MONSTER FILES MONSTER FILES A LOOK INSIDE GOVERNMENT SECRETS AND CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ON BIZARRE CREATURES AND EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS NICK REDFERN Copyright © 2013 by Nick Redfern All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press. Monster Files EDITED BY KIRSTEN DALLEY TYPESET BY GINA TALUCCI Cover design by noir33 Printed in the U.S.A. To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press. The Career Press, Inc. 220 West Parkway, Unit 12 Pompton Plains, NJ 07444 www.careerpress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP Data Available Upon Request. DEDICATION For Tim Binnall who, in 2012, asked me, “Nick, why don’t you write a book about Cryptozoology and the government?” Well, Tim, thanks to your brilliant suggestion, now I have! CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1 The President’s Bigfoot Chapter 2 Serpents of the High Seas Chapter 3 An Army of Manimals Chapter 4 A Wartime Wolfman Chapter 5 Weird and Wacky Winged Wonders of War Chapter 6 How the Pentagon Made a Monster Chapter 7 Welcome to the Jungle Chapter 8 Animal ESP and the U.S. Army Chapter 9 A Yeti-Hunting 007 Chapter 10 Secret Agents and a Supersized Snake Chapter 11 Autopsying a Monster Chapter 12 The Strange Saga of Acoustic Kitty Chapter 13 The Minnesota Iceman, the FBI, and the Vietnam War Chapter 14 From Lake Monsters to Secret Experiments Chapter 15 Sasquatch, UFOs, and the U.S. Air Force Chapter 16 Back in the U.S.S.R. Chapter 17 Are We Ready for Bigfoot? Chapter 18 A Mountain of Secrets Chapter 19 The Nessie Files Chapter 20 A Nightmare From the Skies Chapter 21 Specters and Phantimals Chapter 22 The ABCs of a Royal Conspiracy Chapter 23 The Biggest Blooper of Them All Chapter 24 In Search of the Government’s Mermaids Chapter 25 The Cat Is Out of the Bag Chapter 26 Werewolves and the Military Chapter 27 Something Dwells Down Under Conclusion Bibliography Index Acknowledgments About the Author INTRODUCTION For decades, rumors, tales, and legends have surfaced to the effect that government agencies all around the world, since at least the 1800s, have been secretly collecting and carefully studying data on bizarre beasts, extraordinary animals, and strange creatures. Lake monsters; psychic dogs and cats; sea serpents; flying nightmares; and huge, hair-covered man-beasts—all have attracted official, classified interest. Now, for the first time, the complete, fearsome facts can finally be revealed. These facts beg some amazing and possibly paradigm-changing questions. For example: Does the Pentagon’s top brass secretly have one or more dead Bigfoots on ice, deep in a secure underground bunker somewhere? If so, has a study of these unique specimens revealed the creatures to be apes of a type that zoology has yet to officially categorize? Or are they something far weirder? Might they possibly, and incredibly, be entities linked to the many and varied mysteries that accompany the UFO phenomenon? What bizarre truths are the militaries of the United States and the United Kingdom hiding from us regarding long-necked lake monsters? Are they really surviving example of prehistoric creatures that (as we are assured) became extinct millions of years ago? Or could they, in some convoluted fashion, be the curious creations of government itself? Might there be a link between the clandestine and controversial operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and those dark and diabolical denizens of the Himalayas known as the Abominable Snowmen? Does the CIA have secret knowledge in its possession that this immense and legendary creature—also referred to as the Yeti—really does exist? Or does officialdom’s interest in the hairy beast revolve around matters that have far less to do with the world of monster hunting and far more to do with top-secret espionage that dates back to the height of the Cold War? Why does an old and faded British government file exist on sightings of leviathans of the seas? Is Britain’s Royal Navy sitting on amazing classified evidence suggesting that such sea-creatures really are among us and are not just the stuff of seafaring legend? What, if anything, do the Russians know about both extrasensory perception and life after death in animals? Has the Kremlin really discovered that animals have souls and that bodily death is not the end of life as we know it? Did the United States Army use psychic dogs in covert military missions against the former Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War? former Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War? Are presumed-extinct animals—creatures that range from gigantic marauding lizards to one of the strangest marsupials that ever existed—still roaming around the forests of Australia? And finally, what is the top-secret connection between the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and large, savage cats prowling around the foggy and mysterious wilds of southwest England? How could there even be such a connection in the first place between the highest echelons of Britain’s royal family and exotic felines that the government of the United Kingdom assures both its citizens and the media are nothing more than the results of mistaken identity and folklore combined into one controversial brew? These are just a few of the many thought-provoking questions posed—and duly answered—in this book. In the pages that follow, you will learn the startling truths concerning how, why, when, and where agencies of government have taken an astonishing and abiding interest in those legendary creatures that mainstream science and zoology assure us do not, and simply cannot, exist. You will also learn how terrible freaks of nature were created by crazed Dr. Frankenstein–like scientists and psychological warfare experts, all operating behind a near-impenetrable cloak of official sanction and secrecy. Monsters are not just the stuff of myth, fantasy, legend, and folklore. In their own very odd and unique ways, some of them are all too terrifyingly real. And the governments of our world secretly know this. But they don’t want you to know. Too bad for them: The impenetrable veil of secrecy covering this top- secret menagerie or Pandora’s Box of infernal beasts is finally about to be torn in two. What terrors lurk behind this veil, what is about to come crawling, soaring, pouncing, and rampaging out of that same menagerie, may shock you to your very core. Read on—if you dare! ~ Author’s Note: Rather than compiling the chapters of this book by subject, I have elected to take a chronological approach. I did this because so much of this government interest in strange creatures was prompted by historic, world events such as WWII and the Cold War. With that in mind, I felt it most illustrative and helpful to outline the ways in which such clandestine research has developed, changed, and adapted, just as the world in which we live has done.