Navy Seal Recruited as CIA Assassin Guarded Flying Saucers at S-4 Area 51
What follows is my two part series of articles originally published on July 16 and July 19, 2009, on Examiner.com concerning the revelations of an alleged Navy Seal who spent time at the S-4 facility at Area 51, which he described as a museum for flying saucers and aliens. The former Seal claimed that guard duty at S-4 was used as a means of “cooling down” assassins used by the CIA to permanently silence government critics and/or remove national security threats.
The whistleblower, Derek Hennessy, used the pseudonym “Connor O’Ryan” in a set of interviews with Lt Col Wendelle Stevens in 1991 that was recorded on video. Hennessy/O’Ryan provided a number of documents supporting his testimony. This was especially important since the Seal claimed that records of his Navy service had been purged from official records in a similar manner to what had earlier happened with Bob Lazar in 1989.
Col. Stevens spent a decade verifying Hennessy’s story and supporting documents before he felt confident enough about their authenticity to come forward in 2001 to discuss his investigation at two UFO conferences in Australia and the US (International UFO Congress). He says that prior to the Australia conference he received a phone call warning him not to go too far in releasing the information, but that only convinced him that Hennessy/O’Ryan was telling the truth.
The subsequent release of the video interviews in 2009 (nearly two decades later), which were edited by Rick Keefe from UFO Hypotheses, provided the general public their own opportunity to hear Hennessy/O’Ryan’s story in his own words. I described some of the contents in my original two part series.
I began to assist Steven’s investigation of Hennesy/O’Ryan after watching the video interviews, researching some of the supporting documentation, and interviewing participants such as Jim Dilettoso, who gave Hennessy/O’Ryan sanctuary on his property where the interviews took place. In my last conversation with Col. Stevens, he said that Hennessy/O’Ryan had re-emerged, but had no memories of his earlier life.
Unfortunately, on September 7, 2010, Col. Stevens passed away at his home in Tuscon Arizona, effectively bringing the investigation of Hennessy/O’Ryan to an end. Now after a decade, it appears that the timing of Col. Steven’s death is suspicious given the renewed public interest in his investigation of trained CIA assassins recruited from elite military units such as Navy Seals.
Seymour Hersch had broken the news of a pool of CIA assassins linked to former Vice President Richard Cheney, as I discussed in my first article. Stevens’ information that these CIA controlled “Black Seals” were rested between assignments at highly classified facilities housing UFO related artifacts, and that Cheney had been sighted there, took on special new significance given Hersh’s revelations.
The six hours of video interviews provide extensive details of life on the S-4 facility, what is hidden there, how assassins are recruited and rested there, and of visiting dignitaries such as Cheney and former Director of the NSA, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. The videos are available in three parts (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3)
I am republishing both articles in the series today since they add considerable information on the historical reverse engineering efforts undertaken in the USA for the development of multiple secret space programs as described in my Secret Space Programs book series. With the demise of the Examiner.com back in 2016, both articles are difficult to find, even using the Wayback machine. They appear in their original form with minor grammatical editing and updates where appropriate [in square brackets].
© Michael E. Salla, Ph.D. Copyright Notice
Part 1 – Testimony of CIA Assassin Recruited from Navy SEALS Goes Online with Documents
On July 13 [2009], the New York Times ran a story about the CIA running an assassination squad using U.S military special forces against foreign terrorists without Congressional approval on the orders of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times story confirms claims by Seymour Hersh in March 2009 that an assassination squad had been created that reported directly to Cheney using special forces personnel.
The covert CIA project was shut down by CIA Director Leon Panetta when he learned of it on June 23. Details of the project were passed on the next day to the U.S. Congress and led to furor over the reports. A statement by seven members of the House Intelligence Committee concerning the CIA misleading Congress was subsequently released.
The covert CIA program allegedly began in 2001 soon after the 911 attacks. The unfolding revelations of CIA death squads using U.S. military special forces personnel coincides with the online release of video testimony of a former U.S. Navy SEAL who said he was recruited to perform 18 assassination assignments for the CIA.
If true, the Seal’s testimony reveals that covert assassinations predate the 911 attacks, and also targeted U.S. citizens. Curiously, the assassinations were related to covert projects Dick Cheney was allegedly involved in when he was Secretary of Defense for George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.
Connor O’Ryan was a pseudonym used by Derek Hennessy who claims in video testimony recorded in 1991, that he performed covert missions for the CIA in the 1980s assassinating enemies of the United States. After joining the U.S. Navy in the early 1980s, O’Ryan/Hennessy claims he joined the elite Seals and was eventually tasked to perform his covert assassination missions.
He said that targets of the assassination hits even included U.S. citizens. He described his 18th and final mission as a sergeant for the U.S. Army Green Berets stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary.
O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s extraordinary claims were investigated over a ten year period by a retired Lt Colonel with the U.S. Air Force, Wendelle Stevens. During his investigation, Stevens was able to confirm Hennessy’s military I.D. and that he was assigned to the CIA performing covert missions. Concerned that O’Ryan/Hennessy may have been part of an intelligence operation to discredit him, Stevens did not release the initial results of his investigation until 2001.
Video testimony of O’Ryan/Hennessy is included in a set of interviews conducted with Stevens released on the internet in 2009. In the interviews, Steven’s discussed documents he had in his possession verifying Hennessy’s covert CIA missions.
One document was written on CIA letter head (see above graphic) with instructions for O/Ryan/Hennessy on his last mission. Steven’s read out the document’s contents as follows:
You are to report to the American Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. You will be received by S.A. Greywolf. As a unit you will proceed to terminate an ex S.A. David T. Johnson.
According to Stevens, the document was O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s final hit order one month before he left his last assignment at a secret facility in Nevada.
Another document is O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s W-2 salary statement that showed he was earning $74,000 for the CIA. Though only a sergeant he was earning the equivalent of a colonel’s salary at the time. Steven’s was able to confirm that the serial number and code word on the W-2 were active through an anonymous FBI source.
In the video Stevens mistakenly refers to the salary statement as a W-4, but a copy of the W-2 is clearly shown [see below].
Combined with O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s recorded video testimony, the documents, if genuine, would be smoking gun evidence that a CIA assassination squad using U.S. military personnel predated 2001 and even targeted U.S. citizens.
To date, neither of the documents has been released to the public. Only video images are available. Independent document authentication still has to be conducted.
The confirmation of the W-2 by an anonymous FBI contact of Stevens is powerful support for the legitimacy of O’Brian’s/Hennessy’s story.
There is good reason, however, to be skeptical about the CIA hit order document’s legitimacy. It is difficult to accept that the CIA would be so explicit in putting on CIA stationary orders to terminate a serving U.S. military non-commissioned officer.
One could reasonably argue that such orders, if put on paper, would be done in a more cryptic manner without the CIA logo. This would be consistent with an Assassination Directive that former CIA Director Allen Dulles allegedly drafted in 1961, and was later authorized by a group responsible for covert operations called Majestic-12.
The alleged Dulles’ Assassination Directive used the cryptic phrase “it should be wet” as a code word for assassinations designed to protect Majestic-12 operations.
If indeed there has been a CIA assassination program that predates 2001, it may originate from Dulles’ 1961 draft Assassination Directive. The directive was allegedly received by the chief of CIA counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton in 1961, and subsequently linked to the President Kennedy Assassination.
If O’Ryan/Hennessy did eliminate a serving Green Beret in Budapest in 1991 as he claims, then the authority for such an assassination may derive from Dulles’ 1961 draft Assassination Directive.
If O’Ryan/Hennessy’s CIA hit order letter is a hoax, that raises an equally perplexing question. Why would Wendelle Stevens, a long time researcher of the UFO phenomenon, be targeted in an elaborate intelligence operation to discredit him with a contrived story about CIA assassins using elite military special forces personnel in 1991? O’Ryan/Hennessy spent an extended period hiding with Stevens and associates while allegedly on the run.
During this time, a series of events occurred that persuaded those giving shelter to O’Ryan/Hennessy that he was genuinely being monitored and threatened to return voluntarily to his program. Eventually, O’Ryan/Hennessy disappeared and was not heard of for approximately a decade when he re-emerged with a new identity, and no memories of his covert activities with the CIA.
If O’Ryan/Hennessy’s testimony is even partially correct, as Stevens’ confirmation of his W-2 suggests, it would confirm the existence of an assassination team run by the CIA prior to 2001. His testimony reveals that even U.S. citizens were eliminated due to agendas of a highly classified covert operations run out of the CIA. O’Ryan/Hennessy himself apparently become a target when he shared his information with Stevens and this may have been related to his disappearance.
For the last nine months of his military service during his final assassination missions, Hennessy was assigned to a covert facility in Nevada called S-4 to perform sentry duty for a highly classified covert project. It was there that he witnessed Dick Cheney arrive one day for an inspection for a project, maintaining the secrecy of, which was related to his earlier assassination missions.
To be continued …
Michael E. Salla, Ph.D.
[Note Part 1 was originally published July 16, 2009 on Examiner.com]Part 2 – Cheney taken inside S-4 to view flying saucers & EBE bodies
Around April 1991, Dick Cheney was taken inside a secret underground facility located in a remote area in Nevada adjacent to Nellis Air Force base to view captured flying saucers and dead extraterrestrial bodies. The startling claims were made by a former security guard at the facility who in October 1991 gave his testimony on video. The guard had documents and photos supporting his claims of working on the secret facility called S-4.
The guard, Derek Hennessy, used the pseudonym Connor O’Ryan in giving his testimony in a set of interviews with Lt Col Wendelle Stevens (USAF, ret.) and his associate Gem Cox. O’Ryan/Hennessy claims he had worked for 8/9 years as a Navy SEAL and performed various covert operations. He said that 18 of these missions were assassinations sanctioned by the CIA or other agencies. During the last nine months of his military service in 1991, he worked at the remote S-4 facility which had stringent security procedures. It appeared that the isolation and security at S-4 helped assassins hide their trail after missions.
O’Ryan/Hennessy described his work on the second level of the S-4 facility. S-4 employed approximately 75 personnel on levels 1 and 2. He said he was aware of a further two levels of the facility, but was never allowed to enter levels 3 and 4. He said that approximately 12-15 personnel worked at Levels 3 & 4. His primary duty was to guard the elevators to them which required three keys, a thumbprint and a retinal scan to open.
O’Ryan/Hennessy described the hangar facilities on level two for storing the seven flying saucers retrieved from various crash sites. There were ten hangar bays in total.
The facility was described as “the museum” suggesting it was designed to store advanced extraterrestrial technologies that had been superceded. He revealed how one or more of the flying saucers would be raised to the surface for a flight test. This would only occur when no Russian or other spy satellites were passing overhead. All testing would stop when satellites were detected.
He also described seven tubes with bodies of extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs) typically described as Grays. A biologist would regularly check the fluids to maintain the right temperature and fluid mix to maintain the bodies. In addition to the photos he showed to two witnesses, O’Ryan/ Hennessy drew pictures in his taped interview describing the facilities.
O’Ryan/Hennessy described the day Cheney visited as around the time when the U.S. was closing military bases at the end of the Cold War. Cheney was accompanied by three other officials and escorted by two base security personnel. He said Cheney only visited the first two levels of the S-4 facility and saw both the flying saucers and the bodies of dead extraterrestrials. O’Ryan/Hennessy said:
I was on level two at the time of his visit … and I watched him go in and he went into the back building and we were called up to guard the front of the hangar areas. … He saw the bodies too – the seven little grey people.
A supercomputer and photo analysis expert, Jim Dilettoso, allowed O’Ryan/Hennessy to stay at his property for a month. Dilettoso said O’Ryan/Hennessy showed both him and Gem Cox photographs allegedly taken at S-4. He saw photos of what appeared to be extraterrestrial vehicles, and extraterrestrial bodies in glass tubes.
He also saw a photo with Dick Cheney standing on a balcony allegedly inside the S-4 facility viewing the area below with the flying saucers and bodies while O’Connor/Hennessy was allegedly on duty. Dilettoso also recognized the former Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (USN ret.) as one of the officials in the photo with Cheney.
How credible is O’Ryan’s/Hennessy’s testimony? The most significant documentary evidence is the W-2 obtained by Stevens [see above]. The control number (45851), Employer Identification Number (95-6593572) and Employers State ID (2464423P) were checked and confirmed by Stevens’ FBI contact.
According to the FBI contact, O’Ryan/Hennessy had been “deprogrammed and reprogrammed” after being taken back in to covert programs by the CIA and Naval intelligence on various covert assignments. The W-2 and numbers can be investigated for independent confirmation.
Furthermore, O’Ryan/Hennessy revealed many details in his video testimony to Wendelle Stevens and Gem Cox about his background and events, that can also be investigated for corroboration. Finally, O’Ryan/Hennessy stayed for a month with supercomputer and photo analysis expert, Jim Dilettoso who along with Cox witnessed his photos and a duty roster that O’Ryan/Hennessy showed him.
Dilettoso also described a bizarre incident that changed his initial skepticism towards O’Ryan//Hennessy’s amazing story. Returning from a 1991 Thanksgiving party that O’Ryan/Hennessy attended, Dilettoso found a package at the inside front gate of his ranch. Thinking it was for him, Dilettoso took it.
When it was later opened, a severed finger was found along with a threatening note directed at O’Ryan/Hennessy to return photos and other evidence of S-4. Together with other strange episodes indicating close surveillance by a mysterious group of people, Dilettoso decided it was time for O’Ryan/Hennessy to leave.
O’Ryan/Hennessy says he decided to come forward after he was told that he had contracted a virulent form of Hodgkin’s disease. Being 29 at the time, and in good health with no history of the disease in his family, he suspected that he was being set up for elimination. In retaliation, he decided to become a whistleblower and release photographs taken at S-4.
O’Ryan//Hennessy’s remarkable testimony, if substantiated, clearly reveals that Richard Cheney while Secretary of Defense, had directly witnessed S-4, and covert programs involving extraterrestrial life and technology. That may explain why George Bush deferred to Cheney during the 2000 Presidential Campaign on a question concerning when UFO information would be released: “It will be the first thing he (pointing to Cheney) will do. He’ll get right on it.”
Alas, after a tumultuous eight years as Vice-President, Cheney never chose to disclose anything about his alleged visit to S-4, and knowledge of extraterrestrial life and technology.
[Authors Note: I thank Rick Keefe for his assistance in confirming details of this article and for editorial assistance. The S-4 Informers video is available online: More information about the video and its production is available at: http://ufohypotheses.com/]© Michael E. Salla, Ph.D. Copyright Notice
[Note: Part 2 was originally published July 19, 2009 on Examiner.com] [An audio version of this article is available at: https://youtu.be/Ed7azb4PQjQ ]