Here is an amazing lecture that touches many bases in respect to the study of
UFOs.  I strongly recommend reading this and hopefully commenting on it.  One
can see the historical, over 50 year perspective from this one talk.  Included
is the lecturer who studied and worked with the late J. Allen Hynek.  Also
discussed are a UFO sighting, the Robertson Panel, Project Blue Book, Battelle,
and a way to classify UFO data.  

Investigating UFOs - Lessons From a Teacher and Mentor Talk given by Jennie
Zeidman November 6, 1999 at a meeting of MUFON of Ohio

If you're lucky, you will have, during your life-time--and the earlier the
better--close encounters of the teacher kind or the mentor kind. These
encounters may well set the course for your life's work; or at the least,
provide a philosophy which will be fundamental to your thought processes
throughout your life. You already know that J. Allen Hynek was my mentor in
ufology, but you don't know that Hynek was not the first, nor in some ways even
the more influential of the two close encounters of this kind that I was lucky
enough to have.

By the Fall of 1951 I was a junior in the arts college at The Ohio State
University with a major in technical writing. I needed to complete my
requirements in the physical sciences. There were two courses to be taken
consecutively, which attracted many arts college students. They were under the
Department of Physics and Astronomy, and probably most of the students who
enrolled thought they would be a snap--an easy way to fulfill the science
requirements. There were no mid-terms or finals. No papers to write. No advanced
math. What could be better? All you had to do was show up every day, take a
10-question multiple choice quiz on the previous day's lecture and reading, sit
through the present day's lecture, and be on your way. The next day, quiz scores
were posted outside the door. EASY! Uh Huh! 

The innocuous names of these courses were General Studies in Physics and
Astronomy One and Two. The prof's name was Cedric Hesthal. He was a short, burly
man with a gruff manner, and many of the students disliked him. I thought he was
terrific. Cedric Hesthal was responsible for my first close encounter--and what
he taught could well have been called not General Studies but perhaps the Nature
of Proof, or a search for the truth, or maybe How to Find the Truth. Come to
think of it, it would have been a good course within the College of Law. Even
better, it should be a prerequisite for jury duty.

About those daily quizzes: They consisted of ten statements, based upon the
previous day's lecture and reading. For each statement there were five possible
answers:

Justified by the data alone 
Probably true from the data and your information 
Uncertain from the data and your information 
Probably false from the data and your information
Contradicted by the data alone.

Let me give an example. This was actually on a quiz early on, and I remember it
vividly because I got it wrong.

Here's the statement: The hidden hemisphere of the moon is topographically very
similar to the hemisphere which faces us. (Keep in mind that the question was
being asked in 1951: we hadn't even orbited the earth, let alone sent cameras OR
men around the moon.)

So, what'll it be? Justified by the data alone? Probably true from the data and
your information (in 1951)? Uncertain from the data and your information?
Probably false? Or contradicted by the data alone.

Oh, I thought I was clever. It was known, of course, that the moon didn't have
any atmosphere or water, so there was no chance that there might be a gigantic
ocean taking up most of the hidden hemisphere. And with all those meteor craters
and vast maria, Yep, I thought it was a reasonable assumption that the back-side
of the moon was pretty similar to the side that faces us. I said it was Probably
True, from the data and my information. WRONG! First of all, since we've now
SEEN the back side of the moon, it is justified by the data alone that the
hidden hemisphere has a much rougher complexion, has a higher concentration of
craters, and far fewer "seas" than the side we see. But back then, in 1951, the
answer was UNCERTAIN. There WERE no data about the back-side of the moon, and
neither I, or anyone else, had any information on the subject. Regardless of
what I considered logical assumptions, the statement did not call for logical
assumptions; it called for FACTS.

And that's what I learned from Hesthal's courses: That assumptions, wishful
thinking, beliefs, and even theories may have absolutely no relationship to the
FACTS. And if you're going to practice science, you better be able to
differentiate between them.

A few months after Hesthal's General Studies part II, I was a student in J.
Allen Hynek's Astronomy 500. It was Fall Quarter, 1952. This was also a
tremendously popular class--both Hesthal and Hynek's classes were in the big
auditorium in Mendenhall Lab; the enrollment was limited to 100, and they were
just about always maxed out. Hynek came in the first day and wrote his name on
the board. "My name is Hynek," he said, "as in giraffe."

Hynek's class was run like all astronomy classes in those days: you start with
our home planet and work your way outward. Within a few days Hynek brought up
the subject of flying saucers. He was a consultant for the Air Force on the
subject, he said, and as so many flying saucers turned out to be
misinterpretations of natural events or objects. It was his job to weed out the
astronomical and meteorological explanations from the other possible
explanations, such as balloons, or airplanes, or other natural, normal events.
Of course there was "nothing to" flying saucers, if you mean are they from outer
space -- the problem was primarily that people were SO uneducated. SO
unobservant. Since World War II, people had started looking up at the sky more,
and they were noticing things--perfectly normal things--that they just had never
noticed before. By the completion of Astronomy 500, Hynek said, he hoped we
would all be educated enough so that we would never feel the need to report a
flying saucer.

A few nights later, the class took a field trip to the then Perkins Observatory,
just south of Delaware, Ohio, a facility, very famous in its day, run jointly by
Ohio State and Ohio Weslyan Universities.

And we saw a UFO.

I've always described it as many points of white light, fixed within the
boundaries of an ellipse, traveling as a unit, slowly, silently, close to the
horizon. Maybe subtending an angle of about a half degree. In retrospect, there
was really nothing unusual about it at all.

There were several small telescopes set up on the terrace outside the Perkins
dome. There was enough time - maybe a couple of minutes - so that many of us got
to take a look. None of us saw an object that the lights must be attached to. No
red or green lights, no flashing lights. Humm!

At the next class session Hynek asked if anyone had any comments about the
observation.

"Yes," I raised my hand. "It was a KC-97 StratoTanker, returning from a night
refueling mission," I announced. Huh? Well, you see I was a private pilot in
those days, and I knew many aviation people around central Ohio. A couple of
phone calls had established - between the data and my information that's what we
had seen.

In a class of 100, I had distinguished myself. Hey - I didn't mean to do it - it
just happened.

Is that an example of chaos theory, or what? If that darn KC-97 hadn't been
there, maybe I'd have become a pastry chef, or a chartered accountant, or a lion
tamer.

Three months later, - we're now at January 1953 - I was coming into my last two
quarters at OSU, and I needed a part-time job, and I needed to start thinking
about what I was going to do after I graduated. Hynek needed a TA-teaching
assistant--for Astronomy 500, the same course I had just finished-yes, I got an
A--. So now I was carrying 15 hours, working at the McMillan Observatory 3 hours
a day, and had the amazing title of Research Assistant, Department of Physics
and Astronomy. I graded papers, taught some of the lab sections--things like
there's the Big Dipper; the handle points of Arcturus--. I ran the planetarium,
demonstrated the McMillan refractor for school kids, answered the phone
questions such as what was the 17th star discovered (it was the Ohio
bi-centennial) and at exactly what hour will the moon be full--I want to plant
my potatoes.

But there was another subject I was getting into. In mid-January 1953, Hynek
went to Washington to the Robertson Panel. By then we had already had many
discussions about flying saucers. Yes, he had told the class that they were
almost certainly all nonsense--but he was not entirely comfortable with that, he
confessed to me. There was something---. What if--? Maybe--? He did not tell me
that months before, during the summer 1952 Washington UFO overflights, he had
written the first of several proposals to the Air Force, indicating that a
serious scientific investigation into the subject was needed. Well, of course he
didn't tell me--I don't believe the AF had ever even given him the courtesy of a
response.

But now the Robertson Panel was called. And Hynek went to Washington, thinking
(oh so naively) that perhaps what would come of it would be the announcement
that there would be a serious, full-fledged scientific investigation of
unidentified flying objects.

But such was not to be. (Nor, as we look back, was it ever to be.) He was an
associate member of the panel, a second stringer, made to stay out in the hall
during some of the sessions. It was probably his first realization that he was
really not in the know--that he was not in the inner circle, and that he really
didn't know what the real facts were on UFOs. When he returned from the
Robertson Panel on a blustery January day he expressed to me his confusion and
unhappiness. Here he was, the AF's scientific consultant on UFOs, and he
obviously was not being told everything. For the work he was doing, he did not
have a need to know.

If you asked Hynek how he got into the UFO business, he always answered that he
just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was just a
coincidence. The AF needed an astronomer to weed out all those reports of Venus
and meteors and weather balloons. He was at OSU, just 60 miles from
Wright-Field. He was handy. He got the job. He thought it might be interesting,
a chance to educate the public. He thought it might be fun.

That's not quite the way it happened, but it took me 45 years to find out
differently. The truth was, Hynek was a logical choice for the job. He had had
high security clearances for years; he had worked on the proximity fuse at Johns
Hopkins during the war. And after the war he had continued in classified
research, working with, among others, the captured German scientists--the
Project Paperclip gang--in the utilization of V-2 rockets as instrumentation
vehicles for high altitude research. Hynek was a natural for the UFO job. He had
demonstrated his ability to adhere to the rules; play the game. He was
personable and dealt well with the public. He appeared to be very low-key and
mild-mannered. And neither he nor the Air Force nor Ohio State University wanted
any cross-over publicity between rocket research and UFOs.

Hynek's AF consultancy worked like this: About once a week a courier from
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Hynek led me to believe he was from there)
would show up at Hynek's office with a manila envelope stuffed with TWX's
teletype UFO sighting reports received from military facilities around the
world.

Were they all of the reports Blue Book received--the total number they took in?
Surely not. I usually looked them over before Hynek did. Very few of them were
classified beyond Restricted - and the sensitive material usually had to do with
the installation or facility of the report origin, not with the contents of the
report itself. If Venus was in western elongation, there would be a whole slew
of reports of a bright white light in the pre-dawn east, and Hynek would chuckle
and mutter about how uneducated the public was. When we got a report of
high-strangeness he would scratch his chin--beardless till the fall of 1953--and
say this might bear looking into. We would outline the information we wanted to
have, and we would pass this on to Blue Book. But they hardly ever followed up
for us. If we really wanted some information, we had to go out and get it for
ourselves.

Hynek was paid to investigate only reports allocated to him by Blue Book. That
meant if we heard of a case in some other way--if someone called in to the
observatory, or there was a newspaper story--we could not count it as an
official case, and any expenses incurred would not be reimbursable. Many times
we asked people to report it to Blue Book--so that a case we were already
working on privately and had spent Hynek's--and sometimes even my money
investigating--could become official. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't.
After all, the Air Force was actually pre-selecting the cases they expected
Hynek to solve; a really high-strangeness case would have messed things up--we
rarely saw them. I think Lt. Gorman and the North Dakota light dogfight was one
we did get, but the AF finally insisted it was a lighted weather balloon.

Hynek went to Wright-Field 2 or 3 times a month, and sometimes I got to go
along. The Blue Book facility was in building 263--not Hangar 18--and it
consisted of 3 crummy little offices. Paint was peeling, file cabinets were
warped, the linoleum was thick with crud. Nothing high priority here. There was
a gum-cracking, beehive haired secretary (a civilian) and a dried-up coffee pot
balanced precariously on the window sill. On the wall there was the requisite
United States map with pins stuck in it. This was before computers, of course,
so cases were filed chronologically. If you knew the date, fine. If you knew
only the location, try the card index, and lotsa luck. No wonder I never saw
Capt. Ed. Ruppelt smile.

By the summer of 1953 I had graduated, had a secret clearance, and was now
working full time at the observatory. And a good proportion of the work was on
UFOs. One day I asked Hynek how it was that OSU was willing to keep me on as a
research assistant when most of my work was for ATIC? "You're not working for
ATIC," Hynek said. "You're working for a contractor." (Security leak!!!)

I had no idea what he meant. "A contractor," he repeated, "A contractor who
doesn't wish to be known. But don't worry about it--I've told you too much
already."

But I did worry about it. My paychecks said Ohio State University. The phrase
"laundered money'' was not in common usage in those days.

I stewed over this for a few days--not more than a week or so--and then the
courier came with the weekly reports. Same man, same car--a Chevy a bilious
shade of GI green. The guy from Wright-Field, right? For some reason I walked
him back out to his car, and did an incredible double-take as he drove away. The
license plate was VE-29. It wasn't a government car. It was his own car. With
Ohio plates. I already knew this man as Vernon Ellzey. Good Heavens--a Spook
with vanity plates. The county was not on the plate, as it is now, but the auto
dealer's name was on the license plate holder. A Columbus car dealer. He wasn't
even from Dayton.

Within 5 minutes I had raced over to the main OSU library, pulled down the
Columbus city directory and found Vern Ellzey. And his place of employment.
Battelle.

Well, cutting to the chase, it turned out that yes, Battelle was the contractor.
I was really working for Battelle. But was I? Battelle's money was Air Force
money, which ultimately was tied in with CIA money. Wheels within wheels! Mostly
to hide the fact that Battelle was working on UFOs.

If you recall your chronology, you will know that Battelle was actually in the
throes of writing the famous (or infamous) Blue Book Special Report 14 during
this time frame.

To this day, Battelle is sensitive about their UFO work. In fact, their UFO work
was hidden within an extremely highly classified and long term project called
Project Stork. The mission of Project Stork was to ascertain the capability of
the Soviet Union to engage in technological warfare. Blue Book Special Report 14
was produced by Project Stork people. Does that mean that the government thought
UFOs might be Soviet technology? I don't think so. I think they were funding
BBSR14 through Stork, so that the UFO work would be hidden. And specifically
that the funding for the UFO work would be hidden. In interviewing some
surviving Stork people in 1993, I learned that they--the Battelle staff--hated
the UFO work. Most of them were engineers, and engineers hate anything that
isn't hard, measurable fact. Justified by the data alone. The UFO data were of
poor quality. Further, since the UFO work was hidden within Stork, Battelle
received no additional payment for this work. As far as the Battelle staff was
concerned, the UFO work was time-wasting busy-work which detracted from the real
problem at hand: what was the Soviet Union's technological warfare capability?

Did ALL the Battelle UFO workers think this? NO. Art Westerman, very high up in
the Battelle staff, told me in the late 80's that with regard to the
significance of UFOs, the top Battelle people were "concerned, very concerned."
And that's all he would say.

A theory of mine, over many years, has been that the Roswell debris--if there
really was Roswell debris--was analyzed at Battelle. It seems totally logical: a
premier metallurgical research facility, close to Wright-Field, an institution
and staff with long established government and high security connections. It
STILL seems totally logical to me--but neither I nor any of my colleagues have,
to my knowledge, located the smoking gun. But I'm still looking. Somebody still
alive knows. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they would step forward?

By 1956 Hynek had moved to Harvard to work on satellite tracking for the
International Geophysical Year. I had moved over to the Battelle campus and had
been working directly in Stork. When I went to Battelle, I thought I would be
working on UFOs. Very naive on my part. The people I worked for were
geophysicists, and we were concerned with Soviet technology. UFOs were never
mentioned.

But Hynek continued with his UFO consultancy, and he and I continued
communicating regularly on the subject. At midnight on March 26, 1966, my
husband got me out of a shower for a call from Hynek, from Hillsdale, Michigan,
pleading with me not to get upset when I saw the morning papers. The Air Force
had backed him into a corner. Say something, he was told. So he had said
something. He had said that swamp-gas was a possibility as a natural explanation
for some lights over a marshy area, and the press jumped on it. The swamp-gas
incident distressed him terribly because in effect the Air Force had forced him
to compromise his scientific integrity.

Over the total of 33 years that I worked with Hynek, I would say that the
prominent quality he evinced was intellectual curiosity--the search for
knowledge--for answers--for their own sake--irregardless of what those answers
might be. The emotion which I observed in Hynek most was that of frustration. He
was basically a straightforward person. But he also had a great deal of
political savvy--he knew he HAD to play games, so he went along with the Air
Force for all those years, not because he agreed with their principles or
methods, but because he wanted to keep his hand in--wanted to maintain his
access to the data--as much of the data that he was permitted to know.

In the end, Hynek was a bitter man. IF one assumes that the government DID NOT
know what UFOs really were, then the AF, Blue Book--all the policy makers--were
a bunch of incredibly stupid, incompetent investigators. IF ONE ASSUMES that the
government knew all along what the answer was--meaning Roswell, in all its
permutations DID HAPPEN, then all the deception, the stone-walling, the
ludicrous answers, the Mogul balloons and the six-foot mannequins, and yes, the
300-second-duration, precisely-lit meteors--are all seen as having their place
in a desperate, 53-year determination to hide the truth.

And that brings me full-circle to what I opened with.

A search for the truth.

I said at the beginning that assumptions, wishful thinking, beliefs, and
theories may have absolutely no relationship to the FACTS. And if you're going
to practice science, you better be able to make the differentiation.

The main thing I have learned from 47 years in ufology is that many people
professing to be ufologists HAVEN'T learned this. And they become infuriated if
you bring it to their attention. A MUFON big-shot, Bob Gribble, once wrote that
I could go to hell because I suggested that a statement he had published
declaring that THE ALIENS ARE would have been better phrased.  The ALLEGED
aliens APPEAR to�If Zeidman didn't accept extra-terrestrial visitation as an
absolute, proven fact, she should damn well get out of ufology. I looked for my
documentation on this, so I could quote it to you verbatim, but I'm afraid I
must have discarded it, considering it a fire hazard in my file cabinet.

Bob Gribble notwithstanding, I have met some mighty fine people in ufology over
the years--and I've also met a few idiots--and even one or two who make
Dilbert's pointy-haired boss seem absolutely angelic.

In April 1994, at the Ohio MUFON Symposium, Richard Dell'Aquilla presented a
paper called "The Federal Rules of Evidence as a Guide to the Weighing of UFO
Evidence." His conclusion was that MUFON needs better standards for UFO
investigation and data evaluation. I'd like to expand that to ALL UFO
researchers need better standards for UFO investigation and data evaluation.

And I propose you give some thought to the Hesthal classifications that continue
to impress ME, 48 years or more after I first was exposed to them:

Justified by the data alone?

Probably true by the data and your information?

Uncertain by the data and your information?

Probably false by the data and your information?

Contradicted by the data alone?