David Cuevas interviews Joan Plana Crivillén
It took many years for this interview. If I tell you that I tried to do it since the time when I was doing a humble programme called “La sombra del espejo” (The Shadow of the Mirror), we are talking about 15 years ago. In the last year, for several months insistently, on several trips to Barcelona, after getting his contact, talking to him, getting a more or less fluid communication, I tried by all means to get him to meet me in person so I could interview him.
It took me a lot of effort, but I finally got the chance on July 4, 2022, American Independence Day. I was able to be at his house, I was able to visit his archive, absolutely packed with treasures, and I was able to interview him for almost two hours. The younger ones probably don’t know who he is, and perhaps some of the older ones don’t either.
This is Joan Plana Crivillén, one of the classic, legendary ufologists, who has been away from the ufological subject for a long time, but we have managed to get him to speak and to do so freely. He is an expert in aeronautical ufology, everything that has to do with the state security forces and their relationship with UFO matters, also with the Armed Forces, also at the governmental level, etc., etc. But what is interesting, what he brings to this program, what gives this interview its invaluable value, is that he was one of the main people responsible, together with Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos, for the controversial Spanish UFO declassification process carried out in the 1990s by the Air Force.
We spoke with him at length about this process, and I can assure you that some of his statements will surprise you. They turn 180 degrees from what we have always been told, and they are told by someone who is absolutely authorized to do so, because I insist, he was the person most responsible for providing civilian aid to the Air Force for such a task. Next, so that you can understand all this mare magnum that has to do with that arduous, extremely complex and, I insist, controversial Spanish UFO declassification process, we offer you two extras.
We will listen to an interview with Juan José Benítez, in which he spoke at length about everything that has to do with an incredible exclusive that he published on his website in 2008, related to a group of civilians who collaborated with the Air Force, and immediately afterwards we will also rescue an interview from 2009, which he conducted together with other colleagues such as Manuel Carballal or Miguel Pedrero, with Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos. I think that in this way, after the interview with Joan Plana, after the information that is provided, which by the way will be preceded by an explanatory introduction so that we do not miss anyone, you will be able to understand with these three interviews and the introduction, at least some basic notions and a little more of what was brewing in that turbulent declassification process.
Introduction
On April 14, 1992, the Spanish Joint Chiefs of Staff made a decision. Months later, and more specifically in August, the silence was broken.
The person in charge, Lieutenant Colonel Ángel Bastida, participated in the already famous summer courses of the Complutense University in El Escorial, Madrid, to explain how the first UFO declassification process in Spain was going to be carried out. According to Bastida, the original files would be declassified one by one, following a chronological criterion, to later be deposited for free access to citizens in the Air Headquarters Library in Moncloa, Madrid.
Between 1992 and 1998, 83 UFO files were declassified, with more than 1,800 pages. A process that, in the opinion of several researchers and fans of the UFO phenomenon, was completely contaminated. Thus, Juan José Benitez demonstrated on his website that a group of seven civilians, six Spaniards and one American, collaborated with the Military Intelligence Service of the Air Force in the declassification of the files, with the aim of refuting, so to speak, the aforementioned sightings.
Limit Dimension
David Cuevas.- Well, we already said it, we already commented on it, it has cost me a lot of work, but here I have, I have in front of me, barely half a meter away, Joan Plana Crivillén. Joan, thank you very much for receiving me.
Joan Planas.- You’re welcome, at your disposal.
David Cuevas.- Well, Joan, there are many things to ask you, but we are going to start with the topical, the classic and perhaps a little bit of what a priori might seem less relevant, but which always interests me. How do you start, lazy redundancy, to be interested in, let’s call them anomalous phenomena?
Joan Planas.- Look, I became interested in the UFO phenomenon, after a cousin of mine saw one, in the wave of the year 68, in the summer, and a few days later, of course, he told me about it, and that had a great impact on me, what he told me. And from here, well, if I saw some news that my parents bought in the newspapers every day, they bought, I think yes, La Vanguardia, no, at that time I think it was the Barcelona newspaper, then when the Barcelona newspaper disappeared, La Vanguardia, and if I saw some news, I cut it out and saved it.
Afterwards all this was a good pile that I lost, I don’t know when, and from the year 68 when my cousin saw one, here near Moyá, well, I started to get interested in that subject.
David Cuevas.-And what did your cousin see? Joan Planas.- Well, an object in a forest, it was a Saturday night and all the friends went, boys and girls, they already had a car, because he is older than me, and they had a car and they went up to a farmhouse to have dinner, grilled meat and all that, and it was on top of a little mountain, it was all forest around, and there were a few inside and others outside cooking the meat and all that, and they saw a light that came down from the sky, it stopped, quite large, shaped like a lentil, on top of a mountain that was, now I can’t tell you, he showed it to me many years ago, at a certain distance from where they were, on top of a little mountain, he turned on a spotlight, he turned on a spotlight and he saw in the pines, completely the pines of the little mountain where he was, and I remember that he told me, if we had binoculars, we would see if a rabbit runs between the trees, from the light that there was, and for a few seconds, that light focused like a cone, a conical area of the forest, it turned back to turn off and as it had come down diagonally, well this time vertically, but in tenths of a second, it disappeared, without any noise, nothing, and as I said, they were on a little mountain just over there, where there was not much noise either, because there were only forests around, and it went up vertically and disappeared.
David Cuevas.- And you investigated it.
Joan Planas.- Well, what he explained to me, because of course, he told me then, but I didn’t start to seriously dedicate myself to the subject until 10, 12, 15 years later, then, nor his friends, all those people were already scattered, go see where, as if to go and ask more people, and more than everything he told me. And yes, he told me, that they always went down a bit in fits and starts after dinner, that road, there are a few curves, but since they knew it, they went down a bit fast. He says that that day, dinner was almost silent, those who were hungry ate, those who were not, and they went down in their cars, he says, at 30 or 40 an hour, at most, one car right next to the other, because they were all scared to death, and everyone went home, the party was over, because after that, it seems that everyone was very shocked by what they saw, and nothing, and from then on I became interested in the subject.
David Cuevas.- After all the experience you have, can it be said that you are a skeptical, rational ufologist?
Joan Planas.- Increasingly skeptical, but not to the limit, for example, like others who exist, who find an explanation for everything, I know that there are cases that have no explanation, I am not telling you that they are extraterrestrials, as others tell you, but I am sure that some, perhaps well investigated, also find that explanation, but there are unexplained cases, for sure, because I have been told, for example, military cases, like a colonel who has since passed away, who told me, what he had seen from a Sabre fighter plane.
David Cuevas.- Can we know the name of the colonel? Joan Planas.- Yes, he has already passed away too, Saez Benito, he is leaving…
David Cuevas.- Yes, and Carballo, the famous cases, the flying egg. Joan Planas.- Exactly, he told me, and he says, no, I don’t believe in aliens, but gosh, he says, what we saw there and that with my plane I had it in front of me, and every time I focused the plane on it, that, in tenths of a second it got behind me, and as soon as I turned around with the plane it moved again and appeared on the radar, and they returned to the base in Zaragoza with the planes, because they were running out of fuel, and that thing was following them, and when they were arriving in Zaragoza, in the Moncayo area, people from the ground, farmers, saw it, the two planes and that thing behind, following them, that is, radar, them and people on the ground, and something shaped like an egg, and he told me, he says, I don’t believe in aliens or anything like that, but what happened to me and what I saw, he told me, is that it has no explanation, neither the speeds that it reached, nor the maneuvers it made, nor anything Nothing, I mean, and he says, it was like a fly, seen and not seen, sometimes you see flies passing by, well, the same, he says, we focused, we opened the doors to that thing in front, we saw it in front, the one we had it well focused on, he says, it turned around, and we had it behind, behind, in tenths of a second, I mean, a plane doesn’t do that, it doesn’t do that.
David Cuevas.- We continue with a chronology, you became interested in the subject of UFOs, a few years after the sighting, right?, you tell me.
Joan Planas.- Well, my cousin told me about it in 1968, a few days after it happened to him, and from then on, as I told you, he started to cut things out, but apart from that, nothing, he didn’t do anything else.
David Cuevas.- As an amateur, so that we understand each other.
Joan Planas.- Exactly, that was at the end of the 60s, and until the year 76, well, let’s say 78, after finishing my military service, then I started to dedicate myself to buying books, more than anything buying books and finding out more about the subject, and from the year 81, then I contacted the CEI in Barcelona.
David Cuevas.- Yes, the Center for Interplanetary Studies, whose president we interviewed here in File D, Pedro Redón.
Joan Planas.- Exactly, when I left the subject of UFOs, I was vice president of the CEI, and as I said, I became interested, I saw that there was an eastern center in Barcelona, I got in touch with Pedro Redón, and I started to go there, and then the following year, in the year 82, I became a member of the CEI, and until the year 98 when I left it. That is, from the year 85, 86, or so, if I remember correctly, I joined the board, and as I said, until the end of the year 98 when I was vice president.
David Cuevas.- How do you begin to develop, let’s say, that way of studying the UFO phenomenon, or UFO phenomena, from the most rational perspective?
Joan Planas.- Well, from being at the CEI, and talking with Pedro Arredón, with other people who were then investigating there, of course, what I had done until then, I had done almost alone, and I had formed the ideas of that, and there, well, you see how research is done, you talked to people, well, look, this can be done like this, this can be this, well, reading a lot in the CEI archives, you saw everything there, there were hundreds of cases, if not thousands, and then you took them and you started to read cases, you saw investigated cases, how it was done or how it wasn’t, then, of course, from the CEI I contacted Vicente Juan Ballerter Olmos, he also taught me a lot about how things were done.
David Cuevas.- In what year? Do you remember when you contacted Vicente Juan for the first time?
Joan Planas.- Well, it must have been, I don’t know, because he, of course, came to the CEI, he came, and gave lectures and everything, well I was a member since 1982, it must have been shortly after, of course, and then when I became interested from the very beginning, in the subject of governments, military issues, military issues have always interested me, for reasons, other reasons, let’s say, and then I put it together with the subject of UFOs that interested me with the subject of governments and the military, and I specialized in this, I mean, and of course, then Vallester Olmos had finished certain works, I don’t know if the landing phenomenon, which is what he was doing then, and when he saw more or less…
David Cuevas.- Yes, that was published in the late 70s.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, yes, and at that time he also saw what I was doing, dedicating myself to that subject, and we said, yes, this is interesting, and we began to collaborate together, to get them involved in the military and the army, for example, or the Spanish government, and then he traveled a lot for work reasons to Madrid, so he was the one who began to contact the air force in Madrid, because he went to Madrid at least a couple of times a month, so, for work reasons, he had time, and he was the one who began to contact, and then we began a work that was supposed to end in a book about the Spanish government and the armies and all this, and the UFO subject, and in the end everything ended well, but without a book. So…
David Cuevas.- Why?
Joan Planas.- Because the publishers, the one who presented the work to them, were not interested at that time, and that is why it was at the end of the declassification by the Air Force, that is, there was a lot of new, unpublished information, the one that was known, that everyone knew, which were the declassified files, but the internal information of the Air Force, which nobody knows, the majority, and on the other hand he, I do, I have always said one thing, those who know more about the declassification of the UFO subject, of the Air Force in particular, are Ballester and I, because the two lieutenant colonels of the Air Force who were in charge of the declassification, Bastida and Rocamora, they had to do it because of work, and they dedicated themselves to that because they were forced to do it. We did it for fun, we knew all about the civil aspect of the UFO phenomenon and we knew all about the military aspect by making them friends, let’s say, with them, and they collaborated, because we collaborated with the Air Force, because apart from the fact that we offered ourselves and they accepted the collaboration, why did they accept it? Because they had no idea, and there were things that they didn’t know how to do, and we did them, for example, let’s see, and that’s why Bastida, who was the first, Lieutenant Colonel Ángel Bastida, had quite a good idea, because he created all the main documents at the beginning of the declassification, from the IG General Instruction, to the document to be declassified, he did everything by himself, so it was a very good job that he did, then when we saw what he had done, that he showed it to us and everything, well, we said, well, it’s very good. David Cuevas.- Joan, let’s take it one step at a time. You’ve obviously touched on the star topic of the interview, which is your connection with the famous and controversial, it must be said, UFO declassification for many people, which begins in 92 and ends in 98.
Joan Planas.- In 98, 99, yes, more or less.
David Cuevas.- Indeed.
Joan Planas.- The controversy was that we did one thing and others perhaps wanted to do it and didn’t do it, they didn’t manage to do it, so, I’ll tell you clearly, envy, and even for example like Benítez, Benítez had one thing, in 1976, in October 1976, they gave him several UFO files, General Galarza (Lieutenant General Galarza, president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) who was the Chief of Staff, so, from here on, Benítez believed he was the specialist in the subject of governments, air forces and UFOs, when we got involved in that, he considered it an intrusion, and we got things that he didn’t get, so he began to disqualify us everywhere, everywhere, that is, and that was the thing.
David Cuevas.- Ok, let’s start at the beginning. You already explained that due to Ballester’s continuous trips to Madrid, he began to make contacts, you became an inseparable companion in his hardships, at least with regard to the declassification of Ballester himself. How did you, in some way, become part of that almost inseparable team with Ballester?
Joan Planas.- Well, I’m telling you, at the end of the 80s, in the years 87–88, we decided to make a book about UFO research, about the military, the Civil Guard, the Navy, the army, all that, we started to write to all the headquarters, units, everything we had in the CEI archive, which had to do with the military, the Civil Guard and all that, we created an archive, and we started to look at the cases that were good, those that were not, that is, of course, what has to be done, and then, to ask for information, because in many cases it had not been requested, some had been investigated well, but others had not, to ask for information, to request to see if there was an archive in the Air Force, in the Army, in the Navy, in the Civil Guard, that the Civil Guard, for example, Faber Kaiser managed to get the general… wait, I don’t remember, well, to give him a copy of the files, a summary of the files they had, I was the second person who asked for it, and he also sent it to me. the same, and then we became more interested in the Civil Guard, and General Quintiliano Pérez Monedero told Ballester, well from now on, if there is any case, I give the order to send it here to Madrid to the General Staff, and I send you a copy, and so it was, for a while, then it was that, the same as always, the same as had happened in the Air Force, that there was interest in 1968 during the famous wave, and an instruction was made so that everyone in the Air Force, if they saw something, they would notify Madrid, the General Staff, but over time, it gets lost, they no longer remember that it exists, there are cases, they are no longer sent to Madrid, they stay in an archive, if any report is made, well the Civil Guard went through the same thing, that is, they sent us some cases, I have here, for example, a photo that the Civil Guard sent us, they gave us, this, this, it is not that it looks very good, but this is someone who did a photo of some lights that could be a UFO and the Civil Guard.
David Cuevas.- Where were these photos taken?
Joan Planas.- Well, look, it says here on the back, from San Pelayo de Trevillas in Luarca, Asturias, in 1981.
David Cuevas.- Yes, they are very blurry photos.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes. Black and white is not clearly visible.
David Cuevas.- It is impossible to know what that is.
Joan Planas.- Exactly, it is not clearly visible.
David Cuevas.- The interesting thing is not so much what appears in the photo, but who sent it.
Joan Planas.- Exactly, that is, the Civil Guard found out about this, they went there, they interviewed that person and they got a copy of the photos and gave one of the copies to us.
David Cuevas.- OK, Joan, how do you plan to work together with the Air Force in regards to this collaboration? If I say any word that you consider not correct, please correct me. Is this a sensitive subject?
Joan Planas.- No, look, we… Ballester, above all, who here, as I said, went to Madrid a lot, began to contact the Air Force Public Relations Office.
There was Commander Ramón Álvarez Mateus. They became, well, friends from going so much, on the UFO subject. This commander was meeting every day with the Army Major, that is, he spoke to people who are interested in the UFO subject, who since it is secret want it to be released so they can investigate what we have and that, well, that on one hand.
And then, after so much pestering in different places of the Air Force, they started to move. And whoever had the file in the airspace section, which was where the file was, was another colonel who also did a lot, because he wrote a report to the General Staff, to the General Chief of Staff, saying, listen, we have this here for laughs, it is useless. There are many people who are interested, but since it is secret we cannot show it.
Do something to get the secret out. That would have to be declassified and shown, because there is nothing of sufficient importance, neither for national security, nor for anything, so it would have to be released. And of course, among the different ones, the subject began to move in the General Staff.
And then, the JEMA, the Chief of the Air Staff, passed the subject on, he took it out of the General Staff, passed it on to the Air Operations Command, the MOA in Torrejón, which had just been created at that time. And he passed it on to the MOA General Staff to the intelligence section. In the intelligence section was Lieutenant Colonel Ángel Bastida, and he was in charge of the UFO subject, which he had no idea about, and they brought him the file cabinets from the Air Staff with all the documentation that there was, which was not much.
Pa-ta-pam, here we leave it for you, and take care of this, with an order from the Chief of the Air Staff, that this had to be looked at, reviewed, and if it could be declassified, then it should be declassified and he should prepare the pertinent documentation to be able to declassify.
David Cuevas.- Originally, they gave him everything there was, and he was the one who had to filter and decide what was declassified and what was not.
Joan Planas.- In the end, practically everything they had was declassified.
If you want, I’ll tell you about it later. But the files and all that, if people believe that the Air Force had that there as a secret, and nothing, nothing, nothing.
Vallester spoke every day with Bastida or with Rocamora, who was the successor, with Álvarez Mateus, and sometimes you saw the lack of interest. They found things in units in lost drawers. Why? Because there was lack of interest.
On the other hand, many researchers believe that that was the super secret, and I think, no, total lack of interest. I swear to you that there are still cases in lost archives out there, from the Air Force, that have not been touched for years, and surely there are reports in some of these archives. But the lack of interest, oh, now you go looking for things in the 60s or 70s, there gathering dust, because someone has asked, and they don’t do it.
David Cuevas.- It’s an administrative job, if you don’t take the necessary interest…
Joan Planas.- And also, what happened, the declassification, why did it take so many years? Because they had other priorities in their work, and they were always short of people. We said to Bastida and Rocamora, how is the declassification going? Well, look, I was able to get this file out, but now I have maneuvers, I have this, I have that, I have this, and I can’t dedicate myself again to looking at declassifying another file until a month or so. For that reason, because they had other priorities, if they had put a person, exclusively for the subject, and to get it out, well, that was it.
But no, he had all his normal work, and also, the UFOs. It was secondary.
David Cuevas.- At what point did you decide to create a help commission, in which there were a number of civilians, who began to develop their parallel investigations?
Joan Planas.- We saw, more or less, talking to them, above all, as I say, always Ballester, who was the one who maintained direct contact, the way they were handling things, which was done well, but they didn’t know much about where to go, because they had been given, bam!, take it!, get it out!
David Cuevas.- The mess.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. So, Ballester saw that, and said, something has to be done. And he wrote a letter to General Chamorro, who was the commander in chief of the MOA, and told him, look, we are from an organization founded in 1957, that is, we have been seriously involved in the UFO issue for many years.
David Cuevas.- In this case, he used the CEI.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes.
David Cuevas.- We will talk about that later.
Joan Planas.- Yes, we were from the CEI, both he and I were from the CEI, Ballester and I, so… And then he told them, well, since we have much more experience than you, if you think it is appropriate, we can advise you on the subject. Ballester said that to General Chamorro, in a letter.
David Cuevas.- And isn’t it in that same letter where Ballester proposes a pre-contract?
Joan Planas.- No, no, no, no, that thing about the pre-contract is that… Ballester said that, that if they wanted us to collaborate, to advise, they should send it.
And Bastida, when he saw the letter, said to Ballester, oh, you don’t know Chamorro, he’s going to say no, he’s going to say no, because he was a very strict person, very strict, I know from details, that we saw in the 6 years. Ballester wanted to speak directly with Chamorro and he never, never let him until he retired. So yes, they met, ate, talked.
Why? Because I wanted to be neutral on these issues. Because apart from us there were other people who asked, who found out that the UFO issue was moving and asked. And then General Chamorro, in order to be neutral, neither with one nor with the other. So… No…
David Cuevas.- Well, excuse me. Yes. Neither with one nor with the other, there were those who listening to this could debate and say, well, some of you were given the information and others were not, so there was a decision.
Joan Planas.- It was not a direct decision, let’s say. They themselves saw who was more serious and who was less.
David Cuevas.- But they decided who they gave the documentation to and who they didn’t.
So that with that documentation you could do the relevant research and try to help clarify some of those cases.
Joan Planas.- Exactly, clarify as much as possible, because I’m telling you. Then Chamorro goes and accepts.
Bastidas stayed, wow!, because he already told us that Chamorro would almost certainly not accept. And he told us yes, okay. So we say, give us a little, some information about the cases.
We will look to see what that could be and you do. I mean, there has been a lot of talk about the famous cover memorandum that appeared in the declassified files. That it was a summary of the case and if there was any explanation or not.
That wasn’t our idea, that was Bastida’s idea. I mean, we, well, many times, we gave, hey, this could be or was, we had the explanation of the case.
But in order to avoid getting involved, they may not have included what we said in the summary where they put something, because they did not want to get involved at all.
David Cuevas.- In specific cases, because in others those explanations do appear.
Joan Planas.- In others, we, perhaps we said one thing and at the end in the cover memorandum report they put another.
David Cuevas.- In other words, they took into account or considered the final decision as information.
Joan Planas.- They did everything. In other words, that was how it was. We cannot be blamed for anything.
David Cuevas.- Let’s analyze things. The issue of the pre-contract that we have skimmed over.
Joan Planas.- Then that happened. Of course, the collaboration. Of course, to collaborate Chamorro asked permission from the Chief of Staff. On his own, I tell you, he was a very strict person. He could not do that, no matter how much of a lieutenant general he was. And the head of the MOA had the Chief of Staff of the Air Force as his superior. He asked for permission. Hey, they told me yes… and the other said okay. So, any collaboration with universities, with whoever, the Air Force is seen to make contracts or something like that.
David Cuevas.- Yes, a collaboration contract.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. So, as with other things it was done like that, they asked the legal advisor to make an outline of what a contract on advice on the UFO issue could be like. One that is official or a document. Of course, the legal advisor made that four or five pages there. And he said, man, yes, of course, that’s it. Chamorro, Sequeiros, who was the GEMA, saw that and said, this is too serious, too much pomp for something that, and in the end, we already told them, man, where are you going with contracts and signatures and all that?
David Cuevas.- I mean, it wasn’t a proposal from you.
Joan Planas.- No, no, no. Also, labor.
David Cuevas.- Then it was hinted at, eh?
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, when I read this, a labor contract for what?
David Cuevas.- No, it appears in a famous…
Joan Planas.- Look, the UFO issue has never brought me a euro in my life, if anything the opposite. And my wife and my family can tell you that. I have spent the money to go places, make things, photocopies, whatever you want, and I have spent the money. It hasn’t brought me a cent. In the end… Nothing. Well, all that was done by the Air Force. Of course, they, like with other things, other collaborations, made a contract, so they talked about it. But then they saw that it was something… And we also told them, hey, too serious, something too protocolary. And in the end they saw it and they themselves told us, well, look, there is a collaboration like that between friends and that’s it.
David Cuevas.- So the idea came from them.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes.
David Cuevas.- No, but Joan, this is important because there is a series of information. There is a famous television debate between J. J. Benítez and Ballester Olmos, in which Benítez brings out that famous letter from Chamorro to Sequeiro.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes. And that letter does not exist.
That letter, the one Benítez showed, was a draft. The authentic one that was sent and made, which I have, was different.
What he had… Benítez and we assume who gave it to him, was a draft, a previous draft that said something strange. And then, when we saw the final one, we said, damn, what happened here? What Benítez said is what it says here.
David Cuevas.- So Benítez got the letter from somewhere else and showed it by surprise.
Joan Planas.- We assume that it was the second GEMA (Chief of Staff of the Air and Space Force).
David Cuevas.- Let’s listen to that moment.
“I don’t know the content of the files. You don’t know everything. But, man, please, how can you say that you don’t know the content of the files when I have here a letter from November 2, 1992, signed by General Chamorro, commander in chief of the Torrejón air operations command, to General Sequeiros, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he says that it is not good for Mr. Ballester Olmos y Planas, of the CEI, to make a contract or agreement with the Air Force to be able to work on the declassification. Really, says General Chamorro, it would lead to a bad image of the Air Force. In exchange, you will be provided with copies of the reports once they are declassified, because, you say, they have helped you with information. They have helped you with information. You have tried to make a labor contract with the Air Force. Please. This letter is from General Chamorro. Well, that is a distortion. I offered in August 1992 a collaboration with the Air Force. And, in fact, the Air Force applied a very formal procedure, and even went so far as to draw up what could be a pre-contract. Naturally, neither the CEI nor its collaborators nor the MOA thought about that at all. It was simply about the possibility of being able to provide information. And that was it. The pre-contract, naturally, came to nothing. Well, let’s summarise. Your position, how do you see the situation at this moment? The situation is that we investigators are having access to information that we have been looking for for years, where we can find something of value, and the Air Force’s process is absolutely impeccable. Juanjo, what do you think of the situation? Well, that they are miserably taking us for a ride.”
David Cuevas.- Well, well, the issue of the pre-contract has already been made clear. Let’s move on to another issue that has been very controversial, and it is that group of collaborators among whom there were several people with, let’s say, pseudo-aesthetic or denialist ideologies, like Javier Armentia and many others, right?
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, I was not very… I’ll tell you clearly, I was not very happy with those who…
David Cuevas.- Please, tell us.
Joan Planas.- No, I’ll tell you, Ballester was the one who set up the group, he said, well, we need to study cases, we’re not going to study just the two of us, we need someone else.
Borraz, I used to work a lot with Borraz, who is from Hospitalet, and he was a perfect guy, okay, perfect, Borraz, and then Armentia came out, in the end Willi Smith came out from the United States, he was the last one…
David Cuevas.- He was the one who leaked all the information about those groups.
Joan Planas.- Of course, he got very upset with Ballester, and in the end it seems to me that he gave everything he had to Benítez, I think, right?
David Cuevas.- Yes, and Benítez released it in 2009…
Joan Planas.- He released it, yes, yes, yes.
David Cuevas.- I don’t remember.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, I have it.
With Willi Smith, I wrote to him and he told me, and he said, hey, Ballester, put pressure on Ballester, because that man is in a… I mean, okay, I have always been in the middle, and that is that, in some things I have classified and in others I have not. I am going to tell you now things that I have said to Ballester, a bit like that, but I have said them to him.
David Cuevas.- Well, you are independent people, he can have his vision and you yours, and I am talking to you right now.
Joan Planas.- There are people, people who have given me reports and information, to me, because they have said no, and do not give them to Mr. Ballester, who personalizes his figure too much.
David Cuevas.- When you talk about people, what are we referring to? People from official organizations?
Joan Planas.- Also, also.
David Cuevas.- Or to…
Joan Planas.- No, no, to some people from official bodies.
David Cuevas.- We are talking about military personnel…
Joan Planas.- Also, also. But that, all that happened already…
David Cuevas.- From the army…
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, all that happened almost when I was already leaving the subject.
David Cuevas.- At the end of the 90s.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. OK. When I was already leaving the subject.
David Cuevas.- And that information or that documentation, what was its nature?
Joan Planas.- Well, from UFO cases to… Even information, other information. I don’t want to go into too much detail.
David Cuevas.- Well, allow me, I have to ask you.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, naturally. But that’s it, they didn’t want me to share that with Ballester. Because if not, they would have already given it to him directly, they told me.
David Cuevas.- And what they claimed was that…
Joan Planas.- That he was very personal. He wanted to appear everywhere. He was the figure. I’m saying what they told me, eh? That he was the figure, that he did everything, that he was the main one. And that they didn’t like that way of being or doing things.
So, they told me, if you want, we’ll pass you some things, well, fine. I was already leaving the subject because it was already at the end of the 90s. The declassification was also already finished. More than anything I left the subject.
David Cuevas.- Yes, the last case I think is 99.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. There are cases from more than 2000, I think, or 2001, there is also something, but…
David Cuevas.- But not declassified, I think.
Joan Planas.- Notes in the service books of… I was already talking about discharge and control. But also things appeared from cases already declassified.
New information appeared later because we were searching. We ordered them to search around. Hey, look for this, look for that.
And there were already declassified cases and additional information appeared about those cases.
David Cuevas.- And how did you know where to look?
Joan Planas.- Well, where? No. Well, we knew maybe the unit.
David Cuevas.- Aha, okay.
Joan Planas.- We knew the unit and we were bothering people…
David Cuevas.- By letter, I suppose, right?
Joan Planas.- For example, look, there is a case, I’ll explain it. In 1976, I think it was, a case happened in EVA 7 in Puigmayor in Mallorca.
A radar case. Well, there was no knowledge of that case. And suddenly, during the year 92 or so, when we urged Bastida and Rocamora to ask the units, and this was done twice, eh, twice, circulars to all the air force units to look further in the archives, that surely there were lost things for them to send, to declassify.
And a letter comes out from the head of EVA 7, who was there then, in 90 something, saying, yes, there is a case, on such a date, such a date, such a date, in the year 76, here on the radar. Just mentioning that, the date and that there was a case. Bastida himself, when he received that, said, damn, he tells us that there is a case, but he doesn’t send it to us, if we don’t have it.
And Ballester said the same, damn, what’s going on. They asked him a thousand times, hey, send it to us. It didn’t appear anywhere.
We don’t know where the lieutenant colonel got that from, and if he had it, he didn’t send it to us. And what’s going on with that? Well, we know that that case exists, because they themselves told us so, but it has never appeared. The Talavera Real base case, the famous one from 1976.
David Cuevas.- I have interviewed the main witness, José Manuel Trejo, and the document, by the way, the declassified document, is rubbish, eh?
Joan Planas.- Rubbish, there isn’t any.
David Cuevas.- There are only press clippings.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. There is no information. Where is the information on that case? Since there were certain problems and shootings and everything, who knows.
David Cuevas.- There were many shootings and in many places.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. Who knows where they put the report in the end. I suppose they made a report on that.
Where did they put the report in the end? We don’t know. We don’t know. And we were there insisting.
We know from people who were there that when they started shooting, they went out, it was at night, they were sleeping, the others went out with the gun in their hand to see what was happening. In other words, people who told us ourselves.
In other words, a lieutenant colonel, who was a lieutenant at the time and was there, and he told us I went out with the gun to see what was happening.
David Cuevas.- He entered the Real.
Joan Planas.- Yes. And that’s it. Year 76, I think it was November 76.
This report has never appeared either. There are cases, like that, there are cases. There are cases. That are supposed to be lost out there, who knows where.
David Cuevas.- OK. Continuing with the declassification, because many possible questions will arise, OK? But there is a moment in which, in that debate that we mentioned before between Ballester and Benítez, Ballester said that you did not know the content of the file.
Something that, later, has been shown not to be true when that content of the file that was provided to you, you provided it, as the case may be, now he is pointing out a series of folders to me.
Joan Planas.- It’s all there.
David Cuevas.- Because it was said that something was not known that was known, and also in great detail.
Joan Planas: We knew the information partially. Partially. They didn’t give us all of it. In other words, we did know partially. Because of course, to analyze the case a little, we had to know something. But we didn’t know it completely. In other words, once it was declassified, they gave us all the information anyway. Sometimes they sent the file to the Public Relations Office to declassify it, and on the other hand they gave us a copy of the same file without the stamps. They made two copies, maybe. One for us and another for the Public Relations Office. The Public Relations one has the declassified stamp and all that, and maybe ours, in some cases it does, and in others it doesn’t. Why? Because they sent it to us more or less at the same time, when the thing was already, let’s say, declassified. But, do you understand? Are there some other things that we have that were not declassified or that nobody knows about? Well, I can confirm that yes, that exists. They are not cases, eh? They are not cases. Internal information from the Air Force. I mean, that’s it, there are more than a thousand pages.
David Cuevas.- More than a thousand pages?
Joan Planas.- Of course.
David Cuevas.- And why hasn’t that been made public?
Joan Planas.- Because it is internal information, people who wrote letters.
Not… high up. When I say people who wrote letters, I’m not talking about, for example, if you wrote or that, because that stayed in Public Relations. But before, in the 60s, at the beginning of the 70s, everything did go to the General Staff. And there are letters from that time that yes, that are in the internal information. Afterwards, from the 80s onwards, it stayed in Public Relations. I mean, that’s no longer… I mean, letters from other people, well, no.
David Cuevas.- So that people can get their bearings. When we talk about internal information and letters…
Joan Planas.- They were reports between them saying… Hey, making arrangements. Hey, there is this case, there are cases, well there is information inside. Hey, investigate this or that. Opinions of generals. Do you understand me? Things like that. It is not much, but there are some small details. There are small details. Because there are comments… That is why it has not been published.
There are comments, for example, about people. That people look bad. Do you understand me? It has come out there.
I can mention something to you, because it has been published. For example, about Benítez. There is, for example, a report.
A note. More than a report, it is a note saying… Look what Benítez does. Man, what a face the guy has. Of course, they are not going to publish that.
David Cuevas.- Yeah, but this is very interesting.
Joan Planas.- Of course. Because when… Because, for example, look, this comment referred to a case that I asked about. It was 1987, here near Sabadell, where I live. According to Benitez, there was a general blackout.
Here too. Because the power station failed somewhere. And according to Benitez, UFOs. The UFOs had caused the blackout and military planes had taken off. And I, of course, immediately asked. And I sent what Benitez had published. Well, I sent it. Nothing had been detected on the radars. Nor had military planes taken off. Nothing at all. So, of course, among them… Among the correspondence… Of course, I asked the Air Force. And they said, hey, this man is asking this. He talks about radars and planes. Who are they asking? The heads of the radars. And the heads of the planes that go on alert. Hey, look at that date. Let’s see if there’s something. To answer my letter. And then, of course, when they see what I sent them, what Benitez said. And there was absolutely nothing of all that. Well, one makes a comment. To say, wow, look at what Benitez says. What nerve the guy has to say this. When there is absolutely nothing true. Something like this, a note like this is not declassified. Nor is it released. To say that a person is a nerve.
David Cuevas.- Let’s pause for a moment on this, because this is very interesting. When you review this documentation, because internal documentation was varied and in both directions, and just as there were military officers who apparently explained to you the nerve that Benítez had according to your words, there were others who said exactly the same about Ballester and you. So, what is happening here? Why do the military officers suddenly start to take sides in favour of some or against others? And that begins to change.
Joan Planas.- Well, I cannot tell you that. Why, some take sides and others. I suppose, it is my opinion, that they see the seriousness of some and the seriousness of others.
David Cuevas.- But there were some who were pro-Ballester, pro-Joan Plana and others who were pro-Benítez.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But of course, the pro-Benítez people, the majority of the questions and cases, like one famous person who sent a letter saying that in Bilbao, the Bilbao area, the F-18s had taken off, if I remember correctly, to chase a UFO and I don’t know what. And of course, they check that from people close to Benítez who ask that and they look at the radars, they look at all the reports and there is nothing. Why didn’t it happen? And of course, when the guys in the air force see that there are many things, that certain people always ask them the same thing and that doesn’t exist, that it hasn’t happened, well, they say, well, those aren’t serious at all.
David Cuevas.- It’s been 23 years since that declassification ended.
Joan Planas.- Many, many.
David Cuevas.- Given what we are discussing, isn’t it possible that there was a sort of divide and conquer? I mean, maybe. It is a theory that some colleagues like Manuel Carballal have and it consists of the fact that the army could have used you both to its advantage. What do you think about this?
Joan Planas.- I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Look, I’ll tell you, for example, Lieutenant Colonel Roca Mora, he retired as a colonel years ago.
David Cuevas.- Enrique Roca Mora. He is located.
Joan Planas.- Yes, in Murcia, right?
David Cuevas.- Yes. In the Murcia area. I didn’t want to give too much information because it is being recorded. Yes, in the Murcia area.
Joan Planas.- It is very extensive. I won’t tell you exactly where. Bastida has passed away, Bastida and Ballester reached a point where they were close friends, apart from the UFO topic they talked about families, work, this and that.
David Cuevas.- About everyday things.
Joan Planas.- Yes, close friends. Absolutely everything, like any friend with another friend. Yes. I mean, apart from the UFO topic.
And they had dinner or lunch at one of the houses, or on several occasions, many times, at Bastida’s or Roca Mora’s house. Or they went to eat at a restaurant. In other words, close friends.
Sometimes they met at a lieutenant’s house and the UFO issue wasn’t even mentioned. They talked about other things. I mean, like any friend. I’ll tell you one thing. I spoke to them on the phone a few times. I wasn’t going for work reasons. I couldn’t go to Madrid like Ballester. They were… sure, I can tell you, Ballester, for example, all the meetings, all the phone calls, all that in writing. Everything. I mean, there are what we can call diaries, with dates and everything. I called so-and-so, about this, this, this, this. He told me this, this. Tomorrow I’ll call him again. All this is in writing.
David Cuevas.- Who could get those diaries?
Joan Planas.- Ah, that exists. And with that, talking to them and all that, you see the way, do you understand? Personal. And then you see the thing.
And I’m telling you, that thing about whether they preferred some or preferred others. If they talked to us. I received a letter from Manuel Carballar, for example, or from Benítez, on this subject.
I don’t know how to answer them because I’m going to send them to take a breath, they told us. Likewise, but…
David Cuevas.- And I don’t think exactly that.
Joan Planas.- Well, and worse things, and worse things. I’ll tell you, and worse things. But of course, who had to sign the letter at the end? The general.
And the general, those direct things about sending someone away, not… No, he was a strict guy. After Chamorro it was Togeiro. Neither.
And finally, Domínguez Palacín. That thing is really dirty. They were serious people and they didn’t want to sign letters that said go away, with the question that you have asked us.
So, it was done a little more diplomatically.
David Cuevas.- Why do you say that there was a bit of dirty talk?
Joan Planas.- Because Domínguez Palacín, when he was a captain, in 1968, in Valencia, the CEONI, which belonged to Ballester Olmos at that time.
David Cuevas.- The research group.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. The CEONI was a research group in Valencia on the UFO issue. They held some conferences at a round table, and he was invited, and he went to Domínguez Palacín, who was a captain, and he was invited and explained a UFO case that had happened to him in the area of Mallorca, when he was on a plane.
We don’t have a case either. And Mr. Domínguez Palacín became lieutenant general, head of the air combat command, and the MOA passed on to MACOM, the air combat command, responsible for the UFO issue. We asked him, naturally, listen, you saw something in 1968 and your report is nowhere to be found.
And he sent us packing, us, who were collaborating with them, and he knew about our collaboration, because he signed the declassifications and everything. And he told us that he wasn’t going to tell us anything, that he didn’t want to know anything about that subject. In other words, it’s really dirty for a person who saw a UFO in 1968 to come out to talk about it, he was a captain, because they told him off.
When he came out, it was in the press. And in Madrid they hadn’t given permission to go out to the colonel of the Valencia base and the captain to tell anything. And there was, you see, a fight.
But of course, now the guy was a lieutenant general. He could tell whatever. If the subject was declassified, it was almost declassified.
Well, even then he didn’t tell us anything.
David Cuevas.- Do you know if there have been similar cases of people who have told something, either publicly, or perhaps some journalist, and who have then been reprimanded?
Joan Planas.- Me. Nobody else that I know of, nobody else.
As a civilian, in 1981, I wrote a letter to the Air Force asking for information about what they had stored. I admit that I wrote a bit like that, as it was the beginning of my UFO career, let’s say. A bit inconvenient saying, hey, let’s see, answer things a bit…
David Cuevas.- What are you hiding? What are you hiding?
Joan Planas.- Something like that. And they sent me to the Civil Guard. In other words, I had to go to the nearest Civil Guard headquarters to testify about my criminal record. And as far as I know I was the only one. Even Benítez was interested then, when he found out, to see what had happened to me, he was interested. I have a letter saved from Benítez asking me for information about this, from that time.
David Cuevas.- Joan, I know you don’t give interviews. How are you? Are you comfortable?
Joan Planas.- Yes.
David Cuevas.- Good. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that you’re comfortable to ask you some questions. Let’s go back to one of the, let’s say, most controversial topics. UFO declassification. Group of collaborators.
What is your opinion, more than authoritative, about that group of collaborators whose investigations were, in some cases, never better said, quite important with regard to the explanation that was left black on white when it came to explaining certain sightings?
Joan Planas.- Look, I wasn’t very happy with some of the members of the group, let’s say.
David Cuevas.- How for example?
Joan Planas.- I don’t know. I think, for example, Armentia is fine, more or less fine, but there was someone else like… I just don’t remember who was there more, imagine.
Apart from Borraz, Will Smith, but there was someone else that I wasn’t very happy with. I couldn’t tell you now. I could look, but who knows where I have it. And it’s not that I’m very happy with… For me, the group was a bit biased towards finding an explanation for everything.
David Cuevas.- Of the deniers
Joan Planas.- Let’s say that. Denier skeptics
.
David Cuevas.- And when did you let Ballester know this?
Joan Planas.- Well, letting him know directly either, but saying, them saying, this case could have this explanation and saying, well, it seems to me not. For example, in the case of the Bardenas Reales, I have never agreed with the explanations that Ballester has given, which they have given two different ones. I mean, the last one and everything, the last one was that it was a tractor, it seems to me that it was on a nearby road. I tell you no. That it wasn’t a tractor.
David Cuevas.- What other explanations do you disagree with? Those that were included in the reports.
Joan Planas.- One of the cases that I have been investigating, I will tell you, despite having left the subject, is the case of November 11, 1979, the Manises case. I found something that I passed on to Ballester and we published it, because it is known that there was a beacon that gave off a siren and we did not know where it came from.
David Cuevas.- Yes, Ballester wrote to me to ask me if I could…
Joan Planas.- I found some French information that showed a beacon with a siren, in the end, on the same day, but it turned out that it had nothing to do with it. It was a coincidence, in the south of France, in the Mediterranean too, of a sailboat accident. And they put the beacon up.
Of course, as at the beginning I got the information that it was a beacon in the Mediterranean, the same day I said, damn. But after researching it, I found that it was not the same. I continued researching and I am not very happy with the explanation.
David Cuevas.- The explanation, but more than declassified, there is a lot of confusion with this, with the explanation of Fernandez Peris, which was published in his book of Manises, which talks about the famous chimneys of Escombrera and a series of other issues…
Joan Planas.- The chimneys of Escombrera, I tell you, are known by all civil and military pilots, all, all. Including both Lerdo and Fuazu. All, all know them, because they have met more than once, they have seen them more than once.
So, to give that explanation, man, that some day a special circumstance can be confused, because there is some fog, some thing, knowing that it exists, but you can be confused, it is possible. But in that case I do not believe it.
David Cuevas.- Taking advantage of your sincerity, let’s see, do you necessarily think that it was necessary to recruit a group of civilians to help provide an explanation when what many demand is that this declassification had to have been clean enough not to include a series of additional explanations that come, I insist, not from the army itself, but from a group of civilians?
Joan Planas.- Yes, but I’ve already told you before, the explanations that we could give were often ignored.
David Cuevas.- No, but beyond that, the way of proceeding, that the army agreed to include some of them, is what smells a bit strange, Joan. And declassifications are not normally done with civilians who collaborate, but rather that army itself…
Joan Planas.- If they accepted our collaboration. We sent them the results of what seemed to us, we gave them to them. Whether they used it or not, was another thing.
David Cuevas.- But do you think that was necessary, a declassification of documents, that’s the question?
Joan Planas.- Well, I think that… Let’s see, if they didn’t have any idea, why didn’t they have any idea?
David Cuevas.- Yes, but they could have limited themselves to declassifying the information, which is what was requested, not including explanations, which, by the way, were later investigated by the office. None of them interviewed the original witnesses, etc., etc.
Joan Planas.- That’s what we wanted to be done.
David Cuevas.- But it wasn’t done. And yet it was included as a conclusion.
Joan Planas.- It wasn’t done. There were cases that we, and even the lieutenant colonels, Roca Mora, for example, wanted to do that, go and talk to witnesses and that.
David Cuevas.- To re-examine the case.
Joan Planas.- Yes, but of course, money, time, and as I said before, there were other priorities in the air force, so as to devote time and money to these secondary things.
David Cuevas.- There are those who consider that this way of proceeding, with this type of conclusions, is a kind of small botched job. I don’t know if you agree.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes.
David Cuevas.- Thank you!
Joan Planas.- It’s that in part… In part I consider that the thing was a bit botched, because it was not done perfectly as it could have been done. The cover memorandum that in the end disappeared and was stopped, do you remember? The final reports no longer appear, the famous cover memorandum.
Why was it stopped? So that the declassifying officer wouldn’t have to work so hard. Not for anything else.
David Cuevas.- Yes, he could have saved himself from it from the beginning.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. But in the end someone, some…
David Cuevas.- Because in some cases there was a need to give…
Joan Planas.- Lieutenant General Chamorro, who was the first, said that it should be done this way to make it a little more serious. In other words, to make a summary there, to put a bit of a cover… And of course, if Chamorro said so, who was the boss, then it was done.
David Cuevas.- Where is there a boss?
Joan Planas.- Of course. It is exactly what you just said. You told us, the lieutenant colonels to us, when we said things, and they told us, but Chamorro is up there, where there is a boss.
And Togeiro arrived and said, hey, that’s it… We have to go faster to declassify. How can it be done faster? Well, instead of wasting time to make two or three pages of summaries and everything, come on, that’s it. And it was like that, for no other reason.
And today I heard at that time that, of course, since it was our thing, Ballestier’s and mine and whatever group it was, well, it couldn’t be. And for that reason, no, it was stopped to speed up the declassification process and not waste so much time. That’s the reason.
David Cuevas.- Let’s look at this from a different perspective. And it is the perspective of the witnesses who lived those experiences, those sightings that appear reflected in the declassified reports. What face do you think a witness has? Because sometimes they had military training, they had thousands of hours of flights behind them.
When do they find that a man from his house establishes that what this man could have seen is Venus because it turns out that it was aligned in a similar way using an astronomical catalogue?
Joan Planas.- Well, but there are cases that are like that. I mean, that’s the thing, there are cases that are like that. Others may not, but there are cases that are like that.
Of course, if you… I’m going to tell you something, for example. I’m interested in the most specific, most consistent cases. For me, a distant light at night can be anything.
On the other hand, if you give me a light that, in addition to being seen, has been detected by radar, or has been seen by a plane that has passed nearby, then I tell you, okay, fine, I’m interested.
David Cuevas.- The case of Lorenzo Torres, for example. I want to remember that it doesn’t appear in the declassified documents.
Joan Planas.- No, no, no, exactly.
David Cuevas.- Why?
Joan Planas.- I don’t know if… We know that Iberia already has it in an archive. We asked for it I don’t know how many times and they said no.
David Cuevas.- There are many people who hear this who will think, they will think… Jova, how curious, that the most powerful cases that fit what you ask, which makes perfect sense, are not declassified. And we have a person who has recounted it on numerous occasions, we can say that the case is highly unusual.
Joan Planas.- The Lorenzo Torres case, which was, I think, if I remember correctly, from 68.
David Cuevas.- Yes, yes, one of the first. At the aeronautical level.
Joan Planas.- I suppose that there must be a report on one or two pages…
David Cuevas.- He talks about there being a report that they later put pressure on him, etc., etc.
Joan Planas.- I already know that.
David Cuevas.- Well, what he says.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes. We know that Iberia had a very small archive. Why very small? Because they were old cases. From the 60s to the beginning of the 70s.
Later on, almost no. And… We spent a few months pestering… And in the end they told us no. No and no.
Because they themselves told us that what those reports contained was not very important. It was a matter of… But they did not want to release it. And that’s it. And we were left without taking it out. And one of the cases that could be there, because it happened at that time, is this one, that of Lorenzo.
David Cuevas.- Could there have been cases that were not declassified because they could be considered to have to do with national security? Let’s give examples of invasion of airspace, of some type of foreign aircraft…
Joan Planas.- All the files that reached the Air Staff that were passed on to the operational air command were all declassified.
David Cuevas.- Could there have been any that were not passed on to the Air Staff so they could be declassified?
Joan Planas.- I don’t know about that. We don’t know about that.
David Cuevas.- But you have spoken to people.
Joan Planas.- Yes. I’m going to tell you one thing. A general told us that he had seen the files long before they were declassified when there were still only 40 or 50.
He told us there are several files, some of them, very few, he told us that the witnesses are very important people. And to release that could make those people look ridiculous. I think so because maybe this general saw that the cases could be something known and if that person in the report said it was something unknown he would be made ridiculous.
For example, if it was known for sure that it was Venus, for example, and that person said, well, I don’t know what it was, and then it was discovered that it was Venus and you say, damn, one of them was a minister. Of course, a minister, that it was fatal for a minister to confuse Venus with something else, well, he told us that there were some cases that looked very bad, but I don’t think so, it’s just that I don’t know.
David Cuevas.- Well, if he told you that he knew it, he knew it, he’s not going to make it up. Those cases didn’t go through the filter and declassification.
Joan Planas.- A minister, as I told you, who was precisely the minister of the air force, that is, lieutenant general of the air force.
David Cuevas.- Who was he? Well, this has already expired, this has already expired.
Joan Planas.- Carlos Franco Iribarnegaray, according to what this general told us, there was a case in which one of the witnesses was this one, this case has never appeared, if it existed because later something happened, I tell you that also that other things that this general told us were confused because we saw it later so that this case would not be confused with something else, that could also be because he told us many years after he had seen it, that was a general who was one of those who when Benítez went to ask was the one who took care to cross out names and give it to General Galarza so that he would give it to Benítez later he went, it reached the general, I don’t know if you know who it could be, you can imagine it because of course in the days of that time and later but it is that when Benítez went to give it to him they gave it to him because Galarza wanted it. David Cuevas.- Galarza has a very good relationship with Benítez, perhaps not as good as the one he had with Ballester, but that good relationship existed, as a result of which there was a first declassification of 12 files.
Joan Planas.- No, no, no, no, there was no declassification anywhere, it was a personal delivery, hey look, I’m going to tell you, I’m going to show you, you’ve heard, so you must have seen it.
David Cuevas.- Yes, the famous signature of Benítez, I asked Benítez about that subject in an interview.
Joan Planas.- That is what Benítez signed when they gave him the documents, it is a third report, Benítez signs a certificate that says: “I certify that I will not use the names of people or the documentation that has been provided to me by the Air Ministry, nor do I hold this department responsible for the veracity of the information provided to me.” In other words.
David Cuevas.- What date is it?
Joan Planas.- It says here that he signed a document stating that he would not use the names of the people or the documentation before half a year after he published the book, he could not use the documentation.
David Cuevas.- If you like, let’s listen to what Benítez said about this subject, when we asked him in a previous program…
Joan Planas.- He’s going to tell you a long story, but here it is written, the Air Force document
David Cuevas.- Let’s listen to it:
“Juanjo, there is a document that was published a few months ago, a document that causes quite a bit of controversy among fans of the phenomenon and it is a document that is published in the Enigmas magazine, it is published by Manuel Carballal and we would like you to explain to us what the reason for this document was, because we imagine that there must be a logical explanation since Galarza himself sent you a letter to thank you for the treatment of the reports. Well, the document says the following, subject Mr. Juan José Benítez López, journalist correspondent of La Gaceta del Norte I certify that I will not use the names of people or the documentation that has been provided to me by the Air Ministry nor do I hold this department responsible for the veracity of the information provided to him. Madrid, October 20, 1976 and has your signature, Juanjo.
Yes, and I simply point out a fact. Is that signature mine? That is where we wanted to go, because of course, the story doesn’t quite add up, so we said to ourselves that this has to be clarified somehow. Juanjo, what’s going on here? I plan to clarify it at some point.
The only thing I repeat, insist on and point out is to say, is that signature mine? Well, we’ll need a graphologist, won’t we? Yes, I’ve already analysed it. And what has the graphologist decided? Well, if you’ve investigated it, what is your conclusion? Well, it’s not easy that someone has manipulated that signature. For what purpose? For what purpose? I can’t hear you.
For what purpose, Juanjo? Well, I don’t know, maybe trying to ridicule me, trying, I don’t know, to cut the grass from under my feet, who knows. I mean, I repeat, the intelligence services are not as stupid as they seem and they foresee many things in the medium and long term. But it doesn’t make much sense, you were saying it a moment ago, it doesn’t make much sense that they give me some documents to a journalist who they know is going to publish them and also send me a series of congratulatory letters, let’s say, at least the treatment has been correct and on the other hand, I don’t know, they make me sign a paper saying that I’m not going to use it.
That is to say, there is a contradiction here. Well, it should be clarified because, as you say, Juanjo, it didn’t make sense to us that this document had been published. So, well, it’s clear on your part, that is, you deny that this signature is yours and that the document is logically authentic.
No, I’m not saying that the document is false, I’m saying that my signature does not correspond to my signature. But then you didn’t sign a similar document, which is what we’re getting at, because that’s what we want to clarify, because of course, if Galarza writes you a letter saying that he agrees with the treatment of the book, what’s a document of this type doing? It doesn’t make sense. Well, maybe it’s because I didn’t sign that.
Well, that’s the point. I think your listeners will have understood perfectly what I’m trying to say. Yes, more or less.
I imagine that we would also have to determine and know the original focus of this message and try to find out more about its origin and whether someone really forged your signature or not. Maybe that, a graphologist… This is very serious. I mean, they have taken an Air Force document and have put a forged signature so that, in the end, it ends up being published.
I mean, this is not nonsense. Juanjo, let’s see. Man, it’s a crime.
Let’s see, I also invite you to take a look at that document and tell me if at some point, somewhere, in some corner, there is some seal of the Air Force, something related to the Air Force. Yes, a letterhead. There is a letterhead, it says Air Force Ministry, up there.
Well, I can assure you that I can get these letterheads without any difficulty. If I know someone within the Army, it can’t be that difficult. Of course, of course it’s easy.
Juanjo, don’t you have any theory as to why they were able to carry out a maneuver like this? Well, I’m already pointing it out, right? There’s always the possibility of keeping something that, well, who knows, having something that at a certain moment could harm another person. I insist, they are very diabolical. Well.
That document, I suppose you know, when did it come to light? This document came to light approximately four months ago. 2008. Don’t you find it strange that from 1976, which is supposedly signed by me, until 2008, is not a long time? Why is it coming out now? Just when you were going to publish the letters.
But not that, but how were they going to know four months before that this maneuver was going to be carried out? It doesn’t matter, that’s been prepared. Or he may be prepared so that at a certain moment, if someone wants to cut my throat, he tries to cut my throat.”
David Cuevas.- And you have to understand that that signature is not his.
Joan Planas.- The signature, I’ll tell you. He signed several identical papers. Of course, the signature from one paper to another can always differ in small things.
Because if I give you two of my signatures now, they certainly won’t be exact. They will look a lot alike, but not 100%. Maybe 95, 96, 97.
David Cuevas.- Okay, perfect. Since we’re being honest, let’s take off our innocence in a suit. Do you really think that Galarza, Lieutenant General, gives a journalist two files to keep in a drawer? Really?
Joan Planas.- No, I don’t believe that either.
David Cuevas.- Don’t you think it’s a formality that has no logic at all?
Joan Planas.- That was a personal delivery.
David Cuevas.- What for? So that Benitez would read it and not publish it? To a journalist from the Gaceta del Norte who published books on UFOs?
Joan Planas.- Everyone under General Galarza was unhappy with that delivery. Everyone.
Everyone. They didn’t advise him to. But he, who was the boss, did what he wanted.
David Cuevas.- And knowing perfectly well that it was going to be published. No, man, let’s see, Joan, let’s be honest. Let’s not tear our clothes.
Joan Planas.- And even more so falling into Benitez’s hands. If you think he’s not going to publish it, no.
David Cuevas.- Man, of course. He already had a track record publishing information related to UFOs. So, we are going to shake off our innocence a little, perhaps. Because a Lieutenant General does not give a journalist two files to put in a drawer.
Joan Planas.- And he goes after the general and tells him that he is not happy with what he has done. Because there was a lot of fuss within the Air Force. But afterwards.
At that time, there was General Galarza and the general chief of the Air Staff. But there was the Air Minister. Still.
Who was Franco Iribarnegaray. Precisely. And he said to General Galarza.
Hey, what have you done? And he asked him for explanations. And the other had to send him a report explaining what had happened. Why? Because it was something that was not… And then General Galarza blamed him.
He told Benítez that, although in other places he seems to say yes, in others he says no. And Benítez, for example, there is a letter that tells him that if he wishes to take me to court, I am willing to do all this. Benítez told General Galarza.
When he reproached him for having written the book.
David Cuevas.- Well, having written that book after having published some of those files… In the press. In the Gaceta del Norte.
Joan Planas.- In the press, exactly.
David Cuevas.- Perfect. Declassification.
Joan Planas.- Were there people? So, that was a personal delivery. Of declassification, no.
David Cuevas.- OK. No, no, well, it is a way of defining… Don’t you agree? Perfect.
Joan Planas.- The fact is that there is only one declassification from April 1992.
David Cuevas.- The fact is that a general gave two files to a journalist knowing that he was going to publish them.
Joan Planas.- And later the other general gave him two more.
David Cuevas.- The million dollar question is whether a pure declassification was better done, in which a journalist limits himself to publishing what he is told, or the other one in which there were a series of subjective interpretations.
Joan Planas.- Galarza was going to give the reports to Benítez without crossing out a single name. And that is what I have said, the dissidents who were downstairs before giving it to him took a marker and crossed out everything, the identities.
David Cuevas.- Well, but that is logical. You are not going to publish. That is clear. Not even Benítez would have made it public.
Joan Planas.- That was also done to us.
David Cuevas.- Today with data protection it would be unfeasible.
Joan Planas.- We, for example, with the declassification, we have not been witnesses like that. Some of us knew it, but others did not.
And we don’t know. Some of us may have asked for it and they told us. Not to go, because we haven’t been there. But most of us don’t know. I, for example, can tell you something else. About another declassified case.
In Valencia, in 1973, if I remember correctly. That case of a mirage, which apparently was Venus. That case of a mirage that…
David Cuevas.-My God!
Joan Planas.-Yes. That case of a mirage that they saw… I had it before, this case. Why did I have it before? Because a distant cousin of mine was doing his military service in Valencia, at the Manises air base. And he was the one who typed up the report.
Ah, friend! Ah, friend! And he, of course, was very struck by that. And instead of making an original and a copy as they asked him to, he made an original, a copy and another copy. And he kept that copy.
He took it home once he was discharged. When he found out that I was into UFOs, he called me on the phone. Hey! I have this! Of course, the names of the two Mirage pilot captains were there.
Because, of course, it was a carbon copy.
David Cuevas.- And two Mirage pilot captains mistook a UFO for Venus? But, Joan, this is very strange. But it is possible.
Because there are two of them, right?
Joan Planas.- But it is possible, it is possible. Well, they were on the same plane, right? Not on a different plane.
David Cuevas.- No, but there are two, four eyes, one different from the other.
Joan Planas.- Well, I have that case from the early eighties and it was declassified in the nineties. And without names, of course. But I already knew two names because that distant cousin passed it on to me and brought it to me.
David Cuevas.- Did you get to talk to the pilots?
Joan Planas.- No, no, no.
David Cuevas.- I would have loved to see the look on the pilots’ faces when I was talking to you and said…
Joan Planas.- No, it’s just that, hey, there’s one thing. It’s very difficult to talk to them.
And even more so without higher authorization.
David Cuevas.- Well, we were talking about a military declassification.
Joan Planas.- Well, but of course, now who knows where they are. In 1973 they were captains. Now, if they’re not already at the top, they’re already retired.
David Cuevas.- I get the impression that they’re not going to be very much in agreement with Venus’s verdict. Man, people who have thousands of hours of flight behind them.
Joan Planas.- This explanation was one of the cases in which Willie Smith criticized Ballester the most. And they were the two main cases in which Willie Smith said it couldn’t be Venus. Do you remember who gave the explanation? Well, it could have been Borraz. It could be.
David Cuevas.- It’s just curious, isn’t it? Some people who listen to us will ask. That a person, let’s call him Borraz, let’s call him Willie Smith or let’s call him Armentia, can determine what a man has seen without having contacted the man.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, but of course, you look for this man, of course, it depends on the years that have passed, it is very difficult.
David Cuevas.- There was an intention, be honest, there was an intention.
Joan Planas.- No, no, no, no. There wasn’t. We didn’t.
David Cuevas.- If there was no intention to talk to them, the rest are excuses.
Joan Planas.- No, yes, but we, for example, with these ones in particular, no, but with others, yes, and they told us no. The authorities told us no. Fernando Cámara, from 1979, and others.
Another one whose name I won’t tell you, who also from 1979, no. Miguel Lens Astray.
There is one thing about Miguel Lens Astray that very few people know.
David Cuevas.- Please.
Joan Planas.- I won’t tell you.
David Cuevas.- Well, I also have information about the Lens Astray case.
Joan Planas.- OK, maybe it’s the same.
David Cuevas.- It may have something to do with it, because I have made it public and I can already say, it may have something to do with electronic warfare.
Joan Planas.- It could be, but no. It could be, it seems that when he got off the plane, there was an American there who told him not to give importance to what had happened. In other words, the American could have known that it was something like the electronic warfare defect. Well, it could be.
David Cuevas.- I have the complete report, and when I say complete I mean complete, from Ballester on the Lens Astray case. And I have seen some of the letters between different people giving their opinions, putting certain information that does not appear in the declassified report. Why is there information that is clearly relevant that does not appear in some highly unusual declassified reports?
Joan Planas.- Well, I don’t know.
David Cuevas.- But you know that I am not saying anything stupid.
Joan Planas.- In some cases, there were papers that were misplaced, and we said, hey, that paper is there and it should be removed as additional information. Well, yes, but one day we will do it. What I mentioned before.
David Cuevas.- Do you know that there was any report that remains classified that for some reason they did not want to release?
Joan Planas.- I have already said it before. Everything that was in the archive, as far as we know, was removed. That it could exist, that I told you before. That there are cases in units. Sure, in some general staff of some air region, in a warehouse lost somewhere, that there are cases. I am absolutely sure. But everything that reached the air general staff and then the MOA, everything was removed.
David Cuevas.- There is a famous list….
Joan Planas.- Because they say that if there is something that affects national security it will not be declassified. There was nothing. Because all the cases with Mirage and all that, all the cases with airplanes or something like that were taken out.
David Cuevas.- There is a list that I think Carballal got, that when compared with the cases that were recorded, with those that were later declassified, there were missing cases.
Joan Planas.- The lists were so primitive and so badly done, that when they were reviewed, everything was updated, because the list changed. There were lists of those that were repeated cases, cases of the same case on different dates. And we rectified many things.
Because the one who had made a mistake with the date, I’m going to put another one. Oh, oh, you don’t know the things that were done wrong. And that we tried, Ballester even put pages in the archives of the air force.
Making photocopies to declassify, they left the back of the pages. They made the photocopy of the front and left the back page. And Ballester saying, hey, but this is declassified there and there are two pages missing from the back, please.
And since the others took it that way and didn’t do it, he made photocopies of the back, went there and put them in. So that everyone who could consult it could see it. In other words, he made decisions for the Air Force, let’s say.
David Cuevas.- And I appreciate your sincerity.
Joan Planas.- There was a file from 1968, big, that had to come out when it had to be declassified. Because more or less an order was followed, more or less.
David Cuevas.- One of the first, theoretically, right?
Joan Planas.- And it came out very late.
David Cuevas.- Why? Because there was missing data. No, there was missing data.
Joan Planas.- What’s up? A general saw it, man, it’s here because we have to review it before declassifying. He took it home, moved house, took it to Seville or I don’t know where and didn’t return it. It’s that clear.
And what happened? We were saying… Please. Does that sound like a lie? Well, it was already like that. We were saying, hey, and this case… Holy crap, but I sent it to… So that they would declassify it. Everything was ready to be declassified.
David Cuevas.- But Joan, there were statements by Ballester Olmos saying that the army assignment had been absolutely impeccable, it had been rigorous in its entirety. Listening to this and obviously removing blame from someone from Ballester. Wasn’t that the case?
Joan Planas.- There was a lot of botching in the middle. And then what happened? Because of us asking for this so much, the whole case had to be photocopied again to declassify it. And it came out late because of that.
Because everything had to be done again because a general had taken it. So other times, Lieutenant Colonel, hey, make me a photocopy of all this for an Air Force soldier. And the other did what I told you.
The back didn’t come out, that didn’t… The other didn’t notice. He sent it to be declassified and things were missing. And that’s how it was done.
I’m sorry, that’s how it is. And whoever wants to think that things have been done very well, well no.
David Cuevas.- Do you want to make it clear that it was, let’s say, due to absent-mindedness, lack of interest, and not due to an interest in hiding information?
Joan Planas.- No way, no way, no way. Total lack of interest because they have other priorities in the army. They were always short of personnel. They have a lot of work, they lack personnel, and they also had to deal with declassifying the UFO issue. Something that is totally secondary for them, something that the person who was commissioned to do that had no idea about.
David Cuevas.- I mean… OK, the CEI issue. We mentioned it before. In the interview that I had given to Péra Redón, and he was sincere, and he was a little disappointed by the use that was made of the name of the CEI. Mainly, he points to Ballester Olmos.
Joan Planas.- Yes, I know what it’s about, I know what it’s about. Because both of them contacted me and talked about when certain things happened, and that’s what he must have said about Pedro. Tell me, tell me.
David Cuevas.- Even the CEI, in a meeting, decided to expel Ballester Olmos from the association. What do you know about this?
Joan Planas.- Very little, because I hardly ever went to the CEI at that time.
But what happened is that, for example, when they talked about the contract… The famous pre-contract with the Air Force. That documentation exists and that was not used afterwards.
David Cuevas.- Do you have it?
Joan Planas.- I have everything. I have everything. I have that, with notes from the Air Force themselves, notes in the margin, in pen saying this would have to be changed and put that.
And then another definitive one, and in the end it is not that, it was not used.
David Cuevas.- Are you going to show it to me?
Joan Planas.- We’ll see.
David Cuevas.- I will try to behave well until the end of the interview.
Joan Planas.- So, when they talked about that, that there would be a contract, Pedro said, hey, I am the president of the CEI. I would have to sign that contract. I am the president of the CEI. And what we were saying before, Ballester’s personalism, he said, no, but it’s that I’ve been in charge of the whole matter. And I’m the director of investigations at the CEI. I’ve been in charge of the whole matter. And there was… The two of them spoke to me and there was a significant friction. In the end, since the contract was not made, nor had anything to be signed, well, nothing happened. In the end, there was another declassification… Of course, there was another one, or it was something similar.
David Cuevas.- Why?
Joan Planas.- Because the CEI sent a note to the press saying that the declassification of the UFO subject had been completed, without taking Ballester into account. And when Ballester saw the press release saying that the CEI, members of the CEI had done the declassification and all that, had intervened in the declassification as collaborators and all that, well… Ballester went through the roof too. David Cuevas.- Well, but Ballester used the CEI as an old association to contact and convince the executors.
Joan Planas.- Well then there was also the important friction and… And Ballester said that he could no longer and he left the CEI and they could expel him and everything.
David Cuevas.- I mean, but Ballester didn’t… Well, I don’t know if you were included here, but… You didn’t consult the CEI if you could use its name to try to establish contact with the Air Force and…
Joan Planas.- Of course. If you listen, to make the contract they asked us for all the official documents of the CEI as a legal association. And we asked Pedro, Pedro made us a copy and we sent it to the Air Force.
David Cuevas.- But Pedro was aware that the CEI was used.
Joan Planas.- Well, he’s the one who made us the… The one who has all the official documents of the CEI, like the constitution minutes, all that, the president of the CEI had it and he made us a copy so that we could give it to the air force that had asked us for it.
David Cuevas.- And why was Pedro Redón so unhappy with this?
Joan Planas.- Well, that’s it, because there wasn’t much talk about the CEI, let’s say.
David Cuevas.- Okay. That the CEI was used internally to convince the army, but then the main role fell to… Ballester.
Joan Planas.- Because I too, man, I have seen many articles in this book that I showed you before the government, all in English, and many articles out there, that yes, sometimes Ballester writes articles about the declassification and sometimes he mentions me and other times he doesn’t even mention me. I mean…
David Cuevas.- The declassification ends, a few years go by and there is a group of people or an organization that presents itself as a group of people that begins to send information to “El Ojo Crítico”.
A group of people that present themselves as a group of military personnel or people who have had a relationship, in some way, directly or indirectly with the declassification, who are angry and do not agree with what was done and how it was done. Which is something that goes very much to the point of some of the things that you are commenting on. Eh… I don’t know if you’re paying attention to this information, it was published…
Joan Planas.- Something is…
David Cuevas.- What do you think about all this?
Joan Planas.- Everyone does what they… If there was a group that wasn’t happy or wasn’t satisfied with what it is, well, they could say whatever they wanted, of course. Of course. Just like I mentioned things that I wasn’t very happy with either.
David Cuevas.- Since we’re talking about all this, is there anything, Joan, that you might regret? Not so much because you did it, but because it was also done in your name or it was done in partnership with you during the whole process of declassification, before, during and after, what would you like to clarify or what would you like to make clear?
Joan Planas.- Wow…
David Cuevas.- Your face tells me yes.
Joan Planas.- Well, something, but not much either. I am quite satisfied… Quite, I don’t mean everything. Quite satisfied with everything as it was done.
David Cuevas.- Anything? What thing?
Joan Planas.- I would have to look at it carefully. That means that many years have passed.
David Cuevas.- But think about very specific details, about some specific cases, right?
Joan Planas.- I would have to look at it, I tell you, 20, 30 years have passed…
David Cuevas.- Yes, I was referring more to more general aspects.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes, but there are things that I would have to look at, but now I don’t remember and maybe then I would remember them, because many years have passed since then and there are things that I don’t remember now and maybe I would have something to discuss or say.
David Cuevas.- What did you like most about how the declassification was carried out?
Joan Planas.- What I liked most was the way Ballester did it, contacting them and the way he tried to convince them that the declassification had to be done.
David Cuevas.- And what did you like least?
Joan Planas.- A little about how the declassification was done, as I mentioned, that it could have been done much better, but due to lack of resources and personnel and everything, it was done a bit botched. It could have been done much better. There are other governments that have done it and have done things a bit, it seems to me, a bit better than what was done here.
This is Spain, the country of botched jobs. There are other countries that take things a bit more seriously, even if they are UFOs and maybe if they have to declassify something to look good, then they do it a bit better. To look good, public opinion comes in. Here it is done like…
David Cuevas.- Okay, let’s get into theories, because when you ask some colleagues… I’ve seen that you have some books by Fernando Rueda here, for example. And people talk about…
Joan Planas.- There are many others on similar things.
David Cuevas.- Yes. And when people talk about the subject, he told us, and it seems very symptomatic to me, once there was a discussion about the validity or non-validity of declassification, the interests or not, and he said, Jová, I’m listening to you and I honestly don’t know what you’re complaining about, because I’ve been trying to get ballots declassified for 50, 70, 80 years, and there’s no way, and the only declassification as such, declassification process that there has been in Spain, of documents, has been related to the UFO issue.
Joan Planas.- As I said before, the way Ballester contacted them, talked to them, convinced them… It is like that, but… If Ballester had not made these arrangements, absolutely nothing would have happened.
David Cuevas.- But well, there are many other people, from many other fields, who have made more and more arrangements, and have not achieved anything. Because UFOs, yes, and other things, no.
Joan Planas.- When someone wrote a letter to the air force, asking for things or something like that, the majority, not all, but the majority told us, Hey, this one wrote, this one wrote asking for this, or wants to know that other thing, what do you say to them? Of course, they answered what they thought, if they answered, because many times we knew that they did not answer them.
Because… no, no, it is that… they considered it nonsense and did not answer them.
David Cuevas.- But to consider it nonsense, a lot of resources were invested during six or seven years in declassifying a good group of files. And here we enter the world of theories, right? Or speculation.
There are those who consider that this declassification was done, let’s say, under a certain American interest or order.
Joan Planas.- No. And even if I know, the Americans did not intervene at all.
David Cuevas.- I ask the person, an author responsible for the declassification.
Joan Planas.- Absolutely not at all, I tell you. The thing started with us wanting to write a book about the government and the Armed Forces Civil Guard on the UFO subject, of course, to find out more, we knew that they had some files, so to contact them and from there contact, especially Ballester, who is the one who contacted directly, to convince them, to talk to them, listen to this or that. And so it was. That is, neither Americans nor anything else.
David Cuevas.- Another of the legs of the table that has been talked about is the interest before, during or after with regard to declassification. Then I will ask you about the UFO issue in general and the secret services.
Joan Planas.- The only time we consulted the CESID and they told us that they had no idea about the issue, they had nothing, they told us and that was it. That maybe in the future they might be interested, but nothing more.
David Cuevas.- What is your opinion?
Joan Planas.- I can tell you more about this issue.
David Cuevas.- Yes, please.
Joan Planas.- The CESID sent a person to the Air Force to ask how the UFO issue was in order to be able to answer us. Because the CESID had no idea about the UFO issue. They sent a person from CESID to contact the MOA so that the MOA could explain to them how the UFO issue was or something like that so they could respond to our house.
David Cuevas.- What are we talking about? What year are we talking about? More or less.
Joan Planas.- From 93.
David Cuevas.- In other words, in the middle of the declassification process.
Joan Planas.- Yes. At the beginning, basically. Yes, in 93.
We sent a letter to the CESID asking if they had anything and a questionnaire of 15 or 20 questions. And to answer all that, well, they… Because of course, the person who spoke to the person from the CESID told us.
David Cuevas.- After having spoken with so many military personnel, with so many people, some with a higher hierarchy than others, do you get the feeling that they know more about the UFO issue than they pretend to say?
Joan Planas.- They don’t have a clue. That’s clear. If there is a report like that, they filed it away. If there were many, they didn’t either.
That’s something else. Many pilots and many military personnel, in order to avoid getting into trouble, did not write reports or anything at all. I mean, because that’s what it is afterwards. There is teasing from friends, colleagues. Look, there is a declassified case that was very clear. It’s a meteor, if you look for it. It’s one of the last declassified cases. From the 90s.
And they communicated it to MOA just by chance. And of course, they had communicated it. Well, here you go, fill out the file, the questionnaire. And the other guy answered, hey, if I know you have to make me fill this out, I won’t tell you. Do you understand?
David Cuevas.- More mess. Of course. Civil servants.
Joan Planas.- Well, that’s it. Many, that’s it, now. Imagine before. Many, in order to avoid getting into trouble or something like that, didn’t make a report. Or they didn’t inform their superiors.
David Cuevas.- That is, there are many more cases of high UFO strangeness. Of which we have no record due to avoiding unnecessary paperwork.
Joan Planas.- Someone who dealt with the UFO issue had seen one. And it was not in the report either. Someone who you may not know, because he was the last one who dedicated himself to the UFO issue. The last colonel.
David Cuevas.- Can you say his name?
Joan Planas.- Well, I don’t remember now. He was so important that the poor guy… It was already… In the 90s it was the end, when Rocamora left and all that happened. And now, to be honest, I don’t even remember a name. And he has told us.
That in the Jerez area, when he was a lieutenant, in the 70s I think it was also, because they saw a UFO, that he saw it from the ground, it appeared on the radar, they saw it from the plane, they made a report. The report didn’t appear anywhere either. So… It must be lost in the Southern Air Force region.
David Cuevas.- Joan, in an interview, which is more than 15 years old, that you gave to Manuel Carballal for “El Ojo Crítico”, you closed it in a way that has had a huge impact on me. I don’t know if you remember it. In which you tell what you have of what has been declassified and what you have of what is not known.
Joan Planas.- We have all the information. You could say that, well, maybe they have something that we don’t. But I would say that we have ninety-something percent of what the Air Force has.
David Cuevas.- What hasn’t come out, what hasn’t been published…
Joan Planas.- The internal information of the Air Force.
David Cuevas.- Could it see the light of day in some way?
Joan Planas.- They would have to declassify it. Of course. We’re taking a risk if we take that out, I don’t know if it’s been years, and many of these documents are old. But you’re taking a risk, maybe, because, I say it myself, I don’t know what a lawyer might have to consult.
David Cuevas.- At the end, in that last answer, you mentioned that you had an important file of things that were not known that you could basically provide to the highest bidder. You said it like that. Yes. And I have to ask you…
Joan Planas.- Yes, I imagine. That was said on purpose for other reasons that I cannot comment on now. I know it is bad to say this…
David Cuevas.- Joan, you cannot leave me like this!
Joan Planas.- Yes, but it is like that. It was not because I would not have done it. Selling it, for example, as I more or less implied, I would not have done it. In other words… This would not have been done. That had another purpose. There are many things that have many purposes. Secondary ones.
David Cuevas.- Let’s see. Specifically, you say…
“I have all the official Spanish documentation of a military nature obtained up to 2000, especially all the declassified UFO files, as well as all the internal documentation on UFOs from the Air Force. A thousand pages that are absolutely unpublished and unknown as they are not declassified, and the internal personal documentation that consists of hundreds of unpublished pages referring to how the entire declassification process was managed day by day. This is information of enormous historical value.”
Joan Planas.- Yes. Of course. What I was telling you, the internal information of the Air Force and what I think I was saying before about the kind of diaries of all our actions.
Do you understand me? One thing is ours and the other is the Air Force’s. But all together it is information… Wow. Do you see the day to day of how things work? Do you see those little details of how things were done? From disinterest. From our interest. And listen, insisting on one thing and insisting again so that they say, yes, yes, I will do it. Do you understand me? For the gallery it looks one way. But there you can see the internal framework of all things. Everything. But of course, to get that out right now would take up a lot of time.
David Cuevas.- Well, let’s see. A thousand pages are not that many pages. A thousand pages… There are files that have almost a fifth of that information. And maybe not everything, because not everything will be of great interest either. Yes, yes, yes.
Joan Planas.- The internal information of the Air Force, that which is of interest, is little. There is little. Because the majority, well, no… Now the diaries of the management of the whole process, that is…
David Cuevas.- OK. I’ll ask you directly.
Have you not considered making some kind of book that I think would be, of course, would be the appropriate container to explain, let’s say, how that process was? Because you have never… Well, you have published things in Cuadernos de Ufología and in some publication.
Joan Planas.- In Cuadernos de Ufología I presented a fairly long work, very summarized.
David Cuevas.- But also very outdated.
Joan Planas.- Very summarized and censored.
David Cuevas.- What do you mean censored?
Joan Planas.- I had made it longer. There are things that…
David Cuevas.- And who decided to make them shorter?
Joan Planas.- I’m not going to say that, but you can imagine.
David Cuevas.- Uh… You can tell this.
Joan Planas.- Well, the people from the Anomaly Foundation, those who ran the Foundation, who read the work and there were some paragraphs, very few.
David Cuevas.- Mainly José Ruesga and Julio Arca, if I remember correctly. José Ruesga, interviewed on this programme just a couple of months ago. It came from a published interview.
Joan Planas.- It’s not that we’ve been getting along very well for years. Yes, we haven’t for years for some reason other than ufological.
David Cuevas.- Personal.
Joan Planas.- Yes, I’ll tell you later. And they, of course, read the whole work. And there were several paragraphs that they told me that we’re not interested in getting this out.
David Cuevas.- What do you mean no?
Joan Planas.- That’s clear. And I told them Ballester told you, of course. And they said yes, okay. Because of course, who knew all that? Ballester, they didn’t. They didn’t know the whole plot.
For example, one of the things that is censored is what I mentioned before that the CEI made a press release at the end of the decalcification and Ballester…
David Cuevas.- rather disassociating himself.
Joan Planas.- And the air force, Lieutenant Colonel Rocamora also came out saying that we had not collaborated with them. That’s what he said.
David Cuevas.- Knowing Ballester, he must have felt a little bad.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. We already told him. We don’t want them to give us a medal. But at least acknowledge our participation and Rocamora goes and said that no one had collaborated with the air force. And I put that there. Of course, Ballesteros wasn’t interested and they removed it. And some other little things like that they removed. That’s clear. I say it myself.
David Cuevas.- What else did they censor? It’s time to tell it.
Joan Planas.- I don’t remember. Little details. Little details. That was one of the main ones.
There were just a few small paragraphs and one was this one. I’ll tell you one thing. For some time now, since I published what I published in Cuadernos de Ufología, I have it on a pendrive.
What year was it published? 2000. I have it on a pendrive and it was very brief. I can tell you that from time to time I have it on a pendrive. I have taken a copy and I am adding to it by expanding the information.
David Cuevas.- You know that they have the pages of El Ojo Crítico open and there will be no censorship there.
Joan Planas.- Yes, but that is not… I don’t know, dozens of pages.
David Cuevas.- It’s okay. Do you agree to publish in “El Ojo Crítico” if we leave you the length that you consider?
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes. I don’t know if… I don’t know if I will finish it or not. I’m telling you, I am doing it from time to time.
David Cuevas.- Well, but rather than finishing it, you are going to expand it a bit.
Joan Planas.- Based on the work I tried, which had to be long, it was long, but I couldn’t fill it all and it was quite summarized without many names or things or certain details. And now, let’s say I’m expanding it by adding more information, what was censored, for example, also appears and other things, of course. Only between the year, let’s say, the history of the Air Force until 2001. Well, all that, the whole period with all the information I have, I’m more or less doing it, I’m doing it at times.
Joan Planas.- Well, that’s it.
David Cuevas.- He’s showing me the pendrive. I’ll keep it for you.
Joan Planas.- No, no, no. It’s also incomplete. It’s incomplete.
David Cuevas.- Well, originally I completed what you did in your day.
Joan Planas.- No, no, it’s just that there’s something here that’s already expanded. But for example, you see these sheets here, all these sheets I’ve been looking at things, taking notes to incorporate here.
David Cuevas.- Ah, okay. You’ve promised to publish it in “El Ojo Crítico” when you finish it.
Joan Planas.- Do you have the same address as always?
David Cuevas.- Yes, that doesn’t change. There’s also an email. I say this because what you’ve shown me is a pendrive, not a paper dossier.
Joan Planas.- I’m disconnected and I don’t know exactly where I am anymore.
David Cuevas.- You talk to me, don’t worry. We make a pre-contract that won’t lead to anything like Ballester.
Joan Planas.- Roca Mora said that we hadn’t collaborated.
David Cuevas.- How do you feel about that, Joan?
Joan Planas.- Terrible, but it’s also silly to say that when we have letters signed by Lieutenant General Chamorro himself saying that Mr.… Was he his superior? Exactly, that he appreciated the collaboration of Mr. Ballester and Mr. Planas. You tell me, how can you say that? That we haven’t collaborated when there are written letters, which I have, from General Chamorro telling us that. That he appreciates our collaboration. Please.
David Cuevas.- I’ll try to ask Roca Mora. Yes, yes, now. You laugh. It’s very difficult to find him, but oh well. More than finding him, to get an interview. But oh well, it was also difficult for you to do it and here you are. I can promise and I promise that I will try. That is one of the things you say. And let me take this opportunity to say that more people will be listening to this, any of them, have their right to reply, especially Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos. I am looking forward to interviewing him and he does not let me. Well, Vicente Juan, if you want to clarify things, the microphones of the DL file are open for you.
Joan, you have been comfortable, you have been at ease. I think you have said more than you wanted to say.
Joan Planas.- Maybe so too.
David Cuevas.- Well, I can only tell you that the listeners will appreciate it. Obviously there are many topics left to cover, many issues to comment on. If you allow me one last question. Regarding UFO cases, what is your current opinion of those cases that we can consider inexplicable?
Joan Planas.- I think I have already told you this quite a bit before. Are there inexplicable cases? I don’t know the cause or the origin.
David Cuevas.- You said inexplicable. This word is strong.
Joan Planas.- Because they have no explanation at the moment. At the moment they have no explanation. The case that I explained, that I investigated here in Sabadell, in the area of the radar in 1985, there were some very large echoes and they saw the lights of commercial airplanes in this area, they have tried to find an explanation and still no explanation. In other words, there are inexplicable cases at the moment.
What is the origin? I have no idea.
David Cuevas.- Do you reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis?
Joan Planas.- That’s it. I don’t reject it completely, but 90% of the time, yes.
Because I would say, man, if they were extraterrestrials, I suppose they would have made themselves known. Gee. But more openly, I say.
David Cuevas.- Well, that’s it… We’re in the realm of speculation.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes. But that’s it.
If not, what are they? Strange phenomena yet to be discovered? I don’t know.
David Cuevas.- OK, Joan, to finish. Do you want to say something about everything we’ve discussed, about everything we’ve said? Do you want to take advantage of the moment to create something, to say something, to communicate something?
Joan Planas.- I could say that one of the reasons I left the UFO subject was that once the declassification was finished, I needed to rest.
Because it took us years and working with Ballester is very hard, very hard, because every week you could receive envelopes of that size, folio, 3, 4, 5 centimeters thick. You could receive two or three a week and you were so wrapped up that you didn’t even have time for work. And then, well, one of the reasons was that I needed to rest. The declassification had finished, which was one of my objectives, let’s say, now. And another reason was that I was fed up, fed up, fed up with certain researchers, let’s say, who had criticized us and put us down. And when they put us down, I suppose it was mostly out of pure envy, because we achieved something that they didn’t. I mean, I would say that’s it. Fed up with everything, well, I said, well, besides, the CEI was also about to close and I said, well, I’ll leave everything, I’ll dedicate myself to other things that I had already been doing in parallel for many years before and that’s why I didn’t have time for everything. Now I’m more or less retired from that other subject, which I’m not going to say, because I can’t say it. And I needed to rest and that’s why I left the UFO subject. Also, another very important reason, so many years with the UFO subject, and that’s it. What result? None, none. Nothing is known. In other words, the conclusion is the same as 50, 60, 70 years ago.
David Cuevas.- But Redon told me, when I asked him about this, if he regretted all the years.
Joan Planas.- And did he say no or yes?
David Cuevas.- He said yes. I have considered that he had lost a large part of his life behind the UFO subject. Do you agree?
Joan Planas.- I don’t. I haven’t lost it. I don’t think he’s wasted the years.
I don’t think so, no. I’m thinking that he said this.
David Cuevas.- He said it and it was quite surprising and very sad to hear it.
Ruesga doesn’t exactly say that either, but he also has a somewhat defeatist discourse, I don’t know if I should use the word defeatist, but in part yes. Of weariness, of burning out, that you share and share.
Joan Planas.- You get to a point where you don’t get to the end, you don’t get to a final conclusion. And that’s it, but… That’s it.
David Cuevas.- Well Joan, thank you very much. You were saying this before. There were people who criticized what we did. I have done it. I have criticized part of your work publicly and during this interview I have raised my doubts directly, which I know, and you know, that are those of many who are listening to this. And I assure you that in my case it was obviously not out of envy, because I didn’t understand that possibility, but because there were things that could seem irregular and what better than to take advantage of it to ask you about them.
Joan Planas.- We, for example, have found out a thousand things about how Benítez, Carvajal or Manuel did things, for example. Ways of doing things and getting things done.
Listen… To be unpresentable is totally… There are those who believe that the end justifies the means. So, I don’t know, you go to the air force, you go in with the machine gun, you beat them all up and you take the documentation. Of course, if the end justifies the means, well…
David Cuevas.- We are talking about human lives.
Joan Planas.- We have found out about things that the truth is…
David Cuevas.- No, no, they are public. Most of them are public and well-known. In this program I interviewed Carvajal talking about his methods and he told several anecdotes about how he disguised himself at specific moments to get information. This is public, eh?
Joan Planas.- Imitating people and doing a thousand and one things. We know that. We know this because it has been brought to us by people who, do you understand me?
David Cuevas.- Well, radical ufology, as some would say, right? They are like… It is very antagonistic to radical ufology. That armchair ufology is something that you sometimes carry out, right? Well, Joan, as I said, thank you very much for your sincerity. For your honesty and I can guarantee that there are many people who are grateful that you have spoken, I don’t know how long it has been since you last spoke on a radio programme. A long time.
Joan Planas.- No, not that long. I did a programme on Radio Sabadell that they asked me to do for an hour a week. A few years ago.
David Cuevas.- But talking about these issues?
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, talking about UFO topics. I don’t know, maybe seven or eight years ago. But they asked me, they insisted and once a week, well, for an hour I went there and explained cases and things.
David Cuevas.- But is this public on the Internet? Can it be consulted?
Joan Planas.- I don’t think so, I don’t know. I don’t know, I have no idea.
David Cuevas.- For the listeners in Sabadell very well, but for the rest of the world…
Joan Planas.- I have no idea.
David Cuevas.- They hear this everywhere, no one knows. Well, Joan, thank you very much.
So that’s it for the interview with Joan Plana, Crivillé.
What did I say? I think it was worth the wait, right? Classifying the declassification, excuse the redundancy. As it was partly a botched job, it is already quite scandalous, I insist, coming from the person who helped the Air Force itself to declassify those files, as well as other quite tremendous statements that he makes throughout the interview. When he finished, he opened his file for me and began to show me internal letters, the famous pre-contract, letters between one military officer and another, letters between military officers and the protagonists themselves, that is, both Ballester and Joan Plana, parts of Ballester’s diary or diaries, etc., etc., etc.
A new world, totally unknown, which I hope will one day see the light, in one way or another, and which evidently represents, I insist, information that we all, I honestly believe, deserve to know, especially if we have been following everything that the UFO declassification process generated.
SECOND INTERVIEW
That said, let’s get down to business. Why are we here? Well, we are here because when I interviewed Joan Plana Crivillé on July 4, 2022, we had little time, although the interview lasted almost two hours, but there were still many other things that were left unsaid, which, on the one hand, I would have liked to go into more depth, because they were mentioned in passing, and on the other, there are certain topics that I could not ask him about, I insist, mainly due to time issues. What did we do? Taking advantage of the good rapport that exists with Joan Plana, we asked him for a second, shorter interview, obviously, in which we could address the topics that were not discussed, I insist, or in more depth, or new, in the original interview, and he gladly agreed.
So, what we bring you is extra content, let’s say a second part of the interview, this time by telephone, obviously, he from Barcelona, I from my home, which is quite far from Barcelona, and which I consider to contain very interesting things. I’m not going to give anything away, okay? Not everything is told by the interviewee, but a lot is hinted at, and what is hinted at is significant enough to be taken into account. What am I referring to? Well, in the next few minutes you will be able to clear up your doubts with this more than half hour of extra interview with Joan Plana Crivillen, which deals mainly with everything that happened, everything we don’t know about the Spanish UFO declassification process.
Without further ado, now I’ll leave you with the extra content. There are other worlds, but they are in this one.
David Cuevas.- Joan, here we are in this sort of annex to that interview we did a few days ago. Last July 4, 2022. We are on the 8th. And since some things were left in the pipeline.
I wanted to ask you and you have kindly agreed that I can ask them to you. But here they go. The first of them.
The famous IG45. It is something that was mentioned above but was not clear. What exactly is it? And how was it achieved? And thanks to what information was such a document able to be produced?
Joan Planas.- Look, General Instruction 40–5 of the Air Force.
Which was carried out by Lieutenant Colonel Bastidas. It is a questionnaire. It is a questionnaire to investigate UFO observations.
It was entirely done by Lieutenant Colonel Bastidas. It is based on a questionnaire used by the North American Air Force. And the questionnaire used by the CEI.
In other words, he took things from one and the other. From questionnaires. And he made his own.
For the MOA and the Air Force. And that’s where it comes from. We asked him ourselves.
How is it that figures appear here as if aliens were seen? I mean. Because of course, it’s a very strange thing. And he told us that he had included that section.
About whether aliens were seen. Because he had seen that they appeared in other questionnaires. That sometimes there were people who said they had seen them.
Well, he had to include a question of that type.
David Cuevas.- OK. So it confirms that the information that appears.
Reflected. That survey, let’s say. In part it was. Let’s say copied. From the surveys that the Center for Interplanetary Studies used. To do its research.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. We had given him. So that he could see the things that we did. Well, a questionnaire from the CEI. And we had also given him a questionnaire. From the North American Air Force. Just so that he could see how those people worked. And then he. As he wanted to make a questionnaire. Well, it seems that apart from some of the questions. I suppose that it does not correspond to one questionnaire or another. But on his own initiative. Well, he put together more or less what he thought. And I think that this questionnaire. He created it.
David Cuevas.- Another of the topics that were discussed above. In the interview. And in which we could not go into depth. Something was mentioned. You mentioned it very briefly. It is what takes place after… .. Well. The famous conflict. The Ifni War. The documentation ended up at the Gando base. In Las Palmas. What happened with the apparent destruction of UFO documents? At the Gando base. According to your information, Joan.
Joan Planas.- What I know about this subject is what has been published. I don’t know anything else. I mean. I can’t talk much about the subject. Because I know almost nothing. I only know what I know. I think it was published in Ojo Crítico. I think. And I only know that. I mean. I can’t expand on any more information about it.
David Cuevas.- Well. For those who are listening. I don’t know if you can remember what this information consists of.
Joan Planas.- Apparently. When Spain left the Sahara. All the documentation that was in the Sahara headquarters was brought. To the Canary Islands. And it was archived there. And then after a few years, it seems that of course, they reviewed the material to see if there was anything useful to take to the archives in Madrid and what wasn’t useful apparently. It had to be destroyed. And someone, an air force officer, I think he went there because he saw that there was a folder with UFO observations in the Sahara and in Ifni. I think. And I don’t know if there were about 20 or so, I don’t know, I don’t remember, because I read it a long time ago. And then. He asked the superior officer who was in charge of the document review what was done with that. And the officer, seeing that they were things about UFOs and thinking it seemed to him, told him to destroy them. It seems that the officers thought there were too many. There you can see that they were complete reports. There were short reports. And others, and then there were some pages. With some summaries. Of these files and of course he thought: “Look, you know what? Instead of destroying everything, I kept the summary pages. That was what was kept. It took up little space. Of course. And the others that took up more space, which was what should have been more interesting naturally since they were complete reports, he destroyed them. Because he couldn’t keep all the files and that, well, it seems that this officer when he retired, I don’t know when it was because we don’t know his name either, so it seems that he disclosed it.
David Cuevas.- Speaking specifically about information that was published in El Ojo Crítico, we also skimmed over the matter of the GAO. The GAO. Which is the initials. Of Grupo Alpha Omega. It is formed by a series of military personnel. Okay. That is why I wanted to ask you. What do you know about this? Joan. And how far does it go? In your information.
Joan Planas.- Very little was sent to me by some of these papers and what I know is very little. It is seen that they are people, military personnel. Or ex-military personnel interested in the subject who reviewed what was in the army, what had been declassified and were in agreement with some cases and dissatisfied with others. No? And apparently. Because of course they did not give their opinion either. Let’s say because they cannot give it officially either. Because of course as a military person they owe themselves to the orders they receive and that’s it. And then there are some writings and they sent them to some people and that’s it with their opinion, of course with certain cases that seemed to them to be well investigated and the conclusions were good, but in others they were not completely satisfied with the solution.
David Cuevas.- When I commented that this group of people who identified themselves as military, dissatisfied, right? We were commenting on something with the declassification process, and that they begin to filter certain documentation to the critical eye, which also appears published in its day in the magazine Enigmas and in Ufolix, in the book Ufolix, you said, well, that’s what they say, do you have suspicions that perhaps they are not who they say they are?
Joan Planas.- I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t tell you, I don’t know them, so I can’t tell you.
David Cuevas.- You haven’t had contact with any of them, and you don’t know who they are…
Joan Planas.- Well, maybe you have had contact with some of them, but only minimally, and that’s why I can’t draw any conclusions on the matter.
David Cuevas.- And was this person you had contact with a soldier?
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, that’s true.
David Cuevas.- Can you tell me who he is?
Joan Planas.- No, because I’m telling you, it’s better not to touch on him, I’m telling you, I hardly know him, and I don’t know very many things, so I can’t tell you anything either, maybe I’d make a mistake and there’s no need.
David Cuevas.- Don’t worry, okay, okay, I don’t know if you know him personally or…
Joan Planas.- No, no, no, no, not personally.
David Cuevas.- Contact by letter, I suppose, then.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, mostly epistolary, yes, that’s why I say, and very little, that is, that’s why I say that I know almost nothing, or almost nothing about this subject, so I don’t want to rush into saying things that might be wrong, right?
David Cuevas.- Well, and to finish, so as not to abuse your time, Joan…
Joan Planas.- You can continue a little bit more if you want, but well, not much, well.
David Cuevas.- Well, maybe it will depend on the answer you give me next, because I think I have left the best question for last. What happened on May 2, 2008 in Paris?
Joan Planas.- On May 2, 2008? Ah! Well, look, you asked the question… Look, I can tell you that I was in Paris, and that’s it, I can’t tell you much more.
David Cuevas.- OK, if you like, I’m going to read the information that was made public.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, I was there on May 2, 2008, I was just thinking, because a long time ago, I was in Paris, on a, let’s say, semi-tourist visit.
David Cuevas.- OK, I’m going to read what was published in Ojo Crítico number 59, OK?
“On May 2, 2008, an informal, semi-secret and restricted meeting was held in Paris, in which the 14 attendees who were there discussed and exchanged information on the methodology of declassifying UFO documentation in official archives and how to deal with the subject before public opinion at a European level. Most of the representatives of the 8 countries that participated, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and Ireland, were government officials, except for 3 of them who were civilian experts on the subject in their respective countries.”
Joan, were you one of those 3 civilians?
Joan Planas.- Well, I can’t answer that question.
David Cuevas.- Well, it’s been 15 years.
Joan Planas.- Yes, many years have passed, but I can’t answer that question.
David Cuevas.- Is there no possibility that the content of that meeting will be revealed in some way?
Joan Planas.- I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t say anything more than what you have explained that was published, because I can’t add anything more.
David Cuevas.- I’m going to speculate, okay? And you, if you think it’s appropriate…
Joan Planas.- You can speculate, but I’m not going to tell you anything more than what has already been said. So it would be a bit of a waste of time, let’s say, because you have read what is written, all the information is there, and I can’t add anything more. OK.
David Cuevas.- It was said, I’m just mentioning it so that the listeners take it into consideration, okay? It was said that thanks to the information provided at that meeting, okay? Meeting that takes place 9 years after the end of the UFO declassification in Spain, let’s say that the European declassifications of countries like France or the United Kingdom, well, they had or took advantage of certain previous information related to the Spanish declassification when making their own declassifications. Can you confirm or deny what I’m saying?
Joan Planas.- Well, I don’t know, because each country has done what it thought was convenient and in the way it thought was convenient, so I don’t know, I’m not in France or the United Kingdom or anything, if they have declassified things, well, since I’ve been almost disconnected from the UFO issue for quite a few years, I say almost, not completely, I don’t know, because I don’t know many of these things, about these declassifications in European countries like this, I don’t know almost everything, so, if there is anything current, then I can’t comment on it.
David Cuevas.- And one last speculation on this subject.
It could be considered, to a certain extent, that what was discussed at that meeting, or part of the content of what was discussed at that meeting related to the Spanish UFO declassification could have to do, or could have a direct relationship, with what was done in Spain at the level of… what had to do with that declassification process was a kind of experiment. I don’t know if we should do like in the movie “All the Men in the Precedents,” when we interview Deep Throat, and say that if in the next 10 seconds you don’t say anything, we could say that the information is not incorrect.
Joan Planas.- I don’t have a clue, I don’t know what to tell you, the truth is that I don’t know. I don’t know everything about other countries, well, I don’t know, what they have done, if they have declassified, I have read, or I read some time ago, or something like that, if sometimes in the press some news appears, well, I have read it, but I can’t tell you anything else. I could talk to you about other things, if you want, for example, something that became very famous, that I wanted to tell you about the other day, that maybe interested you, like for example, the famous Extremadura Frigate, do you remember what it was?
David Cuevas.- Yes, yes, yes, yes. Tell us a little, Joan.
Joan Planas.- That subject, well, a UFO researcher from here, a Spaniard, received, you see anonymously in writings, where a kind of report, right?, from the Navy, about the observation of a UFO from the Frigate Extremadura, if I remember correctly it was in 1991, I think, it was during the Gulf War, and this report, well, this person published it, he accepted it as true, and well, in addition, together with another, some other friend of his, well, they said, they crossed out UFO, some of the information that appeared, saying that there were some missile launch codes, which you will say to me, what do missile launch codes have to do with a kind of brief report, Telex type, of a UFO observation, right? Well, I don’t know what one thing has to do with the other, that it wasn’t true. When I saw that, I said, this has to be investigated, and I investigated with the Navy and with other parties, and it turned out that it was absolutely a fraud, right? There was no observation, nor was the report falsified. Many of the words that appeared in this report are no longer used by the Navy, they had used them in the past, and the famous codes, which were a series of numbers, if I remember correctly, did not mean anything at all. In other words, the people who published that and went around saying that it was all a UFO sighting by the Navy and all this, were absolutely false, like many other false cases that have been published, with military intervention, or the Civil Guard, or this type of police, and many false ones have come out.
David Cuevas.- Regarding the Civil Guard reports, which we also mentioned in the interview, Faber-Kaiser published a summary of them. Is it published somewhere so that these reports can be consulted in some way? Joan Planas.- Well, more than reports, they were summaries of reports, what they provided to the Civil Guard were summaries of reports. I don’t remember now, I suppose, gosh, the truth is that I don’t remember any place where they were published. I have them because Faber-Kaiser, when the Civil Guard received those reports, which were about 25 case summaries, I was the second person to receive them after a year or so, after Faber-Kaiser, and I don’t remember, well, I think we published them somewhere, but now I don’t remember exactly where, it’s not very important either, but it must have been something that the Civil Guard also had certain reports or summaries of reports.
David Cuevas.- Joan, beyond what you have told me during this interview, there are obviously many topics left to discuss and go into in depth in many of the cases, it is impossible not to host everything, but as for the general intentions of this declassification process, is there information that is still unknown?
Joan Planas.- Well, as I think I already mentioned in another interview, I am convinced that there are reports lost in archives, that is to say that they are there lost in archives that have not been touched for many years and although it has been requested that they search for everything to send to Madrid in order to declassify it, they have not searched for it, they are not going to put four units that are many that lack personnel and do not have time because they already have enough work for other things, they are not going to go into a room full of dust from archives from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s to search, to see if there is some paper among the thousands that there may be, if there is some paper that talks about UFOs. Of course, you ask those people to search those files and after two or three days they send you a description saying no, we haven’t found anything, that it was impossible that they had searched, but that’s it, that’s how things were.
David Cuevas.- Another of the topics we discussed is about that group of civilians who helped you with the explanations of the cases, right? You said that you did not agree with the categorization of some of them. Reviewing the names, because we missed some to mention, there is one of them that I think is the one you were referring to when you said that perhaps you did not agree too much with his participation, which is Juan Antonio Fernández Péris.
Joan Planas.- Well, look, Fernández Péris only with a specific case I do not agree with, it is that everything depends on the case, it depends on the observation that was being dealt with. There are some that perhaps the same person gave an explanation for a case and it seemed totally true to me, just as I gave explanations for certain cases, the explanation that was given was given by me and it was accepted as valid, not in the Air Force, but within the group or in the catalogues that we have. For example, in Ballester we have catalogues of cases involving military intervention and there are many cases, we have many cases and most of them are that, they are not in the archives of the Air Force. And many of these cases that have an explanation, I have given the explanation. I remember several cases of spy planes. I recognized that the type of UFO sighting that had occurred, due to the characteristics they had, some of them in the Sahara in 1975 when the Sahara was later abandoned, well, they were American spy planes, meaning that they were looking at the Moroccan-Spanish border there and I recognized that those were planes and I gave the explanation. We consulted with the Air Force, who did not know, but in some of the cases they recognized that I could be quite right in having identified those cases with North American SR-71 spy planes.
David Cuevas.- Speaking of Fernández Péris, we also briefly mentioned the Manises affair, but I didn’t have the chance to ask you, what do you think happened in Manises?
Joan Planas.- Well, the truth is, it’s a case that has always interested me a bit, despite having left most of the subject behind, and it’s a case that has always interested me and from time to time I still keep looking for information to see if I find something new. I don’t think, in principle I don’t think that it was the refinery in Escombreras, I think they said it was the lights from the gas chimneys, because the pilots are fed up with seeing them, they’re fed up, yes from time to time someone might get confused, but the fact is that the majority who have been pilots for many years know it very well. So for me, personally I don’t really believe that that could be the explanation.
David Cuevas.- Do you consider the Manises case of November 11, 1979 to be an inexplicable UFO case?
Joan Planas.- At the moment I would say yes, at the moment. And in a certain way, in a certain way, and in another certain way perhaps, because several different things took place that night, perhaps some have an explanation and others don’t.
David Cuevas.- There is talk of NATO maneuvers.
Joan Planas.- There it is, no well not NATO, there were many American ships in the area, yes, there were many ships and they could have been doing some electronic warfare.
David Cuevas.- It has also been said that many things happened that night and that the Americans were behind it, as apparently happened in some of the moments related to the Motril case that took place days later.
Joan Planas.- Days later, yes. It is just that we do not know. We tried to investigate it and we did not manage to get to a certain point because we tried to speak with certain people so that they could explain to us some more details and we only knew a small summary, well a small summary, some comments that they gave us, but we were looking for the original source and the original source was not available at the moment and we could not find out exactly what had happened.
David Cuevas.- There is a book that you will read very soon called Electronic Warfare, the Battle of the Magicians by Daniel Balcarcel in which electronic warfare is discussed by someone who works in electronic warfare and some details of the Manises case are discussed.
Joan Planas.- Well, it could be, it could be, I’m telling you, there was an aircraft carrier and several ships from the United States, from the US Navy, in the area between the Balearic Islands and Valencia. The next day some of them entered the port of Valencia. In other words, they could have been there, the Americans are always practising things, wherever they are, with or without permission, and it could very well be that some of the things could have been caused by the Americans.
David Cuevas.- Fernando Cámara himself, when he had the opportunity to ask some questions on a programme of his friend, on the Centre of Mystery, asked if the Americans at that time were a bit like Pedro at home doing what they considered without giving explanations and he told me categorically that they were.
Joan Planas.- Exactly, yes, yes, that was it, that was it. There is a case, there is a case that also has no explanation at the moment that could have been from the same year 79 between the Balearic Islands and Barcelona more or less and the area of Valencia and Alicante and all that area where there is a quite interesting radar observation and in the afternoon at the Air Staff a general appeared saying be careful, warn the civil air traffic controllers that the Americans are flying without any permission throughout the area and could cause an accident or something similar. And that is what they did, now not so much, now things are more controlled but at that time they did quite a lot of what they wanted and without a flight permit or anything they could fly over places where commercial or commuter planes passed and could cause some trouble.
David Cuevas.- About 10 years before there was a case in 68 you said that it was a file that brought you many headaches because it went round and round until it was finally declassified. What was that case? Joan Planas.- What was that case? Well, not now, I think it was one from the Seville area and it was from 68, but now I couldn’t tell you exactly what case it was but anyway, I suppose that if the Seville area goes in 68 there shouldn’t be many but it took a while when, that is, in the MOA they declassified the case, they put all the stamps on it, they sent it to Public Relations so that it could be sent to the Library for general consultation and damn, it didn’t reach the Library and we knew that it had been declassified how come it wasn’t available to everyone and we asked, and we asked, and we asked and it seems that on the way from the Public Relations Office to the Haya Army Library a general had seen the report, it seems that he, I don’t know if he had intervened in some way or was related in some way to that case, he took it and took it home to read it and then it seems that they moved it to another place and the man took the file and didn’t return it. What’s going on? Of course, that file was to be declassified and the man took it away, so of course, we insisted on seeing where that case was that should have been released already and it didn’t appear and they had to do it again, the whole file taken from the original that the originals are separate, photocopy the whole file again and do all the necessary procedures again and they released it again, but months after what it was supposed to.
David Cuevas.- To finish, Joan, there are many people who, listening to this, continue to wonder if there are things missing to know, not so much in terms of the declassified case law but in terms of the way of proceeding with regards to that declassification, that declassification process.
Joan Planas.- Well, yes, there are always some ways in which they acted internally. They wrote reports from one place to another and said, hey, these people are asking us, there are a lot of people who are requesting that information on UFOs be declassified. What do we do? Let’s see, this report is for, let’s see, we’ll ask the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the other one, the Operations Division, I don’t know what, all the internal dealings of the Air Force. There are many things and comments between them. All of that is kept and, naturally, I don’t think it will ever be declassified because, of course, they are internal things that cannot be brought to light at the moment.
David Cuevas.- Any particularly relevant things that you can tell us about?
Joan Planas.- Well, there are always comments, of course, there are personal comments about researchers and things like that. A general also told us that, for example, someone important had seen a UFO that was not known, well, that it appeared in the papers, but of course, it could seem like something strange and not be, and then if that case was disclosed, maybe, as I said, a general mentioned that to us in passing, I mean, we don’t know, we don’t even know the case if it really exists or not, maybe it’s one of the declassified ones, but the person hasn’t been mentioned, well, of course, maybe if that person’s name came out, it would look ridiculous and things like that wouldn’t be worth it, but I don’t believe the internal information of the Air Force, the internal actions, I don’t think that will be made public.
David Cuevas.- And I have to ask you the last question. At some point will we be able to know what happened at that meeting on May 2, 2008 in Paris?
Joan Planas.- Well, I don’t know. If they held it in Paris and the people who organised the meeting want to report on it, then I’m fine with them, because it was a French thing to appear there in Paris, right? Well, that’s it. The organisers are supposed to know what happened there and if they want to report it publicly, then when they feel like it.
David Cuevas.- But on your part?
Joan Planas.- I can’t do anything more about it. Of course.
David Cuevas.- Joan Plana, thank you very much, really, for answering me again for these questions that I left out. We have to continue talking in private, obviously.
Joan Planas.- Yes. Hey, what you mentioned about a book coming out soon, where could I get it? Because electronic warfare has always interested me.
David Cuevas.- I knew it would interest you. No, this is going to be published in…
Joan Planas.- I don’t know if you noticed here in my library, I already have several books on electronic warfare. Didn’t you notice?
David Cuevas.- Not so precisely.
Joan Planas.- They are placed there in the middle and maybe not…
David Cuevas.- Yes, but this is very interesting because it is told by someone, an active military man who works in electronic warfare.
Joan Planas.- Yes, yes, yes. Well, when this book is published, let me know how I can get it.
David Cuevas.- Yes, yes, it will be published, it will be published by Editorial del Ojo Crítico.
Joan Planas.- Tell me and tell me how I can get it and I will try.
David Cuevas.- Yes, take it for granted. Well, Joan, really, thank you very much for attending to us.
Joan Planas: The other day I thought you would ask me about the books I have here in the bookstore and you didn’t say anything.
David Cuevas.- It struck me, Joan, it struck me that there were certain topics not related to the UFO topic that perhaps you didn’t want to comment on.
Joan Planas.- Exactly. This was one and I was surprised that you didn’t ask about it. Did you see some that had covers, well, with a red spine, all red? Yes, I think so. Well, I was thinking of asking these books to see why I have them and since you didn’t, it struck me that I wanted to tell you about it but then I forgot too.
David Cuevas.- Well, hey, since we’re here, if you want I’ll ask you, ok?
Joan Planas.- They are guides to the Spanish embassies abroad. From 1900, let’s see, no, because at first they didn’t put the year on the spine but I think it’s 92 or so, from 1992 until they stopped publishing it. They stopped publishing it in paper, right? In paper. It’s 2011 and I have up to then 2011. From 1992 to 2011. And I thought, he’s going to ask about these books of the guides of the Spanish representations abroad. And you didn’t. And I thought, you’ll tell him.
David Cuevas.- I took a very quick look at the books. I didn’t look at them in a, let’s say, detailed way, right? Time was of the essence and well, you already knew. Well, Joan, thank you very much for attending to me once again.
Joan Planas.- You’re welcome.
David Cuevas.- Thank you very much for your availability when needed. Thank you very much, Joan.
The original in Spanish can be heard at:
