Robert M. Collins

Robert M. Collins wrote that he came to the UFO subject in the summer of 1985 as an analyst in theoretical and applied physics at the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, now the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, and that in the group around William L. Moore he was given the bird name Condor.¹ Robert Hastings reported on March 1, 1989 that a member of the production team of UFO Cover-Up Live had identified the second source on the program, Condor, as Collins, then recently a captain in the U.S. Air Force at Kirtland Air Force Base, and that "both Doty and Collins deny any involvement in the MJ-12 affair."³ The copyright page of Exempt from Disclosure: The Black World of UFOs (Peregrine Communications, 2010) names Collins as author, with Richard Doty and Timothy S. Cooper as "contributors and writers."¹

Service, as described by Collins

Collins wrote that his FTD assignment began in the summer of 1985 and that he had "18 years" in the subject by the time of writing, against Doty's "20 + years."¹ He described himself as an FTD analyst in the areas of theoretical and applied physics, and in the account of his meetings in 1988 as "stationed at Kirtland AFB, Air Force Weapons Lab."¹ Hastings, who wrote that he knew "very little" about Collins, reported that at his departure from the Air Force, in late 1988, Collins was a captain assigned to a plasma physics group at Sandia National Laboratories on Kirtland.³ Mark Pilkington called Collins "a former Air Force physicist."⁴ Collins wrote that he once had a "DET 22" escort on a mission in Germany and France; that detachment, he wrote, accompanies personnel in technical intelligence capacities on risky travel.¹

The group around Moore

Collins wrote that FTD led him to ask about stories of bodies stored at Wright-Patterson, and so to retired Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Kellerstrass, whose last assignment had been FTD and who in 1985 worked for Systems Research Laboratories in Dayton. According to Collins, Kellerstrass named Anthony J. Cacioppo, then chief FTD scientist, and Dale Graff, reassigned from FTD to the Defense Intelligence Agency, as informed, and described a meeting at a ski lodge north of Albuquerque in 1968 about a wave of sightings.¹ In the spring of 1986, on a temporary duty trip to consult the technical staff of TRW in Los Angeles, Collins met Moore in his motel room for about an hour; Moore mentioned a "Mr. X" who had contacted him in 1980.¹ Collins wrote that from 1986 onward Moore, Jaime Shandera, Kellerstrass, Doty, Hal Puthoff (from 1987), Kit Green (from 1989) and he held a series of meetings, referring to MJ-12 as "the Committee," while the introduction to the same book dates the group's coming together to 1985.¹

In the fall of 1987, he wrote, Kellerstrass hosted Moore, Shandera, Puthoff, Colonel John B. Alexander, "Scott Jones (assistant for Senator Pell)" (C.B. Scott Jones, aide to Claiborne Pell) and Collins at dinner at his house in Beavercreek, Ohio.¹ The bird names, by his account, were Doty "the surrogate 'Falcon' when the real Falcon (DIA's, Dale Graff?) couldn't be found," Kellerstrass "Hawk," Puthoff "Partridge," Jones "Hummingbird," Green "Blue Jay," Alexander "Chickadee," and himself "Condor."¹ He also wrote of "Heron (Jerry Miller)."¹ In the references he wrote that "in June/July 2012 the CIA Falcon was disclosed as none other than" Harry Rositzke, who died on November 4, 2002 in Warrenton, Virginia; that "very few people were in a position to know who the real Falcon was," the two he knew of being Moore and Doty; that Moore "provided a name to his friend Greg Bishop in 2005"; that Brian Parks, who had known Moore closely from the early 1980s until he left UFO research around 1994, "gave Brian the very same name as Bishop had"; and, in another reference, that "according to Bill Moore and known by Rick Doty it's Harry August Rositzke, born in New York, 1910." He added a redacted 1961 FBI memorandum on Rositzke supplied by Parks and Parks's statement of "07-20-012." The name is Collins's report of what Moore said to others; Moore did not publish it.¹ Moore had said in 1989 that he and Jaime Shandera invented the name Falcon in 1984 and that hints in 1987 that Doty was Falcon were a diversion.⁷ Pilkington asked whether Colonel Barry Hennessey, who ran the AFOSI special projects unit at the Pentagon during the MJ-12 release and the Bennewitz affair and later directed Air Force counterintelligence and special program security, was Falcon, and wrote that Hennessey and Moore had both denied it.⁴

Howe and Lear, November 1987

Hastings wrote that Linda Moulton Howe told him that in November 1987 Collins was "frantically" trying to meet her in Albuquerque; that at the meeting, also attended by John Lear, Collins showed them MJ-12 documents "primarily relating to a live alien allegedly held captive by the U.S. Government"; and that Collins said he had worked "behind the scenes" with Moore for years.³ Howe's own book does not name Collins.⁵

The program, 1988

Collins wrote that in August 1988 he, Moore, Shandera, Doty and Kellerstrass met at a state park near Dayton under arrangements Kellerstrass drew up, with the executive producer Michael Seligman present; that Seligman wanted to see picture identification and engaged a congressional investigator, and that the men "all checked out."¹ In September 1988, in Albuquerque, Moore and Shandera filmed him as Condor.¹ He wrote that after the broadcast of October 14 two high-level contacts approached Moore and Shandera, and that in April 1989 he attended a "mini-summit" at an Albuquerque motel with Puthoff, Green, Doty, Moore and Shandera on "the aftershocks" and "disclosure strategies" proposed by Green.¹ Howe quoted Condor on the program as saying that an agreement had been signed with the extraterrestrials under which "we won't disclose your (ET) existence if you do not interfere in our (Earth human) society," and that the base was at Area 51, "Dreamland."⁵ Moore said on July 1, 1989 that he was "convinced that at least some of that information falls under the category of disinformation" and "equally convinced that some of it is true."⁷ Barry Greenwood wrote in Just Cause in September 1989 that "a fair portion of the last hour [was] wasted in presenting what Moore admits to be false data."⁶

Later publications

Pilkington wrote that Collins and Doty "would reunite in 2005 as the authors of Exempt from Disclosure," cited the book as published by Peregrine Communications in 2006, and described Collins as one of the people who might be reached by telephone during the 2005 Serpo episode alongside Doty.⁴ Collins signed the book's introduction "Author: http://www.ufoconspiracy.com/.";¹ The archive.org copy carries a copyright notice of 2010 and refers to events of June and July 2012, so the passages on Rositzke come from a later revision than the editions Pilkington cited.¹ Among the "Bird Code" samples the book prints, dated "87/88," one reads that "the Eagle mated with the Blue Jay," that "the new breed and rarest bird is called the Condor," and that "the Condor must open the apartment."¹