- Ward Kimball, one of the original Disney animators, referred
to by Walt Disney as one of the trusted "Nine Old Men," (supreme
court of animation) died in Arcadia California on July 8. He was 88.
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- Kimball was famous for his creation of the character
Jiminy Cricket, The Cheshire Cat, The March Hare, The Mad Hatter, and for
redesigning Mickey Mouse in 1938. He joined the Disney Studios in 1934,
and rose up in the ranks to become a directing animator on such classics
as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio,"
"Fantasia" and "Peter Pan." He directed Disney Oscar-winning
shorts "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom" in 1953 and "It's
Tough To Be a Bird" in 1969.
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- Unknown to many Disney watchers, Kimball was also student
of UFOs and Outer Space. He had a large collection of UFO books and magazines,
according to Navy physicist Bruce Maccabee who met with him in 1980. Maccabee
had been to Kimball,s house to recruit him as one of the 10 original board
members for the Fund for UFO Research. Kimball accepted the position.
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- Kimball worked with technical advisor Werhner Von Braun
to write and direct three key outer space documentaries for the "Disneyland"
television series. The three documentaries were, "Man in Space,"
"Man and the Moon," and "Mars and Beyond." Kimball
referred to them as, "the creative highpoint of my career. According
to Disney spokesman Howard E. Green, the three outer space documentaries
are "often credited with popularizing the concept of the government's
space program during the 1950s.,
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- The first of these, the 1955 "Man in Space, was
so popular (viewed by over 42 million people) that according to Kimball,
President Eisenhower phoned Walt Disney from the White House looking for
a copy of the production. When Disney asked Eisenhower why he wanted it
Eisenhower replied, "Well, I'm going to show it to all those stove-shirt
generals who don't believe we're going to be up there!
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- It was Kimball, who at the July 1979 MUFON UFO symposium
in California, told of his interest in the subject of UFOs. Then to a stunned
audience he related the story of how the American government had approached
Walt Disney himself prior to Sputnik to make a UFO documentary to help
acclimatize the American population to the reality of extraterrestrials.
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- Kimball stated in the speech that around 1955 or 1956
Walt Disney was contacted by the USAF and asked to cooperate on a documentary
about UFOs. The USAF offered to supply actual UFO footage, which Disney
would be allowed to use in his film.
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- According to Kimball, Disney went along with the USAF
plan, which was not unusual. The use of Walt Disney cartoons, after all
had been suggested by the 1953 CIA Robertson UFO panel as part of a public-education
program involving the mass media to "strip the UFO phenomenon of its
special status and eliminatethe aura of mystery it has acquired."
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- The discussions between the CIA people and Disney may
actually have taken place, because in August 1955, Frederick C. Durant
111, who was a member of the Robertson CIA panel showed Walt Kimball's
documentary "Man in Space" during the Sixth Congress of the International
Astronomical Federation in Copenhagan.
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- Disney had also cooperated with the government in producing
a number of war documentaries during World War 11 like the documentary
"Victory through Air Power. In one year, during the war, Disney turned
out over four hundred thousand feet of government films.
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- Disney was also, according to a December 16, 1954 FBI
document made a SAC Contact for the FBI, which elevated him from his former
position as an informant for the agency. The confidential internal FBI
memo read,
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- "Because of Mr. Disney,s position as the foremost
producer of cartoon files in the motion picture industry, and his prominence
and wide acquaintanceship in film production matters, it is believed that
he can be of valuable assistance to this office . . . "
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- Once Walt Disney had finished his meetings with the USAF,
he began to work on the requested UFO documentary for the public. He asked
his animators to think up what an alien would look like. Meanwhile, he
waited for the Air Force to deliver the promised film. After some period
of time the Air Force re-contacted Disney and told him the film offer had
to be withdrawn. There would be no UFO footage as promised. Kimball told
researcher Stanton Friedman that once he found out there would be no delivery
of UFO film, he personally spoke with an Air Force Colonel who told him,
"there indeed was plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Ward, nor
anyone else, was going to get access to it. This caused a temporary halt
to the project. As one account by Bruce Maccabee described it,
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- " Disney cancelled the project, but by this time
a lot of animated film of creatures, had been completed by his artists.
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- "So Disney went ahead and made a short "documentary"
anyway, featuring Jonathan Winters impersonating various "characters"
associated with typical UFO lore.
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- "I specifically recall Mr. Winters as an old lady/grandmother
who saw a UFO and reported it... then he portrayed the Air Force officer
who investigated the sightings and offered explanations. He also portrayed
a little boy in a room who had a telescope looking up at the stars and,
to the little boy's amazement, an alien came through the telescope into
his room. Of course the boys father didn't believe that story.
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- The UFO documentary was never shown in public, but Kimball
did show the 15-20 minute piece at the 1979 UFO Symposium. The movie, however,
did not contain any of the dramatic UFO footage everyone had been promised.
What is important to note about this Kimball story about the attempt by
the United States government to "spill the beans is that it was not
the only time such an incident occurred.
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- In 1972-73 Colonel Robert Coleman, former USAF Project
Blue Book spokesman, and former ATIC Commander Colonel George Weinbrenner,
made an offer of "800 feet of film . . .as well as several thousand
feet of additional material of dramatic UFO material to documentary film
producers Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler at the Pentagon. They would
be allowed to use the UFO footage in a special film project they had been
asked to join.
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- The promised film was reportedly dramatic footage of
an encounter between the occupants of a landed UFO and officials at Holloman
Air Force Base. It impressed Emenegger who described what he saw in 1988,
"What I saw and heard was enough to convince me that the phenomenon
of UFOs is real very real.
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- The project was described to the two producers as a documentary
on a secret government project. When the two men discovered that the topic
of the secret project would be UFOs, they were surprised because "they
had assumed that the matter had been resolved with the closure of Project
Blue Book in 1969.
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- The documentary was to be sponsored by the Department
of Defense in a claimed attempt to do a public relations turnaround, which
was needed because of the Vietnam War. At least that is the story Emenegger
and Sandler were told by Bill Coleman. A number of different subjects
were proposed for the documentaries, but no other subject, other than UFOs,
were brought up.
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- The two documentary producers were told that the government
was now ready to release all the facts about the alien presence on earth.
They were shown evidence that they could use for their tell-all documentary.
This evidence included:
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- - Photographs and films of UFOs. - Pictures of grey-skinned
alien beings. - A 16mm movie film of an alien in the company of an Air
Force officer. The two men were told that this alien had survived a 1949
crash and it had been kept at a safe house in Los Alamos until its death
in 1952. - 800 feet of film showing a landed encounter between three aliens
and Holloman Air Base officials during a landing that had reportedly occurred
there in May 1971. Several thousand feet of additional material was also
offered. - Photos of UFOs taken by astronauts, which NASA had formally
denied the existence of.
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- As the documentary neared completion, the two producers
waited for the promised dramatic alien landing footage. Colonel Bill Coleman
who had first made the offer to provide it in 1972, however, withdrew it.
According to what Emenegger told researcher Tim Good, Coleman had declared,
"The timing was politically inappropriate, due to the Watergate scandal.
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- The Emenegger/Sandler documentary, "UFOS, Past,
Present, and Future released by Sandler Films in 1974, was forced to use
standard animation, background film taken at Holloman, and "elaborate
drawing of the so-called aliens. At least that is what the producers thought
when they first ran the film. Later, indications arose that indicated 12
seconds of the actual Holloman landing might have been part of the "training
film material they were provided. As an interesting footnote to the Disney
story, Emenegger reported that he and Sandler had also talked with the
Disney people during the time period they were working on the documentary.
The people who they spoke to at the Disney studios "seemed to be involved
and interested, but not have any particularly startling data.
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- In 1983, the United States government made yet another
offer of dramatic UFO film for a UFO documentary. The offer was made to
documentary film producer Linda Moulton Howe and HBO. They were approached
and offered the same Holloman landing film along with a film of the live
alien that lived in a Los Alamos safe house from 1949-1952.
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- While preparing to make a UFO documentary for HBO, Howe
was given information by Richard Doty, a special agent with Air Force OSI
at Kirtland AFB (Albuquerque). Doty claims that higher ups were willing
to release special confirming UFO information for her documentary. Howe
described the film offer,
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- "The government intended to release to me several
thousand feet of color and black and white film taken between 1947 and
1964 showing crashed UFO discs and extraterrestrial bodies in historic
footage to be included in the HBO documentary supported with official government
confirmation."eeeeeeeeee
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- As with Kimball and the Emenegger/Sandler team, the promised
film was never released to Howe. Despite Doty,s claim that the government
had authorized the release of film showing crashed saucers and alien bodies
for use in the HBO documentary, it never materialized due to "political
delays. When the alleged historical film footage didn,t materialized,
HBO canceled the documentary.
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- In 1985, another offer of historic UFO footage was made
to Robert Emenegger. Colonel Robert Coleman, now retired from the Air force
Public Relations department, indicated the time was again right, and the
government might be willing to release key confirming information confirming
the extraterrestrial presence on earth. Suggestions are even made that
Senator Barry Goldwater, and former President Jimmy Carter "would
help obtain the release of the promised film.
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- One of the conditions tied to the release, however, was
that prominent UFO researchers Jacques Vallee and J. Allen Hynek had to
get involved in the film project. The reason for this is that a key to
getting the information promised by the government is that the film had
to be "professional enough and interesting enough to reopen the whole
subject before the American people.
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- Emenegger again believed that the information is about
to be released. Vallee, on the other hand, was "negative and skeptical
about the offer being made. He felt that if the government wanted to release
the information they could simply go to someone like the national Academy
of Sciences and announce the discovery of the alien presence.
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- Both Vallee and Hynek feel the Air Force was again playing
games and were trying to use them to deliberately mislead the public. Between
themselves they concluded that they could not support Emenegger,s plan,
but "if there was any chance of uncovering genuine evidence they would
pursue it "behind the scenes. Hynek and Vallee did pursue some interviews
at Norton Air Force Base where two Generals assured them they could produce
the UFO footage, but the two researchers weren,t buying and the deal was
finally withdrawn.
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- In the late eighties, the government was again busy.
This time they floated an offer of an interview with the keeper of the
live alien that had been held at Los Alamos. The man had been a Captain
in the early fifties when the alien was still alive. He was now a Colonel,
near death and prepared to talk. Those presented with the offer were documentary
producer Robert Emenegger, documentary producer Linda Howe, and author
Bill Moore. This offer like the many before it experienced delay after
delay, and a final withdrawal of the offer.
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- The final twist in this bizarre disclosure saga brings
us back to Ward Kimball. A prominent British photographer by the name
of Don Maloney reported in 1995, that in 1972 he had been in the United
States and was having dinner with the head of the Disney Studios, and four
of the nine original Disney animators. Ward Kimball was one of the four
at the table.
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- While this was going on Maloney reported that he was
introduced to another man, identified in one account as a "well-known
Disney employee. The man offered to show Maloney some unusual film footage
at his house. When Maloney saw it he described it as "old footage
of UFOs, and "two beings that he was told were aliens. UFO investigator
Georgina Bruni interviewed Mike Maloney about his early 1970s encounter
at Disney. She described what Maloney told her about the aliens he had
been shown on the film:
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- "One, which appeared to be dead, was laid out on
a table - or slab, the other was clearly alive and moving around on the
floor. He was given no information as to the source of the footage, which
he was told was "top secret", but he was in no doubt that it
was a genuine piece of old film. Mike described it as being similar to
the alien autopsy footage that had been shown on television. (The Fox "Alien
Autopsy film) At no time did he say it was the same, just similar. Of
the footage he personally viewed, he said: If the film that I saw was
a fake, it was a brilliant fake.,
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- Was the "well-know employee Kimball, or was there
a second "well-known Disney employee who was also a UFO buff? Was
the Kimball Disney story told by Kimball in 1979, just a cover for a film
that the Disney people had gotten from the government? Maloney has not
yet released the name of the man who showed him the film. If it was Kimball
who showed the alien film in his house, then the government now knows where
that missing UFO film went.
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- If it wasn,t Kimball who showed Maloney the conclusive
E.T. footage, then Ward Kimball, like many UFO researchers before him,
had spent many decades of his life gathering strong evidence of the E.T.
presence, and died before he could hear the government confirmed his suspicions.
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- If that is the case then welcome to the club Ward!
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- Grant Cameron www.presidentialufo.com
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- The Presidents UFO Story www.presidentialufo.com
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