And yet, with all of that done and said, there's not one single thing that
anyone can hold in their hands and say, "Now this is proof of aliens."


"Sir Artio" <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:RKMfb.23086$cJ5.3351@www.newsranger.com...

In article <30Jeb.4149$qK1.3972163@news2.news.adelphia.net>, AutumnZen

says...

Hello, you bring up some good points about what and how debunkers think

(I

don't like to think of myself as a debunker or a disbeliever, but neither

am

I particularly a believer).  When you speak of people requiring proof,

the

proof they are talking about usually means something that can be held in

the

hand and science could unquestionably call "alien".  There are many

reasons

that pictures, video, and people's testimony are not considered proof.

You do make SOME valid points, but you do NOT understand
the history of "State" spOOk debunkers.  So I will educate
you RIGHT NOW:

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



Take

dragons, for instance, for centuries both science and religions accepted
them as fact.  People came with stories about slaying them and almost

every

culture had their own take on what a dragon was.  It was accepted, sight
unseen, that dragons existed.  Some people believe that fossils of

dinosaurs

led to the stories of dragons, however, since there is no way to prove

that,

I accept that as hearsay as well.  Eventually scientific minds knew that

the

only way to verify information was to test it, feel it, and see it.  This
did lead to mistakes that were later rectified.  Scientists for years
thought stories about falling rocks was nonsense, then they were able to
verify, test, and see, using telescopes and other scientific methods of
testing data that proved the meteor's existence.  This vindicated the
stories that people told.  While it made the scientists look foolish, I
believe the scientists did the correct thing.  They waited until

verifiable

proof came along before acknowledging the existence of something they did
not understand.  UFO's are much the same.


"Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A." <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote

in

message news:Gsfeb.22428$cJ5.2917@www.newsranger.com...

Usenet UFO "Debunkers" Are Really UFO "Believers"
Author: xxx@xxx.tttt

Debunkers are an odd lot, they yammer for proof but never tell anyone

what

proof

is acceptable to them.  They ignore the facts, and resort to attacking

the

messenger of the facts.  We have thousands of clear photographs,

thousands

upon

thousands of eyewitness testimony, and even the US government has

giving

testimony for alien visitation.  Heck, even the French, English,

Japanese

and a

whole flock of other nations have given depositions and evidence, yet

still the

Usenet debunkers claim otherwise.

These Usenet debunkers are really not debunkers, they are really

believers

who

have a vested interest in chasing away any interest in the subject and
surrounding it with derision and ridiculel and their only weapon is

personal

attack and mockery.  It is obvious these pseudo-debunkers are using

every

trick

in the book to dissuade others from accepting the evidence as evidence.

Their

motivation is their financial greed and religious beliefs.

ahgnis@yahoo.com (Ahgnis) added:
Date: 27 Aug 2002 15:31:20 -0700

You are correct in your statement that the debunkers on this NG are not

real

debunkers, since they display very limited scientific knowledge. They

have

no

interest in reasonable discussions of the topic, so therefore many of

them

could

be UFO believers. Their only interest is to attack and ridicule all

posters that

disagree with them. This is a bullying tactic and detracts from free

flow

of

information required in an open society. Many people do not post

because

of

these jerks. The debunkers ignore that the opponent they face across

the

computer screen is a live human with human feelings.  The opponent has

become an

enemy to be destroyed, damn the consequences.

Ahgnis