General Walter Bedell Smith

Early Military Career

Walter Bedell Smith (October 5, 1895–August 9, 1961) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and became one of the U.S. military's most influential staff officers. He enlisted in the Indiana National Guard (1910–15) before commissioning as a second lieutenant of infantry in 1917. During World War I's Aisne-Marne Offensive, he earned the Croix du Guerre and was wounded in combat. Between wars, Smith served in the Philippines and taught at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

WWII and Eisenhower Partnership

In February 1942, Smith was appointed Secretary of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Secretary of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. General Dwight D. Eisenhower personally requested Smith as his Chief of Staff for the invasion of North Africa. The "Ike-Beetle" partnership proved exceptional; Eisenhower provided coalition leadership while Smith delivered meticulous staff management and logistical coordination. Eisenhower trusted Smith so completely that he directed Smith to negotiate and sign the German surrender documents alongside German General Alfred Jodl on May 7, 1945, at Supreme Allied Headquarters in Belgium.

Cold War Intelligence Leadership

After the war, Smith served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1946–49), then commanded the U.S. First Army (1949–50). In 1950, Eisenhower's successor as President Harry Truman appointed Smith Director of Central Intelligence (1950–53), making him the lead intelligence officer during a critical period of early UFO investigations. Smith was promoted to General in 1951. When Eisenhower returned to the presidency in 1953, he appointed Smith Under Secretary of State (1953–54), a position Smith held until his retirement from active service.

UFO Briefing and National Security Assessment

In December 1952, during the peak of the 1952 Washington DC UFO wave, H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence, delivered a classified briefing directly to Director Smith on the subject of unidentified flying objects. Chadwell was convinced that "something was going on that must have immediate attention." He warned Smith that "sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles."

Smith responded by questioning whether the Air Force's Project Blue Book investigation was sufficiently objective and independent. He requested assessments on how much additional funding and manpower would be required to determine the cause of the small percentage of sightings that remained unexplained. Notably, Smith conducted a risk calculus: he believed there was "only one chance in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the security of the country, but [insisted] even that chance could not be taken." This assessment shaped CIA policy toward UFO investigations for the remainder of the 1950s.

Classified Programs and Alleged MJ-12 Connection

In 1950, Smith created the CIA's Office of National Estimates (ONE), described as the agency's "super branch" tasked with producing coordinated National Intelligence Estimates. ONE operated with unusual autonomy and classification levels, analyzing threats to U.S. national security.

Unconfirmed UFO conspiracy literature, particularly documents circulated by ufologists in the 1980s, alleged that Smith replaced Secretary of Defense James Forrestal on an alleged secret UFO committee—Majestic 12—following Forrestal's death in May 1949. While the FBI declared MJ-12 documents "completely bogus" and the U.S. government has consistently denied such a committee's existence, Smith's position as CIA Director and the timing of his tenure coincide with the alleged formation and expansion of classified UAP retrieval and analysis programs. Declassified records remain silent on Smith's knowledge of any crash-retrieval operations or non-human intelligence assessments, though his briefing from Chadwell demonstrates he was aware of officially unexplained aerial phenomena.

Legacy

Smith died August 9, 1961, in Washington, D.C., taking any detailed knowledge of classified UFO assessments to his grave. Eisenhower, Smith's longtime partner, made his own famous warning about the military-industrial complex in his final presidential address in 1961—a statement some interpret as alluding to classified aerospace and intelligence programs beyond public oversight. Smith's role as both Eisenhower's trusted aide and CIA Director during the formative years of U.S. UFO policy positions him as a key but largely silent figure in Cold War-era UAP concealment.