On Feb 27, 2:37 pm, Benj <bjac...@iwaynet.net> wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:33 pm, "Sir Arthur C.B.E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A."
<scie...@zzz.com> wrote:
Although the UFOs quite obviously represent one of the biggest
challenges for science, they are too often only laughed at, or simply
ignored. One reason for that is that the whole spectrum of the UFO
phenomenon is rarely presented in a serious manner and, when UFO
sighting cases are reported in the press, they are usually taken out
of their context.
Johannes von Butler
Are you saying that "science" laughs at UFOs because the press always
"spins" UFO reports? Since when is what science does science
determined by the myriad lies in the press? Perhaps "science" ignores
or laughs at these reports because they wish to keep their jobs and
not loose funding. Can you say "political agenda"? I knew that you
could.
Science, Secrecy, and Ufology By Richard M. Dolan
Secrecy permeates the UFO field. What does this mean for Ufology as a
science? Answer: the field cannot really be handled scientifically
within the public domain. The great model is the Manhattan Project.
When a project is undertaken at highly classified levels, you will
find nothing of value about it within the mainstream. This was true
during the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s; it is true
regarding the UFO.
Missing the Obvious
Some thing are so obvious that they are invisible.
Segments of the intelligence community have been intensely interested
in UFOs since the problem emerged after World War Two. Moreover, they
have monitored and infiltrated the UFO field. Conversely, the
"mainstream" (as opposed to "classified") scientific community has
ignored UFOs altogether. Ask yourself a simple question: why this
discrepancy?
What passes for Ufology has spun its wheels for fifty years. Not only
have even its most important researchers been unable to force
recognition of the problem by official powers (not very surprising,
after all), but some of these same researchers have not even taken a
definite stand on what UFOs might represent. That is, they have been
working without a hypothesis (!) and so in many cases have merely
piled up sighting after sighting for years and years, and then
expected this pile of "evidence" to do the trick. But in any
intellectual endeavor, piling up evidence is never enough. The
researcher has to organize and analyze the evidence through hypothesis
or supposition. Without this effort, there is no research, only what
Gore Vidal calls "scholarly squirreling" of data in a hole in a hollow
tree. What can we say about such researchers, some of whom having been
in the field for decades, or even in some cases, generations? What
have they been doing?
A young innocent who wants to learn more about this topic - a subject
of the utmost seriousness and importance - can easily become
bewildered by the confusion. Should one side with Klass, Shaeffer, and
Korff, or Hynek, Ruppelt, and Keyhoe, or Friedman, or Randall? Does
one follow the line of the conservative J. Allen Hynek Center of UFO
Studies (CUFOS), the paranormal leanings of MUFON, or the coverup
themes of UFO Magazine? On the Internet, should one haunt the tepid
world of listserves like Project 1947 or UFO Updates, or dive right
into John Greenwald's Black Vault?
Four centuries ago, Rene Descartes established a very simple principle
of knowledge: one must create a strong skeleton -that is, a foundation
of unquestionable facts - and build an edifice upon it.
So let us be Cartesian, and review the obvious.
Secrecy and the National Security Crowd
In 1946, a year before the great deluge of reports here in the states,
Americans monitored "ghost rockets" over Europe. Two prominent
American generals conferred with the Swedes, and censorship over the
Swedish press followed. The Greek Army also investigated, according to
Dr. Paul Santorini, a key scientist in the development of the atomic
bomb. The Greeks concluded the objects were not Soviet, nor were they
missiles. The American military then pressured them into silence.
In 1947, UFOs appeared over American skies in large numbers. Some
incidents were quite serious, such as the repeated violation of air
space over the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility. Oak Ridge housed some of
the most sophisticated technology in the world and was highly
classified: one did not simply fly over there. Yet Army Intelligence
and the FBI monitored dozens of intrusions over Oak Ridge well into
the 1950s. Similar violations occurred over sensitive places in
LosAlamos, Hanford, and many military bases. All of this was
classified, of course. Americans knew nothing about them at the time.
In a classified memo, General Nathan Twining wrote of the possibility
- based on the careful evaluation of military personnel - that "some
of the objects are controlled." Controlled by whom was the $64,000
question, and America's national security establishment set out to
answer it, far removed from the prying eyes of the public. In 1949, an
FBI memo stated that: "Army intelligence has recently said that the
matter of 'unidentified aircraft' or 'unidentified aerial
phenomena' ... is considered top secret by intelligence officers of
both the Army and the Air Forces."
In 1950, Robert Sarbacher, a physicist with the DOD Research &
Development Board, privately told Canadian official Wilbert Smith that
UFOs were "the most highly classified subject in the U.S. government."
After an extraordinary UFO encounter near Fort Monmouth, New Jersey in
1951, Air Force officer Edward Ruppelt attended a two-hour meeting
chaired by General Charles Cabell, the Director of Air Force
Intelligence (and later Deputy CIA Director). The meeting was
recorded, but the tape "was so hot that it was later destroyed. . . .
to be conservative, it didn't exactly follow the tone of the official
Air Force releases." The CIA, meanwhile, had monitored the problem
since at least 1948. After the UFO wave of 1952, the Agency sponsored
the Robertson Panel, which convened in January 1953 - the final
weekend of the Truman presidency. The panel debunked UFOs, and its
recommendations resulted in the gutting of Project Blue Book (already
a public relations burden) and heightened surveillance of civilian UFO
organizations.
Clearly, this was an issue considered to be of the utmost seriousness.
As a result, it was not a topic ordinary citizens could simply waltz
into and get easy answers. Observe what happened to the most dangerous
of all civilian organizations: the National Investigative Committee on
Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). Founded in 1956 with the goal of ending UFO
secrecy, it was quickly and secretly infiltrated by "ex-CIA" officers
involved in CIA psychological warfare operations. The most important
of them, Colonel Joseph Bryan, was the key player in the ouster of
Director Donald Keyhoe in 1969. A succession of CIA men then ran NICAP
into the ground. Needless to say, no one outside the Agency knew of
their CIA connections.
One might complain this was all a long time ago. Does the military
still take UFOs seriously? Does the intelligence community still
infiltrate UFO organizations? After all, if UFOs are still important,
then intelligence operatives would presumably still need to monitor
and influence the key organizations. Is there any reason to believe
this is so? In a word, yes. The military still encounters UFOs, as
many reports continue to prove. Moreover, secrecy orders about UFOs
remain in effect. In 1975, the late Senator Barry Goldwater stated
that UFOs were still classified "above Top Secret." As one of my Navy
acquaintances recently said to me: "If I were to tell you what I knew
about that subject, I would probably go to prison."
In the mid-1980s, UFO researcher William Moore admitted to working
covertly with the intelligence world, to the shock and dismay of his
colleagues. But stuff like this is surely the tip of a large iceberg.
Ufology is dominated by men and women connected to the world of
intelligence, usually through prior experience in the military or CIA.
Why is this so? What does it mean to Ufology that this is the case? It
is a question I will return to - more than once, I suspect - in future
articles.
Science
Throughout history, people have used outdated concepts to think about
the world, especially during periods of rapid change. It's
unavoidable. We remain wedded to the concepts we learned in our youth,
while reality races ahead. Observe our cultural attitudes toward
science. Science, we were taught, is a bastion, indeed the foundation,
of intellectual freedom in the world. It is an independent search for
truth, and the destroyer of social and religious myths.
How independent is science? In whose interest is it practiced today?
This is no idle question, for gone are the days of scientists
following their intellectual passions in a search for truth. Earlier
this year, James Lovelock, a pioneer in environmental science now in
his eighties, had this to say: Nearly all scientists are employed by
some large organization, such as a governmental department, a
university, or a multinational company. Only rarely are they free to
express their science as a personal view. They may think that they are
free, but in reality they are, nearly all of them, employees; they
have traded freedom of thought for good working conditions, a steady
income, tenure, and a pension.
Science is an expensive business, and you need sponsorship. I laughed
out loud when a sincere and interested reader of my book asked me who
sponsored my research. But, he is a scientist, for whom such a thing
is absolutely necessary.
Reflect on the following:
1. Since the Second World War, the military has been by far the
biggest sponsor of scientific work.
2. The military and intelligence community has exhibited extreme
levels of interest in the UFO phenomenon, and high levels of
classification have enveloped the subject.
3. It would seem logical that the military has sponsored classified -
that is, secret - scientific work on this problem for many years.
4. In public, however, mainstream scientists offer nothing more than
ridicule or scorn upon the topic of UFOs.
Like any other segment of our civilization, scientists follow the
money. If the cash is there, so are they; if not, forget about it. If,
as I believe, the vast sponsorship of UFO research is classified, we
will not hear positive statements about the subject from the
mainstream. Moreover, the extreme specialization of science ensures
that mavericks do not stray into the uncharted seas of UFO research.
The result is widespread ignorance by scientists of even the basics of
the UFO phenomenon. At least, this is so within the non-classified,
mainstream areas of research. In the classified world, we can only
surmise, but we can do so based on some facts.
We know without question that within the first few years of the
appearance of UFOs, many top-flight scientists became involved in some
way with this phenomenon - in every case at the classified level. By
no means exhaustive, here are some of the more noteworthies: Lloyd
Berkner, Edward Teller, Detlev Bronk, Vannevar Bush, David Sarnoff,
Thornton Page, H. P. Robertson, Allen Hynek, and Lincoln La Paz. In
the case of Bush and Bronk, the connection has not been proven to the
satisfaction of some skeptics, but even in their case, the evidence
remains strong. For the rest, the case is open-and-shut. These men
were some of the elite power scientists in the world, and intimately
connected with the American defense establishment. And yet, we find
them looking at UFO reports. Of course, let us not forget Harvard
astronomer and UFO debunker extraordinaire, Donald Menzel, who,
unbeknownst to the world, was deeply involved with the American
intelligence community, in particular the super-secret National
Security Agency.
One supposes that we shall have to wait another few decades to learn
about our contemporaries - in other words, long after the issue
becomes moot. Such secrecy, we realize, is not unique to UFOs. It is
standard operating procedure. We learn the truth after it becomes
irrelevant.
The Great Secrecy Model
As was stated above, when a project is undertaken at highly classified
levels, you will find nothing of value about it within the mainstream.
The primordial example is the Manhattan Project. Here was an
undertaking of such magnitude that secrecy was of paramount
importance. How to design and build an atomic bomb without the enemy
knowing? It is, of course, a multifarious question. One of the
answers, however, was to hide the knowledge from Congress itself -
despite the fact that it involved unprecedented outlays of money.
Amazingly, the plan succeeded.
In fact, when scientists detonated a nuclear bomb at Los Alamos on
July 16, 1945, the most spectacular and ominous event in the history
of science, no one outside that small classified circle knew a thing.
Consider the implications. The work was done in a secrecy so profound
that the mainstream scientific literature had nothing of import to say
about nuclear technology. The information was too sensitive to discuss
openly.
Significantly, though the Manhattan Project remained secret from the
public, it was not secret from the Soviets, who had penetrated the
American defense and scientific establishment, and used data from the
project to build an atomic bomb years ahead of schedule. This pattern,
in fact, recurred throughout the Cold War: more often than not, the
American public was kept in the dark about black projects more
successfully than were the Soviet authorities. Many times, it was they
and not the Soviets who were the true target of secrecy - for
instance, in such cases as the U-2 flyovers or mind control
experiments.
Thus, the Manhattan Project possesses staggering historical importance
for so many reasons, not the least of which is that it has served as a
model ever since for conducting expensive and covert operations.
Hiding the money, keeping the real talk classified, and steering the
public discussion- all of these were successfully tackled by the
national security world of the 1940s. If it's important, it's probably
secret. This was true during the development of the atomic bomb in the
1940s; it is almost certainly true regarding the UFO.
Implications
Those of us without a "need to know" about UFOs can still learn a few
things. Enough information exists within the public realm that we can
put many of the pieces together. It is, frankly, what I have tried to
do in my recent study.
Do the math. For more than fifty years, millions of people have
experienced a global phenomenon from agencies unknown, possessing what
appears to be fantastic technology. We have on record hundreds of
military UFO encounters and reports, with undoubted interest and
infiltration by the intelligence world. Compound this with
disturbingly strong claims of abduction (and even worse) on the part
of these others, and you have powerful reasons for abject silence on
the part of our erstwhile leaders. The math is not higher calculus.
No, it is simple addition, and when you add it up the conclusion is
forced: this is a fundamentally covert event of awesome magnitude.
But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we can "get to the
bottom" of this. That is, as mere citizens of what some would call an
oligarchic empire that masquerades as a democracy, we are unlikely to
get official confirmation regarding something as important as an alien
presence. And even if we did get such "confirmation," could we truly
depend on the accuracy and completeness of the information? I think
you know the answer.
Knowledge may give us an edge in some way. Or, our situation may more
closely match the American natives of 500 years ago. Either way, we on
the outside are on our own where this phenomenon is concerned, and it
behooves us to become as educated about it as we can. Otherwise, we
experience our fate - for good or ill - in the dark.
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Last year, I published a book which has received a fair amount of
critical acclaim. This is: UFOs and the National Security State: An
Unclassified History. Volume One, 1941 to 1973 Anyone interested in
reading 40 pages of this book, along with various articles, can check
my website at http://keyholepublishing.com