

  ARNOLD: I don’t know how best to explain that. But if they were not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe they’re of an extraterrestrial origin.

  MURROW: Extraterrestrial origin? You mean you think there’s a possibility they may be coming out of space from another planet? I suppose that’s pretty hard for people to take seriously.

  ARNOLD: Well, I’ll tell you this much--myself and all the other pilots, none of us appreciate being laughed at. We made our reports to begin with, essentially, because we thought that if our government didn’t know what they were, it was our duty to report it to our nation. I think it’s something that’s of concern to every person in the country, and I don’t think it’s anything for people to get hysterical about. That’s just my frank opinion of it.

  MURROW: So that’s how it all began; that was the trigger action. Kenneth Arnold’s story went scudding over the newswires. Radio and newspapers picked it up, and then within days the country broke out into a flood of “flying saucer observations.”1

  ARCHIVIST’S NOTE

  Shortly after interviewing Arnold in Boise, Doug Milford apparently flew to Seattle. This correspondent has located a sales receipt for a new 1947 black Buick Roadmaster sedan, purchased at a dealership outside of Seattle on July 14. The buyer was Douglas Milford, and he paid in cash.

  What was Milford doing in the Seattle area? And where’d he get the cash for a new car? Read on:

  1 I have verified that this interview was indeed broadcast nationally on CBS Radio. One is left to wonder how much of Arnold’s apparent bitterness was colored or shaped by his interactions with Milford—TP

  *3* OTHER SEATTLE SIGHTINGS

  It is worth noting that during the next few weeks in the summer of 1947 over 850 reports of UFO sightings appear in the collective U.S. media. Many of these may be attributed to so-called “copycat sightings”--a well-documented psychological phenomenon. But over 150 of them survived closer scrutiny to make it into the files of Air Force Technical Intelligence, the office that would soon oversee Project Sign.1

  Among those cases deemed legitimate was a sighting on July 5. A veteran United Airlines pilot named Emil J. Smith, flying a commercial DC-3 flight from Boise to Seattle, spotted nine silvery disks--the same number Arnold spotted--flying in formation nearby and monitored them for over ten minutes. Smith’s copilot and stewardess observed them as well. We’ll come back to Smith in a moment.

  1 One of these cases, pertinent to this dossier, is a UFO sighting in early September 1947 involving “flying disks” over Twin Peaks, Washington. Initiating further research—TP

  *4* MAURY ISLAND

  A few days before Kenneth Arnold had his encounter near Mt. Rainier, an incident with even more disturbing consequences was reported to the west, on the water in Puget Sound Harbor between Seattle and Tacoma, near Maury Island. This is where the story of all the 1947 sightings can be said to begin, and where the role of Douglas Milford starts to assume firmer shape:

  On June 21, a licensed Marine scavenger named Harold Dahl, his 16-year-old son Charles and their family dog were salvaging orphan logs--a hidden menace to shipping; logging operations paid a healthy fee for their recovery--from Puget Sound near Maury Island. At around 11 that morning they noticed six round unidentified aircraft hovering in the sky high above them. Alarmed, Dahl immediately made for shore and observed the disks through binoculars from there, also taking a number of photographs.

  As reported by Paul Lantz in his story that appeared the next day in the Tacoma Times, Dahl described the crafts as a metallic gold or silver color, with a ring of six porthole windows around the perimeter. The crafts made no sound, had no visible means of propulsion and he estimated each of them to be approximately 200 feet in diameter:1

  That same day, a local stringer in Tacoma for the United Press named Ted Morello picked up Lantz’s story and put it out on the UPI newswire, where it gained traction nationally.

  Fred Lee Crisman took possession that day of the metallic and rock fragments from Dahl. Dahl’s son was treated that afternoon for second-degree burns to his right arm. After calling the Tacoma Times and giving the story to police beat reporter Paul Lantz, Crisman also immediately contacted a friend of his in the Midwest named Ray Palmer.2

  1 The following story did indeed appear in the June 22 edition of the Tacoma Times, under the byline of reporter Paul Lantz—TP

  2 No relation to the Palmer family of Twin Peaks—TP

  *5* RAY PALMER

  Ray Palmer was the editor of a popular nationally distributed pseudo-scientific pulp magazine out of Chicago called Amazing Stories. The previous year Palmer had enjoyed his highest circulation by publishing a series of sensational articles by one Richard Sharpe Shaver, a Pennsylvania welder and former hobo, who claimed he had acquired secret knowledge of an earlier “progenitor” race of beings he called “Lemurians.” Palmer called these stories, collectively, “The Shaver Mystery.”

  Shaver claimed it began in the early 1930s, when a peculiar frequency emanating from his welding gun allowed him to hear the thoughts of his coworkers. Not long afterwards he started picking up more sinister te
lepathic signals--in effect “downloading” extended dialogues almost like transcripts--from the aforementioned Lemurians.

  Shaver’s strange narrative claimed that these Lemurians lived in vast underground cities--accessible only by caves and lava tubes, frequently set deep below dormant volcanoes throughout the world. Among these, supposedly, are Mt. Shasta and Mt. Rainier. They were a cruel, cold-blooded race in possession of incredibly advanced technologies that they used to closely observe human life, often interfering with and even tormenting, torturing and occasionally dining on humans. Chief among various other assertions Shaver made about their powers was telepathy, the ability to communicate silently to the minds of others, even at a great distance--which was the method by which Shaver stated he had come to learn about them.1

  Shaver wrote that the Lemurians had also developed advanced weapons he quaintly called “ray guns” that sound a lot like the concentrated light of lasers, which are now commonplace, but were at that time still 15 years away from human invention.

  Even more dangerous than the weapons, Shaver claimed, was the creatures’ telepathic ability to influence the minds of humans without their knowing it, forcing them to take actions against their will. The stories also claimed that the Lemurians had forever been opposed by a second race of peaceful aliens--called “teros”--with whom they were locked in eternal battle. Hailing from somewhere in the distant constellation of the Pleiades, these “teros” individuals were allegedly human-like enough in appearance to live unnoticed among the human race. He wrote that they would occasionally reveal themselves and confide in humans in order to enlist our help in the battle.