117 - Sub-Project Candy Onion

Cabal: Sub-Project Candy Onion

“The way I see it human belief in these things effects the world in a very real way. Think of it like a pearl formed around a grain of sand. A gradual irritation pushing ceaselessly at the fabric of the universe. In most cases - as with the formation of a pearl - this does nothing, but with certain deluded and obsessive types the pressure is too much to ignore.

So something happens, nothing big. Maybe a cow gets torn up. Some crops get pushed down. Lights in the sky.

Only this doesn't relieve the pressure, with reinforcement it only mounts. Obsessives reach out to one another and form cliques. Even the public perception of UFO nuts as crazies keeps the idea accessible to people on the edge of society. Gradually, like an embolism, that grain of sand grows into a shiny, glossy tear in what the public sees as reality. Grays, abducting and mutilating people on the back of the psychic resonance these people are generating. I don’t know if they’re real entities baited in from some other planet or dimension, if they’re psychic projections, or something else entirely. It doesn’t make a difference. Certainly didn’t make one to those dead ranchers.

If you don’t believe me then you explain why this is happening.”
- Charlie Tusk, Interview Tape #022, May 14th 1983

Washington, 1947. A pilot witnesses nine glowing objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. The government explains this event as a mirage and the term ‘flying saucer’ is coined by the press.

Roswell, 1947. Pieces of a weather balloon fall to Earth in the New Mexico desert, the story of it being an alien craft captures the public imagination for decades to come.

Desert Center, 1952. The head of a small occult commune claims to have made contact with alien visitors from Venus in the California desert. His claims are widely disputed.

The mid-20th century gave birth to the phenomenon of the UFO. The tension between disenchantment at an increasingly rational world and enchantment at the pace of technological development making anything seem possible resolved through cold war tensions and fear of the outsider. Even staid government agencies - in the form of USAF Project Blue Book (formerly Signal and Grudge) - became part of the tapestry. The myth of “men in black” who would show up to ask pointed and threatening questions, disappear inconvenient evidence and secretly collude with the little green men.

The dry reality - at least at the beginning - was that categorising and investigating unexplained aerial phenomena was a matter of national security and could potentially provide valuable information for aerospace development and the security of active research. Spurious public perception and bureaucratic indifference ground this down into a culture of complacency and withdrawal which eventually saw the programs shuttered, but one side project bore strange fruit and grew into its own twisted reflection of the original work while managing to survive its erasure: Sub-project Candy Onion.

Candy Onion was a disinformation program intended to take advantage of public UFO perception. In order to conceal the reality of experimental aircraft and weapons research why not encourage the emerging alien mythology and control it in ways that would provide a camouflaging advantage? It was a small outfit, but successful. At its inception its head, Captain Barry Campbell, was in charge of two other airmen and a secretary who shared cramped offices at the back of a New Mexico air base which grew to five times as many staff at the heyday of their operations. Candy Onion staged false alien encounters, gave cover to the testing and recovery of downed experimental equipment and encouraged UFO cults to spread their message. It was through this last practice that Campbell came into contact with Charlie Tusk.

Charlie didn’t seem like your average UFO looney, he was well-spoken, considered and didn’t believe in aliens. As a cliomancer, his area of intense interest was how other people believed in them. He interpreted conspiracy as modern mythology and knowing a lot of people in the subculture Charlie had access no one else did. It’s not clear exactly what arrangement he and Campbell came to but he avoided prison for trespassing through a military base and in return became Barry’s mole and inside man in developing these groups as effective patsies and misdirection. What wasn’t expected was for Charlie to run across real aliens.

In an abandoned New Mexico trailer park the two grey-skinned, black oval-eyed carcasses he found dead and mouldering under a tarp lasted just long enough for Campbell to watch them deteriorate into slush before his eyes. Having followed a breathless phone call from Charlie, who had been working with a cult believing they were descendants of ancient astronauts trying to phone home, he wanted an explanation he could stomach. Shaken, Charlie told him how the aliens had arrived when prophesied and been shot at by the jumpier members. Still in shock he started trying to explain magick. Disbelieving and disgusted, Campbell kicked him to the curb.

Then it happened again the year after. And again and again. Corpses that turned into puddles of ammonia and silicon and technology that turned into non-functioning junk within hours of being handled. In one case a hovering hubcap the size of a bus made the papers and it all landed in Campbell’s lap one way or another. Then three rural households wound up dead, riddled with cleanly cut, swiss cheese holes and it seemed like aliens were to blame.

Exasperated by evidence that would evaporate before he could get it into a lab, Campbell tracked Charlie down and the adept excitedly explained how he’d discovered that these occurrences were a direct result of what they’d been doing all along. That these encouraged UFO groups were somehow psychically responsible for the aliens. Overjoyed, Charlie bounced through a dozen variations on themes that involved thoughtforms, interdimensional psychic beings and collective belief-based power in his interview tapes. He magickally demonstrated the reality of these things to Campbell and talked about what they could do with it, how they could study it and how it could be controlled and weaponized by steering these people. Campbell nodded, kept his cool and then late one night he held a pillow over Charlie’s face and shot him at his isolated Arizona bungalow.

Sickened by the evidence of his complicity in the deaths of his countrymen and limited by his inability to provide proof to higher-ups Campbell secretly resolved to conceal and control the phenomenon. The idea of the concept spreading and the potential chaos and destruction it could cause was not something he was willing to conscience or share with the chain of command. Schooled in deception and bureaucracy, the well-connected officer misappropriated, lied and inveigled his group into a new kind of organisation. One that would secretly keep people safe from this scourge using the same tools he'd perfected to inadvertently encourage it.

By some miracle Sub-project Candy Onion still exists in a forgotten corner of the gigantic US military budget, surviving the shuffle of post-9/11 restructuring and organisation. Ostensibly its role is the same as it has always been with the added touch of being used to teach counterintelligence techniques to newly recruited air force intelligence officers in an inconsequential environment.

Disinformation is still the name of the game, the three people the now retired Campbell let in on his secret steer what control they have over the UFO narrative into keeping believer groups small and destabilised without tipping them off to government interference. Occasionally more direct action is needed. Only one of them has spilled blood and the consensus is that’s too risky outside of an emergency. More often an ascendant prophet claiming to be from Alpha Centauri gets busted with drugs or explosives in his car. To this cabal keeping a low profile is the best tool they have for keeping everyone safe.