“Stalin learned from Hitler,” the EG&G engineer says, “revenge… and other things.” And that to
consider Stalin’s perspective one should think about two key moments in history, one right before World
War II began and another right before it ended. On August 23, 1939, one week before war in Europe
officially began, Hitler and Stalin agreed to be allies and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, meaning
each country promised not to attack the other when war in Europe broke out. And yet almost
immediately after shaking hands, Hitler began plotting to double-cross Stalin. Twenty-two months later,
Hitler’s sneak attack against Russia resulted in millions of deaths. And then, just a few weeks before
World War II ended, Stalin, Truman, and Churchill met in Potsdam, Germany — from July 17, 1945, to
August 2, 1945—and agreed to be postwar allies. Just one day before that conference began, America
had secretly tested the world’s first and only atomic bomb, inside the White Sands Proving Ground in
the New Mexico desert. Truman’s closest advisers had suggested that Truman share the details of the
atomic test with Stalin at Potsdam, but Truman did not. It didn’t matter. Nuclear weapons historians
believe that Joseph Stalin was already well aware of what the Manhattan Project engineers had
accomplished. Stalin had spies inside the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who had been providing him
with bomb blueprints and other information since 1941. By the time the Potsdam conference rolled
around, Stalin was already well at work on his own atomic bomb. Despite Stalin and Truman pretending
to be allies, neither side trusted the other side, neither man trusted the other man. Each side was instead
making plans to build up its own atomic arsenal for future use. When Operation Crossroads commenced
just twelve months after the handshakes at Potsdam, the Cold War battle lines were already indelibly
drawn.
It follows that Stalin’s black propaganda hoax — the flying disc peopled with alien look-alikes that
wound up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico — could have been the Soviet dictator’s revenge for
Truman’s betrayal at Crossroads. His double cross had to have been in the planning stages during the
handshaking at Potsdam, metaphorically mirroring what Hitler had done during the signing of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. By July of 1947, Stalin was still two years away from being able to
successfully test his own nuclear bomb. The flying disc at Roswell, says the EG&G engineer, was “a
warning shot across Truman’s bow.” Stalin may not have had the atomic bomb just yet, but he had
seminal hover and fly technology, pilfered from the Germans, and he had stealth. Together, these
technologies made the American military gravely concerned. Perplexed by the flying disc’s movements,
and its radical ability to confuse radar, the Army Air Forces was left wondering what else Stalin had in
his arsenal of unconventional weapons, usurped from the Nazis after the war.
“Hitler invented stealth,” says Gene Poteat, the first CIA officer in the Agency’s history to be assigned
to the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO. Gene Poteat’s job was to assess Soviet radar threats, and
to do this, he observed many spy plane tests at Area 51. “Hitler’s stealth bomber was called the Horten
Ho 229,” Poteat says, “which is also called the Horten flying wing. It was covered with radar-absorbing
paint, carbon embedded in glue. The high graphic content produced a result called ‘ghosting,’ which
made it difficult for radar to see.”ترجم الفقرة كاملة للغة العربية