On Feb 8, 9:32 am, "H." <hbo...@charter.net> wrote:
"Hagar" <hs...@surewest.net> wrote in message
news:Ydadnc1dDohPkhLUnZ2dnUVZ_gednZ2d@giganews.com...
"Sir Arthur C.B.E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A."
<scie...@zzz.com> wrote in message
news:2292fd40-35f5-43bc-b7b7-3ca82e3f6545@n33g2000pri.googlegroups.com...
I must insist that every debunker LEAVE THE USENET
immediately and
wait for further instructions!
Those instructions are coming over the
secret-channel now.
Wait, here it is: +++All debunkers, NO EXCEPTIONS,
must report to your
nearest FEMA camp for processing!+++
Wow! I knew this wonderful day would come! Hooray
for America , home
of the Brave.
Now then, there is a little matter to finish.
Attention: Casanobrain,
Borsch, Hagar, VD-VAC, CUJO and others, please make
your way to these
FEMA camps as soon as possible. Thank you for your
cooperation!!
End of scheduled transmission!!!
*********************
Corrected version:
We must insist that all idiots LEAVE THE USENET
immediately
and wait for further instructions from nurse
Cratchett!
Those instructions are coming over the secret-channel
now.
Wait, here it is: +++All idiots, NO EXCEPTIONS, must
report
to the nearest nut house for processing!+++
Wow! I knew this wonderful day would come! Hooray
for America , home of the Brave.
Now then, there is a little matter to finish.
Attention: Casanobrain,
Borsch, Hagar, VD-VAC, CUJO and others, please make
sure
the USENET Groups are kept free of the likes of one
Artio CB
LipFlapper and Co. Shoot to kill, take no prisoners.
Thank you for your cooperation!!
End of scheduled transmission!!!
Transmission received and acknowledged.
Am engaging super kook anti-idiot missile immediately.
Holeflapper et all should be expunged ASAP.
Ha-ha, you are so NOT funny Borsch.
So, just how serious is the UFO problem? Are aliens really
among us? If so, what do they want?
Keeping this discussion completely factual, we can
acknowledge that the UFO phenomenon has always been global.
It is not, as some Americans continue to believe, a uniquely
American phenomenon, or restricted to the southwestern
states. By no means. Sober, reliable, people of all
sociological strata have reported unconventional objects
throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia,
Australia, Antarctica, all the world's major bodies of water,
and even outer space.
UFOs are also actual objects, not simply atmospheric
phenomena. This is not to say that some atmospheric phenomena
have not been mistakenly believed to be flying saucers, but
that the core of difficult UFO cases are of actual objects of
apparently unconventional design (e.g. disc-shaped), and
capable of incredible speeds and maneuverability. When an
object is seen visually, is tracked clearly on radar, and
when pilot after pilot is adamant that what he saw was a real
object, it is reasonable to conclude that we are dealing with
something real.
It is also true that from the 1950s and beyond, people around
the world have been claiming to see alien entities. Now, it
is certainly possible that they were mistaken. It is
interesting to note, however, that such people have
frequently been interviewed by civil and military
authorities, and typically been considered honest. In late
1954, for example, hundreds of witnesses in France and the
rest of Mediterranean region, as well as South America,
claimed to see short alien beings. The witnesses were men,
women, youths, and the elderly, doctors, professors,
mechanics, homemakers, and peasant farmers. Several cases
left significant landing traces. Were these people hoaxing?
Not according to the authorities who investigated them. Were
they delusional? If so, what caused such widespread and
similar delusions? Was it a case of mass hysteria? If so, it
was an event that cut across national and language barriers
among people who knew little about UFOs to begin with.
In addition, a number of prominent military and scientific
personnel have believed in the extraterrestrial hypothesis
(ETH) as an explanation for UFOs. In other words, they
believed that aliens are here. There is a good reason why
military personnel take the subject seriously, considering
the seemingly non-stop nature of their encounters with
unidentified flying objects.
There is also no doubt that the actual number of UFO
sightings vastly exceeds any official total. Hynek believed
the difference to be a factor of ten. That, of course, was
when people had somewhere to report their sightings. I can
add that, in the final twelve months of writing this book, I
encountered about thirty people who volunteered UFO sightings
to me, without any solicitation on my part. In every case,
the witnesses never reported what they saw to any authority,
and in most cases told either no one, or perhaps a close
friend. One woman told me of her sighting, even though she
had not told her husband. How many people are there who have
seen a UFO, but never made their sighting a matter of public
knowledge? I believe the answer to that is, lots.
What we have here is a widespread phenomenon affecting many
people, generating high levels of interest, concerning a
project that is taking place in near-complete secrecy, for
purposes unknown, by entities unknown, with access to
apparently substantial resources and technology. That, at
least, is how matters appear to be.
SOURCES AND DOCUMENTATION
Bodies need bones; history needs facts. In the course of this
study some seemingly outlandish claims are made: how do I
back them up?
In preparing this book, I have drawn from three basic groups
of sources.
1. Previously classified documents released through the
Freedom of Information Act. The Freedom of Information Act
was a completely unforseen development to those involved in
UFO secrecy during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The Act was
passed in 1966, but gained some teeth only in the aftermath
of Watergate and Vietnam. By the mid-1970s, many citizens
filed FOIA requests regarding government involvement with
UFOs, and obtained information that confirmed extreme
interest in UFOs.
UFO researcher Bruce Maccabee compiled a short list of
government information available to the public which was not
available in 1969. It includes: the files of Project Blue
Book, the UFO files of the Air Force Office of Special
Investigation (AFOSI), The UFO files of the FBI, CIA files,
State Department files, Army files, Navy files, Coast Guard
files, the Canadian National Research Council files, and
more. Maccabee estimated that perhaps 5,000 pages of
government documents have been released in recent years that
were not contained within the Project Blue Book/AFOSI file as
of 1969.
The public is especially indebted to Citizens Against UFO
Secrecy (CAUS), and the determination of people who
petitioned government agencies for UFO documents. Fortunately
for researchers, most of the relevant FOIA documents are
readily available on the Internet. In book form, much of the
pertinent documentation has been published in Clear Intent
(1984), by CAUS members Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood.
In addition, Timothy Good's Above Top Secret (1987) used many
FOIA documents to support the thesis of an international UFO
coverup. FOIA documentation also exists in dozens of other
published books.
2. Primary sources (e.g. books) from people involved in UFO
research at the time. Many of the primary sources from the
mid-1940s to the mid-1960s are hard to come by. Still, with
some effort, it is possible to track down the key sources.
In the first place, there were three main organizations of
the 1950s and 1960s that collected significant UFO data. They
are: (1) Project Blue Book (formerly Projects Sign and
Grudge), which was conducted by the United States Air Force;
(2) the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), a
global organization founded by Jim and Coral Lorenzen; and
(3) the National Investigative Committee for Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP), led by retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe. The
records of these organizations are not especially accessible.
Project Blue Book's records are available for a fee at the
National Archives in Washington, D.C. APRO's records have
never been published in a systematic form and have been
unavailable for years. NICAP's files ended up at the Center
for UFO Studies in Chicago, but have never been published.
More readily available are publications that made use of the
above sources. Many Blue Book cases were distilled by two
individuals who based their books on them: Captain Edward
Ruppelt, who headed Blue Book in the early 1950s, and Air
Force consultant Alan Hynek. Ruppelt's 1956 Report on
Unidentified Flying Objects is essential reading. It derives
heavily from Blue Book files, and is amplified by Ruppelt's
account of military and government attitudes toward the UFO
problem during that period. Hynek also wrote two books based
on his twenty years of affiliation with Blue Book. In
addition, the complete list of Blue Book unknowns are
available at several Internet sites, and UFO researcher Brad
Steiger published a collection of Blue Book reports in the
1970s.
Although APRO files are unavailable, much of the
organization's work was published in the many books of its
founders, Jim and Coral Lorenzen. All are valuable and most
are difficult to find. Coral Lorenzen also wrote and edited
the APRO Bulletin, one of the finest UFO journals ever, and
today one of the rarest.
NICAP records are to some extent available through the
organization's seminal UFO Evidence, published in 1964. The
book is long out of print and unavailable even in most
libraries. Beside this, the writings of Donald Keyhoe are
essential reading. Keyhoe was NICAP's director from 1956 to
1969, and without question the most important UFO
researcher/writer ever. His five books on the subject contain
a wealth of information. It surely helped that Keyhoe was
friend and associate to prominent figures in the American
military and intelligence community, including Roscoe
Hillenkoetter, Delmar Farhney, Arthur Radford, and others.
Throughout, he elaborated on his contention that UFOs
represented the technology of an extraterrestrial
civilization.
Keyhoe worked hard to obtain accurate reports, and succeeded
far more than he failed. He also could look ahead, always a
rare gift. In 1940 he wrote a prescient book on how the
coming world war would be fought. In 1953 he daringly (and
with remarkable accuracy) wrote about the future of space
travel. But most importantly, Keyhoe scored coup after coup
for many years while digging for UFO facts. His 1953 book
alone contained several gems: (1) The first detailed account
of the 1952 Washington sightings and the ensuing Air Force
press conference, the latter description of which remains the
best available anywhere. (2) The publication (obtained
through official channels no less) of about 50 previously
classified UFO reports, many of which flatly contradicted
official positions that there was nothing to the phenomenon,
and several of which suggested intelligent control beyond
anything conventionally possible. (3) The outlines of the
Robertson Panel, which Keyhoe quickly learned about. This
last was truly a remarkable score, and was something only
Keyhoe could have done.
It is the unavoidable fact that UFO researchers have not used
Keyhoe's books effectively. Today, he is nearly forgotten.
His books are absent from footnotes, and rarely appear in
bibliographies. Prominent UFO researchers blandly acknowledge
his key role in breaking the dam on information, and then
ignore him.
Writers such as Keyhoe, the Lorenzens, Hynek, Ruppelt, and a
few others of the early period remain unique and
indispensable sources of information. Nothing written today
about that period, including this book, can replace them. But
they were not infallible. Keyhoe and the Lorenzens made their
share of mistakes, and Hynek's writings are often
self-serving and coy (until his "conversion" to the UFO cause
during the mid-1960s, Hynek was held in relatively low regard
by many UFO researchers for his frequent servility to the Air
Force line). Still, these people offered the best information
we will ever have on this period, and they must therefore be
placed in a special category of consideration. Above all, one
must read their books with great care.
Even though my focus is on the American dimension of the
problem, it is not exclusively so, as both the UFO phenomenon
and American national security interests are global. There
are a few European sources, but unfortunately for the early
period, there were no European civilian organizations
equivalent to APRO or NICAP that maintained an extensive
database. One of the important early European researchers was
Frenchman Aimé Michel, who researched and recorded in
admirable detail the great 1954 European Flap. In addition,
several of Jacques Vallee's books also provide good source
material for the European aspect of the UFO phenomenon.
3. Contemporary scholarship. The quality of work on UFOs
varies to an alarming extent. Some of the most sophisticated
discussion and analysis does not exist in book form at all,
but only on the Internet. While much of the Internet writing
on UFOs demonstrates excellent historical understanding, most
of it is not historical writing, per se. The fact is that
there is a serious lack of systematic historical writing on
the subject of UFOs. In my own judgment, until this book,
there had been a single, genuine history: The UFO Controversy
in America (1975), by Temple University historian David
Jacobs. Jacobs' book was a well-researched, successfully
written history. Its primary drawback derived from its time
of publication, which preceded the great release of UFO data
through FOIA. It also offered little on the relationship
between the U.S. intelligence community and UFOs. Jerome
Clark's three-volume UFO Encyclopedia is another important
resource for the serious reader. Although I disagree with
some interpretations offered by Clark, his work is valuable,
and is available as an abridged, single-volume, The UFO Book.
Other useful books are indicated in the bibliography.
It was not easy deciding when to stop hunting for more
information, even though I had a mass of data from hundreds
of sources. Every time I thought I had obtained the
fundamentals of a particular element of UFO history, I
inevitably found something new and exciting to look into,
frequently on an Internet web site. As anyone who has ever
written history knows, however, at some point you have to
stop hunting and start writing. Although I am sure this book
would have continued to benefit from several more years of
research, I believe it would have been a benefit of
diminishing returns. Still, I leave the door open to future
revisions if I decide that more thorough research is truly
warranted.
The waters of UFO research are deep, and I have tried not to
lose my footing. Throughout, I have been careful never to
veer far from established facts. I am reminded of the saying:
we are never as radical as reality itself. Thus, while some
of my conclusions are more conservative than what others
might think justified, they are just as often more radical.
FINAL REMARKS AND CONCERNS
Because I have tried to provide perspective on the political
and military dimension to the UFO problem, there is the
danger that I have written two books instead of one. After
reviewing my material, I don't think this has happened, but
there certainly are passages dealing with the national
security state that are not directly UFO-related. I have
added them for the value of their indirect light. It is
important to show that the cover-up of UFO information is not
all that unusual. In all cases, I have tried to keep the
non-UFO-specific passages as succinct as possible.
I am confident that I have followed through on my intention
to adhere closely to the facts. It is true that there are
some places in this book where I speculate on some
possibilities or theories; when I do, I have tried to make
this clear. Throughout, I have tried to the best of my
ability to serve as a useful guide through the maze of UFO
reports and policy. If nothing else, this topic deserves a
respectable history. The UFO field has long since reached the
point where the available information is more than sufficient
for a unified history of the early years. So I have presented
this book, despite its imperfections, as a partial
restitution for such egregious neglect.
Even if UFOs were to turn out to be a unique form of mass
hallucination (which they will not), this study will still
have value for its review of how the U.S. national security
apparatus handled the problem. If there are other answers,
then this book should clarify some of the key patterns
involved.
Unfortunately, those patterns leave little cause for optimism
regarding either the problem or its response. Americans are
in a bad enough state trying to struggle through the ordinary
smoke of their official culture. How can they be expected to
assess the implications of the UFO problem? They can begin
only by recognizing that secrecy over UFOs exists, and that
this secrecy is part of a broader policy of control and
deception. It is a bad omen that our civilization,
beleaguered as it is by its own doing, has not faced this
problem squarely.