In article <724a8f69.0309130506.69782b67@posting.google.com>, Harlow says...

"Charles D. Bohne" <CharlesBohne@PasoSchweiz.de> wrote in message news:ge36mv0ev4bpeu4p85kd1e3pvb2odc8l8l@4ax.com...

On 12 Sep 2003 16:46:14 -0700, harlowsoup@hotmail.com (Harlow) wrote:

A kook is a kook when *I* say they're a kook. Get it?

UFO Debunkers: A Dangerous "Cult" or Super Patriots?/ The History of UFO
Debunking!

The standing joke among UFO circles is for every 200 UFO sightings, the Air
Force can explain away 201.  The possibility that our Government might withhold
or distort information about UFOs might seem farfetched, until you read the
mountains of evidence compiled from the Government's own files.  Evidence that
strongly suggests a cover-up.  The U.S. Military first started seeing UFOs in
World War II, pilots called them "Foo Fighters."  We thought they were a German
secret weapon, the German's thought they were ours.  An explosion of civilian
sightings in 1947 caught the military by surprise.  Top secret investigations
were begun.  A joint study by the FBI and Army concluded, "The flying saucer
situation is not all imaginary, something is really flying around."  That report
was kept secret until 1976.  

Most early UFO sightings were made by eyewitnesses and not radar.  In New
Mexico, over a two year period, dozens of people reported seeing green
fire-balls over sensitive military installations.  But when radar and cameras
were dispatched to those installations, the fire-balls mysteriously shifted
someplace else.  A 1949 study by scientists at Los Alamos Lab stated, "The
fireballs deserve serious consideration.". 

Some have suggested that the saucer craze of the 1940's and 1950's was a
by-product of Cold War tensions and fears.  Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
conducted secret studies to find out if the other side was behind the UFOs, and
both concluded early on that the capabilities of the flying discs seemed beyond
human technology.  This secret report done in 1948 by the Air Force and Naval
Intelligence is among the most fascinating of the UFO documents ever to surface
because it wasn't suppose to exist.  A confidential memo at the end of the
report ordered that all copies should be destroyed.  But one copy survived and
was finally pried out of the Pentagon in 1985.  It's a study of more than 200 of
the earliest UFO sightings, including one that occurred on June, 1947, near Lake
Mead. The report notes that an Air Force pilot saw a formation of six UFOs, and
the UFOs were some type of flying craft, not weather balloons or hallucinations.
The report made note of the fact that more than a few sighting reports were made
by experienced personnel, and that the origin of flying saucers was not
ascertainable.  

The Cold War with the Soviets and Communist countries was heating up. Strange
craft were reported all over our skies, and the news media was critical of
government's explanations. Many people thought the craft belonged to the Soviet
Union or perhaps aliens bent on invasion. There was fear the Soviets could use
UFO propaganda to discredit the US government. There was genuine concern that a
national panic could occur. Whether UFOs were real or not, the situation made
the president nervous and made the military and the various intelligence
agencies look bad. Plenty of good reports were trickling out that a substantial
number of military aircraft were crashing. Stories started to leak out that
these aircraft were crashing while chasing UFOs. The crashes were explained as
training accidents and mechanical failures, but the news media was starting to
tie the two types of reports together.

The over-all effort to study saucers was called "Project Sign," and the
headquarters was located at Wright Field in Ohio.  In 1949, Sign personnel wrote
a top-secret report, which concluded that, "UFOs were extra-terrestrial craft."
When the report made it to the desk of the Chief of Staff General Hoyt
Vandeberg, he rejected it and ordered all copies burned.  This rejection from
the top was in the view of many, the death knell for any objective study of
UFOs.  A few weeks later Project Sign produced another final report stating that
it's findings were "inconclusive."  That report was accepted and soon after
Project Sign became Project Grudge.  Grudge evaluated reports on the premise
that UFOs could not exist.  According to a later report by the Library of
Congress, it was the job of Grudge to explain them all.  Despite this slant, 23%
of Grudge cases remained a mystery.  Grudge staffers decided these cases were
physiologically motivated, the first official declaration that people who see
UFOs are crazy.

In 1952, there were more sightings than the five previous years combined,
including the two infamous Washington D.C. incidents.  Yet another study was
launched, Project Bluebook.  Bluebook today is notorious in UFO circles as a
whitewash.  There is considerable evidence the project was far from objective.
The man appointed to head Bluebook, Captain Edward Ruppelt, said he was told in
the very beginning that the 'powers that be' were anti-flying-saucer and to stay
in favor, "it behooves one to follow suit."  Ruppelt later resigned from the
military and wrote a book about what he says was the Bluebook cover-up and the
reality of flying saucers.  The continued increase of UFO sightings was a source
of great concern for the CIA and a new strategy was born: "UFO DEBUNKING."

A group of CIA-connected scientists was assembled in secret to evaluate UFOs.
CIA documents reveal that five members of the Scientific Advisory Panel, who
were all well-known skeptics, were given several poor UFO cases to examine and
came to the conclusion that "there was no evidence of a direct threat to
national security in the objects sighted. Flying saucer reports were overloading
emergency reporting channels with false information, clogging up communication
lines, causing alarm, and realistically even if they were real there was little
we could do about them."  Furthermore, the government was losing the confidence
of the people. Our science and aircraft seemed to be confronted by far superior
technology. 

The  "Robertson Panel" spent all of twelve hours in a round-table discussion,
analyzing only about a handful of UFO cases.  The Panel concluded that, "UFOs
are not a threat to national security...but continued reporting of UFOs is a
threat."  Their recommendation: The Government should take immediate steps to
strip UFOs of their "aura of mystery," through a program of public education.
The final report even used the term, "DEBUNKING." 

The Robertson Panel discussions and recommendations centered around the main
problem of eradicating belief in these unidentified flying objects. Ways of
using the news media and movies to discredit UFOs were discussed and placed into
action.  This resulted in the reduction of public interest around the reality of
flying saucers, which even today still evokes a strong psychological reaction.
Such propaganda techniques included addressing actual UFO cases, which might
have been puzzling at first but later explained away as natural phenomenon. 

The panel also discussed various insidious methods that were often implemented
to execute this debunking program.  It was felt strongly that psychologists
familiar with mass psychology should be called in as advisers to assist with the
nature and extent of this program. These national programs resulted in the
National Policy.  The end result was to debunk any valid sighting, even if it
resulted in the embarrassment of pilots and/or government employees. UFO reports
were denied, debunked and those who saw them were soundly and mercilessly
ridiculed. 

Timothy Good in his book Above Top Secret writes: Another sinister
recommendation of the panel was that civilian UFO groups should be watched
"because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread
sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of
such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind." The panel concluded
that "the continued emphasis on the reporting these phenomena does, in these
parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective
organs of the body politic," and recommended:

a. That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the
Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the
aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.

b. That the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence,
training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the
morale of the country to recognize most promptly and to react most effectively
to true indications of hostile intent or action.

Shortly thereafter every effort of the government went into debunking UFOs even
if it would mean embarrassing its own people. It soon became known the best way
to destroy your military career was to report a UFO. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt,
Chief of the Aerial Phenomena Branch at the Air Technical Intelligence Center,
said that the CIA ordered the Air Force to debunk sightings and debunk
witnesses.   "We're ordered to hide sightings when possible," he told Major
Keyhole, "but if a strong report does get out we have to publish a fast
explanation--make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule
the witness, especially if we can't figure out a plausible answer, even if we
have to discredit our own pilots." 

The debunking included spying on UFO witnesses and the infiltration of UFO
organizations by the CIA and FBI.  Various effective civilian UFO organizations
have been rendered impotent, and sometimes inactive, after ex-CIA members have
joined their board of directors, the best example being the ousting of Major
Donald Keyhoe from NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial
Phenomena.).  APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) head Jim Lorenzen
was also put under CIA surveillance in 1953, after the recommendations of the
Robertson Panel.  New federal policy resulting from the Robertson Panel includes
Military Policy Orders AFR 200-2 and JANAP 146, which simultaneously
criminalizes the release by any military personnel of UFO-related information,
but makes the reporting of all sightings to immediate superiors MANDATORY.  The
debunking strategy likewise included the silencing of military personnel through
intimidation. Even retired military personnel risked losing their pension
benefits if they talked about their experiences with UFOs.  That ban continues
to this day.

For three decades, the Military have publicly scoffed at UFOs but it has been
another matter behind the scenes.  A secret order issued to Air Force base
commanders in 1960 stated UFOs should be treated as, "serious
business...directly related to national security."  Public pressures spurred
Congress to hold hearing about UFOs in the mid-1960's and the Air Force decided
enough is enough.  It commissioned what was to be the ultimate UFO study,
directed by Edward Condon of the University of Colorado.  Condon was a respected
scientist but was hardly impartial about UFOs.  Before the study even began, he
said in a speech that "The Government should get out of the UFO business,
there's nothing to it."  He later wrote, "The authors of UFO books should be
horsewhipped."  There is even evidence that the studies conclusion were written
before the project even began.  To the surprise of few, the committee declared
that further study of UFOs would be a waste of time.  The Air Force used this as
its reason to finally end Project Bluebook.  UFO researchers have long suspected
that Bluebook was merely for public consumption, that another secret UFO program
existed to handle the most sensitive cases.  

The CIA responds to UFO requests in this fashion: "There is no CIA program to
actively collect information on UFOs, nor has there been one since the 1950's."
This statement flies in the face of numerous reports, squeezed out of the Agency
by Freedom of Information lawsuits.  A series of internal memos dated 1976, made
repeated references to "UFO Research"- "UFO Studies"- "CIA-UFO Experts"-and
"Agency personnel who are monitoring the UFO phenomenon."  The reluctance to
admit an interest in UFOs dates back to at least 1952, an internal letter from
CIA Weapons Chief states "It is strongly urged that no indication of CIA
interest reach the press or public, in light of their alarmist tendencies."  

Officially, CIA and other government agencies say their lack of interest is
because UFOs pose no threat to national security.  Yet, UFOs have made alarming
intrusions at our most sensitive military bases.  As the Washington Post
reported, "UFOs visited five separate nuclear missile launch sites near the
Canadian border during a two-week period in 1975, one right after the other."
In a least one case, UFOs tampered with the launch codes of ICBM missiles.
Fighter planes were unable to catch the UFOs, which makes the government
explanation that those UFOs were "mystery helicopters" seem specious.  Mystery
helicopters that can out-race F-16's visiting nuclear missile bases?  If this
isn't national security, what is??  Oddly, the government has used the national
security excuse to withhold UFO data.  Stan Friedman fought all the way to the
Supreme Court to get UFO documents from the National Security Agency, and all he
got was a summary of the documents which was over 80% blacked out.

This "explaining away" real UFO cases continues to this day with the multiple
phony accounts of the Roswell extraterrestrial crash given by the Air Force.
Within the span of a single day (July 8, 1947), two stories were made public:
the first one, the correct story as it turns out, was that a flying disc had
been recovered.  A few hours later General Ramey issued a statement that the
wreckage was just that of a weather balloon's radar reflector.  27 years after
that in 1993, in response to the potentially damaging GAO Roswell report, the
Air Force released its now infamous super-secret Project Mogul balloon excuse.
This is the most popular excuse favored by UFO debunkers. Four years after that
in 1997, came the now laughable time-compressed crash-test dummy explanation
which tried to explain the 4 to 5 alien bodies that were witnessed at the crash
site by multiple military and civilian observers.

Let's ask nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman if it is possible for the
government to completely cover up a story as earth-shaking as extraterrestrials?

SF:  I think it's extraordinarily easy.  In the first place, the good tools for
getting the best data all belong to the government.  They've got the radar
systems, the closed communication systems, the aircraft loaded with
instrumentation, the Air Defense Command and so forth.  And all that data is
born classified.  If you were to ask me as a physicist what I'd like to do to
find out about flying saucers, I'd say, well, you've got to have a system to
detect them, then you need another system to monitor them once you've picked one
up, then you want to communicate back and forth and get guys up there with
instruments as close as you can when they're there.  The government's got all of
that, and it's all classified.  So, that's the first thing: they've got a closed
system to begin with.

Secondly, when we talk government, we imply--at least some people do--that
everybody knows and nobody's talking.  That's not how security works at all.  I
had a clearance for 15 years.  The "need to know" concept is most important.  As
an example of that, I was working on radiation shielding for nuclear airplanes
for General Electric.  I would have liked access to secret restricted data on
radiation shielding being produced by Westinghouse for the nuclear submarine
program.  I mean, a shield is a shield.  You've got the same difficulties with
light-weight and that sort of thing.  I didn't have a need-to-know for their
data.  I had the right level of clearance, but it got me nowhere.  So, the key
is compartmentalization, which was honed to a science during World War II by
some of the same people who were apparently involved with UFOs post-War.  How
did we keep the Manhattan Project secret as long as we did.  Two billion dollars
in 1942 money, tens of thousands of people involved in the construction of
enormous facilities that at one point were using eleven percent of the
electricity in the United States, to blow uranium hexaflouride through little
holes in a mile-long building--and yet, it was kept secret.  Secrets are easy to
keep, as long as you control the detection systems, the communications systems,
and the interference systems, if you will.  I've talked to a number of people
who worked for Truman and Eisenhower.  Every single one agreed that secrets
could have always been kept, at least post-World War II.  No problem at all.

Although the case for the flying saucer reality is far better than the case
against most convicted criminals.  If you do it on an evidential basis, you can
look at things like Ted Phillips' collected information on over 4,400 physical
trace cases from 79 countries.  These are cases where the saucer is seen on or
near the ground, and after it leaves, one finds clear physical changes such as
burn circles and burn rings, landing gear marks, swirled vegetation, dried out
soil, and so forth.  People say there is no physical evidence.  Well, if a
footprint and a fingerprint are physical evidence, then the physical trace cases
are certainly physical evidence.  And the same things keep happening all over
the world.  The problem is most people are unaware of the evidence, even though
there is a preponderance of evidence.  Given the physical trace cases, the radar
sightings, the photographs and the eye-witness testimony from people all over
the world, we have quite sufficient evidence to conclude that our planet is
being visited by manufactured objects behaving in ways that we Earthlings cannot
yet duplicate, and that therefore were produced someplace else."

In addition, Jim Marrs had the following accurate narrative to add:  As the 20th
century came to a close, cattle mutilations continue, crop circles are more
elaborate than in the past, and the abduction experience appears to be more
widespread than ever, in spite of the debunkers and media-supported public
disbelief.   

Two concepts increasingly accepted by all but the most intransigent skeptic are
that there is much more to life than our own brief material existence on Earth
and we are not alone on our world.

The concept that we are not alone is supported by overwhelming evidence,
including multitudinous sightings, photographs, films and videos, radar
contacts, personal confrontations, abduction reports, crop circles, animal
mutilations, channeled messages, multiple-witness reports and physical evidence
such as indented landing sites, holes in the ground, burned vegetation, human
scars, and implants.  Some of the human reports and photographic evidence
undoubtedly are the product of misinterpretation or hoaxers, but the sheer
number and consistency of descriptions argues against all of them being mistakes
or fakes.

Another argument supporting the idea of non-human visitors is the longevity of
the reports.  If sightings had occurred only in recent times, they might be
attributable to some passing mass psychosis, an aberrant copycat function of
minds frightened by the onrush of modern technology.  But reports of flying
machines and unearthly visitors predate man's history.  And the evidence of
technology superior to ours in the distant past is particularly compelling.
Although there is no clear indication that such technology was the product of
alien visitation rather than some lost civilization of man, the many ancient
tales of sky-gods and their flying craft tip the scales in favor of alien
contact.


Thank you to George Knapp, Michael Lindemann, Timothy Good, Ralph Steiner,
Stanton Frideman, Jim Marrs and George Filer for the above information