Phil Klass - A Spy for the FBI?

When Phil Klass died in 2005, more than a few

people said words to the effect of: “Now that he’s
dead we’ll be able to check his files and find out if
he was working for the government.”

The FBI subsequently released its files on Klass. A

few pages were withheld in the interests of national
security, which probably has nothing to do with
UFOs and everything to do with some of the
material about which Klass wrote, and was looked
into for national security violations for having done
so, as well as redacted information within the
released files, most of which seems to relate to
personal information, or sources and methods.

So – was Klass an agent of the FBI?

Hardly.

The materials in the FBI files show that the FBI thought Klass was a pest, and
that they didn’t have a great deal of respect for him or his opinions.

For example, a memo dated 21 February 1975 reveals that on the 18th of
February, 1975, Klass called the Editor of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin to
complain about an article by famed ufologist Dr. J. Allen Hynek, “The UFO
Mystery,” which has appeared in the February, 1975 issue. According to the
memo, Klass “derided” the decision to publish the article, suggested that by
doing so the FBI had “given its endorsement to a hoax (that UFOs are extra-
terrestrial in origin),” and called Hynek a “fraud.” Klass then stated that he had
“investigated UFO sightings with the thoroughness of the FBI over a period of
many years” (a statement which must have amused the FBI), and had not found
“one shred of evidence that they were from beyond earth’s atmosphere.”

When Klass was informed of the FBI’s positive view of Dr. Hynek, especially that
he was affiliated with a leading university (Northwestern), Klass replied, “He
won’t be for long!”

This didn’t affect the FBI’s assessment of Dr. Hynek, as is clear from the memo:
“All of his writings and public statements that were examined prior to the
publication of his article in the Bulletin disclose a meticulously objective and
scientific view of the UFO phenomenon.”

In other words, the exact opposite of the FBI’s view of Klass. The memo
concludes by stating that, “In view of Klass’s intemperate criticism and often
irrational statements he made to support it, we should be most circumspect in
any future contacts with him.”

This was a remark that followed Klass from that point on whenever he dealt with
the FBI, often being referred to in later memos. For example, when Klass wrote
two letters in 1987, the first to question whether the FBI employed psychics, and
the second to complain about a psychic being brought in to lecture to students at
the FBI Academy, the memo attached to the letters and the FBI’s responses
includes the reminder that the 1975 memo had stated ‘in view of Klass’
intemperate criticism and often irrational statements… it was recommended that
the Bureau be most circumspect in any future contacts with him.”

Undeterred, Klass followed up on 14 June, 1975,

with a letter to FBI Director Clarence Kelley (pictured,
at left) in which he wrote:

“The enclosed photo-copy of a headline and feature

story in a recent issue of the tabloid The National
Tattler is a portent of the sort of ‘FBI endorsement’
for the flying-saucer myth that you can expect to see,
repeatedly, as a result of the article on UFOs carried
by the February issue of the Law Enforcement
Bulletin. That article was written by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the spiritual leader of the
vocal group of ‘believers’ and ‘kooks’ who claim that we are being visited by
extraterrestrial spaceships. While the FBI did not endorse Hynek’s views per se,
the decision to publish his article and to alert law enforcement agencies as to
what to do “if they land,” has embroiled the agency for all time.”

Klass continued:

“The Hynek article published by the FBI encourages law enforcement officers to
take the time – from much more pressing duties – to take calls from people who
report seeing UFOs and to in turn relay such calls to Hynek’s own UFO group.
Surely in these times law enforcement officers have more useful things to occupy
their time and attention.”

At the end of the letter, Klass offered to write an article for the Law Enforcement
Bulletin that would present the “other side” of the UFO issue.
Kelley’s response was contained in a letter he wrote dated 23 June, 1975:

“Quite contrary to the news clipping you enclosed, Dr. Hynek’s article has been
accurately and rationally reported by the media throughout the country. None of
the responsible media, to my knowledge, have ignored the clearly stated theme
of the article: ‘[r]egardless of the source of UFOs or their legitimacy, these
sightings represented a real problem for law enforcement…’ to whom persons
normally first report their observations. This is the only premise the FBI has
endorsed in publishing the article. I could not agree more with your implication
that law enforcement personnel should look after their primary responsibility –
crime, not UFOs. This is precisely the reason we believe the Center for UFO
Studies can help free law enforcement personnel from investigating and reporting
on phenomena unassociated with crime.”

Fairly kind words re: CUFOS from the FBI, and certainly not the disparagement
of the UFO phenomenon for which Klass was no doubt hoping (Kelley politely
declined Klass’s offer to write an article in response to Hynek’s).

Privately, FBI officials were scathing about Klass. Attached to the Kelley letter is
a memo that states:

“Klass is well known to us… [He] is deficient in all points of his argument,
particularly concerning the credentials of Dr. Hynek which would scarcely be
better. Hynek has been associated professorially with some of the finest
universities in this country and is recognized in the most prestigious scientific
circles. On the otherhand, Klass has no such sterling reputation and has twice
been under FBI investigation in connection with the unauthorized publication of
classified information. Both of these cases have been closed.”

This latter point, about Klass publishing classified materials without authorization,
is ironic, given his role in the MJ-12 circus. Other memos in the file reveal that
the only reason Klass wasn’t prosecuted is that the classified information he had
used could not be declassified for the purposes of prosecution (Memo, 11 May,
1976).

Lucky for Klass.

What can be gleaned from these files is a portrait of a man who was neither
respected nor liked by the FBI, who was in fact seen as an “accusatory and
argumentative” trouble-maker, and who could not be trusted, given both his
previous publishing of classified material and his “intemperate criticism and
irrational statements” (i.e. he was a loose cannon).
In the vernacular?

He could be a mean-spirited pain in the ass – no surprise there to many

ufologists – but he was also about as far from being an FBI agent as you could
get.

Paul Kimball