Forbidden Science Dispatches #1

Jacques Vallee Meets Barney and Betty Hill, 1967 / The ET Scholars from IBM

I am currently making my way through famed French ufologist/venture capitalist/computer scientist Jacques Vallee’s Forbidden Science journals as a bit of a research treasure hunt. I genuinely believe that Vallee is—and has been for quite some time—the best writer the field of ufology has to offer, but there are constant questions lurking in the back of my mind. His analysis of possible human orchestration or manipulation in many UFO events was integral to this newsletter’s series on the Gulf Breeze Six. But Vallee is a true believer in the paranormal—in the broader sense—even if he is often more inclined to think like a boundary-pushing scientist. He has also found himself associating with CIA scientists and other defense contractors from time to time which, of course, makes me wonder. But for the most part, Vallee comes across as an earnest and enthusiastic researcher of the paranormal. I have referred to Forbidden Science in past articles with entries where Vallee considered CIA involvement in South American UFO events or where he and Hal Puthoff met convicted child molester Wendelle Stevens in prison. The diaries are chockful of interesting tidbits such as these. For this reason, I wanted to start a bit of an informal series of articles as I make my way through these five volumes of UFO history, putting a spotlight on specific entries that strike me as important.

From May 31^st to June 12^th, 1967, Vallee recalls meeting some of the earliest American abductees, Barney and Betty Hill. The Hills are the subject of an ongoing series by Boltzmann Booty at the Substack publication Nuts and Boltzmann that I would highly recommend for a more complete picture. Within those articles, Boltzmann looks to explore the purported abduction as a case of counterinsurgency, a notion that seems highly likely given the duo’s interest in civil rights and other progressive causes as well as the constant presence of personnel from Pease Air Force Base in their lives. Additionally, Bosco Nedelcovic, who alleged that the abduction of Antonio Villas-Boas was a CIA operation, further claimed that “the Hill episode in New Hampshire was a CIA event.”¹ Regardless of this possibility, Vallee met with the couple in New Hampshire at the request of J. Allen Hynek who wanted him to act “as an observer in a contact experiment Betty Hill wants to conduct.”² “Betty believes she has become a ‘transducer,’” Vallee writes. “She thinks she can make a flying saucer appear in the sky and land.”³ Among the attendees of this transduction test were John G. Fuller—the author of the most popular narrative on the Hill abduction, The Interrupted Journey—and Dr. Benjamin Simon, the psychiatrist who had treated the Hills after a prolonged struggle to grapple with their fragmented and traumatic memories. Joining them was Robert Hohmann, an IBM engineer who had sent Vallee “a melodramatic letter” that claimed the French scientist was an integral component to the vaguely named “Phase Two” which involved Vallee himself taking “command of the interaction with the Aliens as they land.”⁴

Photograph of Jacques Vallee during his 1967 meeting with the Hills in New Hampshire. (Source)

Hohmann is an interesting, if little spoken of, figure in the saga of the Hill abduction who heavily tipped the scales in favor of the couple interpreting the odd events as extraterrestrial in nature. Vallee’s wife Janine read Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey in preparation for their trip to New England and noted to Jacques that “the whole story of the abduction of the Hills by saucer people didn’t originate with Dr. Simon at all but with this man Hohmann himself.”⁵ After hearing of the case from Donald Keyhoe of NICAP, Hohmann and C.D. Jackson, another IBM employee, met with the Hills and introduced them to more fantastical notions than that of a common UFO sighting:

On November 3^rd (1961) they wrote to the Hills and they with them on November 25^th, interviewing them from noon to midnight. They even asked them if they used fertilizers for their trees, because they thought saucer pilots might want to steal the fertilizer. Hohmann and Jackson also told the Hills that there might well be life on Alpha Centauri.⁶

It is through these interactions that the move towards extraterrestrial abduction was pushed forward, eventually culminating in the Hills’ hypnotic regression and later belief that they were briefly kidnapped by beings from another planet. Hohmann and Jackson’s backgrounds are potentially very important when considering the idea that the Hill abduction was an entirely human affair involving intelligence and military personnel. Robert Hohmann served in WWII “as a driver of VIPs and an interrogator of prisoners of war,” roles that supposedly gave him “a high security clearance,” according to his widow.⁷ He was employed primarily technical writer, but also “worked closely with scientists and engineers, and arranged presentations for IBM executives.”⁸ C.D. Jackson’s career before IBM is not as clear, but when with the company he was a key drum developer “for the U.S. Air Force’s SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) air defense computer,” a revolutionary technology for the United States military at the time.⁹ Boltzmann Booty notes “the Hills’ proclivity for socializing with Air Force spooks,” and it would seem that Hohmann and Jackson were also connected to military projects of rather high importance.¹⁰ This is in addition to their apparent affiliation with civilian UFO org NICAP, which researcher Jack Brewer suspects (with substantial evidence presented in his book Wayward Sons) was a group that “the CIA was substantially involved in the incorporation and initial operation” of.¹¹

Robert E. Hohmann photographed in the Poughkeepsie Journal, 26 May 1961. https://www.newspapers.com/article/poughkeepsie-journal/132674855/

C.D. Jackson photographed in The Kingston Daily Freeman 19 August 1958. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kingston-daily-freeman/132819596/

This background aside, Vallee seemed befuddled by Hohmann’s assertions of Betty Hill having the ability to summon UFOs. “It was like a bad movie,” he wrote.¹² Convinced that Betty was able to communicate with humanoid extraterrestrial beings, Hohmann set up a folding table and chalk circle to observe and/or meet the UFOs and their occupants. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but Betty “jumped up excitedly” at every “artificial satellite, (…) meteor, (…) and lightning bug.”¹³ Vallee seems convinced that something indeed had happened to the pair, but also that “Hohmann has clearly planted many strange ideas into the couple’s mind.”¹⁴

As for the other characters hovering around the Hills at the time: While Vallee interacted with C.D. Jackson (partner with Hohmann) at some point, not much is said of his impressions of the man. He notes that John G. Fuller, who is suspected of being a CIA asset by other researchers¹⁵, was “jovial, ebullient, (and) relaxed.”¹⁶ However, during the UFO watch party with Betty Hill, “Fuller couldn’t stand still” and eventually opted to drive to Exeter “to see if there was anything new there.”¹⁷ Vallee seems rightfully confused by this and I am unsure what to make of it. Perhaps he found the proceedings ridiculous. Vallee also seemed impressed by Dr. Benjamin Simon although he “wore no shirt” causing Vallee to recall most vividly Simon’s “huge bulging stomach that bounced around the room.”¹⁸ Odd. Regardless, Simon makes clear his position that “he doesn’t really care whether or not they have abducted,” finding the question irrelevant to his psychological work on them.¹⁹ Indeed, Vallee finds direct answers hard to come by during his visit. Conflicted about the story himself, Vallee nonetheless interprets the situation accurately: “Their adventure suggests a grave and terrible mystery.”²⁰

Thank you for reading Getting Spooked. If you have enjoyed what you’ve read, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Doing so will give you access to archived articles and support the continuation of this research. I am sincerely grateful to anyone who has done so already. Reach out to me at gettingspooked@protonmail.com with any questions, comments, recommendations, requests, spooky stories, etc. You can find me on Twitter at @TannerFBoyle1 or on Bluesky at @tannerfboyle.bsky.social. Until next time, stay spooked.

1. Reynolds, Rich. “The Villas Boas Event.” The UFO Reality. 11 January 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20070614143010/http://ufor.blogspot.com/2006/01/villa-boas-event.html.

2. Vallee, Jacques. Forbidden Science 1: A Passion for Discovery – The Journals of Jacques Vallee, 1957-1969. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 1992. Page 293.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., page 297.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., page 298.

7. Friedman, Stanton T. and Kathleen Marden. Captured!: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. Pompton Plains: New Page Books, 2007. Page 53.

8. Ibid.

9. “IBM Appoints Red Hook Man to Engineering.” The Kingston Daily Freeman. 19 August 1958. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kingston-daily-freeman/132819596/.

10. Booty, Boltzmann. “The Hill abduction as counter-insurgency (Pt. 1).” Nuts & Boltzmann. 21 August 2023. Available here.

11. Brewer, Jack. Wayward Sons: NICAP and the IC. Self-published, 2021. Page ii.

12. Vallee, Jacques. Forbidden Science 1: A Passion for Discovery – The Journals of Jacques Vallee, 1957-1969. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 1992. Page 299.

13. Ibid., page 300.

14. Ibid.

15. Redfern, Nick. “Betty and Barney Hill, an ‘Alien Abduction,’ and MK-ULTRA.” Mysterious Universe. 21 June 2020. http://web.archive.org/web/20200621140604/https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/06/betty-and-barney-hill-an-alien-abduction-and-mk-ultra/. (Note: Redfern quotes a passage from the late Philip Coppens in this article that seems to confuse the IBM employee Chauncey D. Jackson of the Hill story with Charles Douglas Jackson, a onetime psychological warfare chief under Eisenhower and later bigwig at Time and Life. The latter Jackson was likely an intelligence asset in his own right, but unrelated to the Hill abduction’s C.D. Jackson. Wikipedia article on Charles Douglas Jackson.)

16. Vallee, Jacques. Forbidden Science 1: A Passion for Discovery – The Journals of Jacques Vallee, 1957-1969. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 1992. Page 298.

17. Ibid., page 300.

18. Ibid., page 299.

19. Ibid., page 301.

20. Ibid., page 303.