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From: Jerry Cohen <rjcohen@li.net>
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 19:50:59 -0400
Fwd Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 08:53:21 -0500
Subject: Hynek 10/10/66 Newsweek - Pt. 1


For those without web browsers.

Because it can't be transmitted all at once in email, footnotes
to this article will appear in Hynek 10/10/66 Newsweek
Article.2. Those downloading this article can connect both into
one file for research purposes. The footnotes are extremely
relevant to this post for researchers, as all information can be
checked for accuracy therefrom, and also provide additional
insights.
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Life and Times of Dr. J. Allen Hynek:

In trying to learn as much as we can about the life of J. Allen
Hynek and his ufological relationship with the United States Air
Force we note the following:

Since the late 1940's, the Air Force had been releasing
explanations for UFO cases and in effect, doing its best to
assure the American public (and the world) that it had this "UFO
thing" under control. Skeptics could feel confident that UFO
claims were probably _all_ scientifically explainable if one
would simply dig deeply enough into each case.

However, the number of UFO cases that made the newspapers in
1957 again began increasing dramatically in 1965/66, the quality
of some began rising as well and the Air Force seemed to be
falling short in publically explaining some of them.

Then, something happened in 1966 that had a profound impact on
every person following this fascinating controversy: Dr. J.
Allen Hynek, chief civilian astronomical scientific consultant
to the Air Force on UFOs (for approximately 18 years), the
scientist responsible for debunking all the cases _for_ the Air
Force, suddenly went public with information which apparently
contradicted what the Air Force had been saying all along. In
simple terms the man said; "I can't explain all of this. Some of
it has me baffled." (This researcher's quote, not Hynek's)

So that we can remember exactly what happened back then, I am
posting those 2 articles that originally exploded this
controversy into a major dispute, unresolved to this day.

The following article was taken from:  Newsweek Magazine,
10/10/66, p. 70. It contained quotes by Dr. Hynek. A brief
discussion of same follows.

Another much longer and more detailed article by Hynek himself
appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on 12/17 of the same year.
I believe that 2nd one may have been a large portion of the
major text of the article Hynek evidently submitted to "Science"
journal _prior to their editing._  I'll be submitting that
shortly.
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Begin Newsweek article:

SCIENCE AND SPACE

UFO's for Real?

Flying saucers once again have zoomed back into the public
eye-or imagination. In the first six months of this year the
U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, the official registrar of
Unidentified Flying Objects, has duly noted 508 UFO "sightings."
Saturday Review columnist and UFO believer John Fuller's
"Incident at Exeter" has been sharing space on the best-seller
lists with former radio announcer Frank Edwards' book "Flying
Saucers-Serious Business." And just last week Fuller began a
two-part story in Look magazine recounting the terrifying two
hours that a New Hampshire couple claim they spent being
interrogated aboard a flying saucer.

The Air Force has been chasing-and usually shooting down-such
stories since the late 1940s. The issue has always seemed
clear-cut: on the one side, the excited believers or someone
with a story to sell; on the other side, the sober scientific
Establishment which explained away alleged sightings as weather
balloons, birds, jet aircraft, cloud formations or even ball
lightning (NEWSWEEK, Sept. 5, 1966). But last week one of the
leading Establishment members seemed to be defecting to the
other side. No less a figure than J. Allen Hynek, the
Northwestern University astrophysicist and the Air Force's own
UFO consultant, believes something's up. "There is a phenomenon
here," Hynek says. "I've studied this for eighteen years and
it's not all nonsense."

In a letter to the authoritative journal Science, to be published
this month, Hynek calls upon reputable scientists to investigate
UFO's seriously. "I'm not saying we are being visited by
extraterrestrial beings," Hynek told Newsweek's Richard Steele,
"but I believe it is one of the possibilities and I think we
should hold an open mind about it. It would be provincial to
believe we are the only intelligent beings in the universe."
UFO's might even be, according to Hynek, "something entirely new
to science. Where would you have gotten in 1866," he asks, "if
you had talked to a scientists about nuclear energy?"

Unlike the true UFO believers, Hynek does not cry conspiracy.
First of all, he dismisses the idea that UFO's are some secret
military device. "I just don't think people can keep a secret
for eighteen years," he says. Hynek also acknowledges that most
UFO reports can be explained as down-to-earth events. At first,
Science (journal) rejected Hynek's letter, reluctant to lend its
reputation to a controversy that has been the property of
publicity seekers and circulation-minded editors. But Hynek's
arguments persuaded the magazine to publish an abbreviated
version.

In his letter Hynek eloquently seeks to win over "scientists who
would like to look into the UFO phenomenon but are so vastly
afraid of ridicule . . . They don't dare investigate."  He
presents his argument in charge and rebuttal form:


*CHARGE:   "UFO's are reported by unreliable, unstable,
            uneducated people."
 REBUTTAL:     "... some of the very best, most coherent reports
            have come from reliable, scientifically trained
            people."

*CHARGE:    "The Air Force has no evidence that UFO's are
            extraterrestrial or represent advanced technology of
            any kind."
 REBUTTAL:     "As long as there are unidentifieds' the
            question must obviously remain open."

*CHARGE:  "UFO's have never been sighted on radar or photographed
           by meteor or satellite-tracking cameras."
 REBUTTAL:    "This is not equivalent to saying that radars,
           meteor cameras and satellite-tracking stations have
           not picked up 'oddities' on their scopes."

Search:  To turn UFO's into IFO's (Identified Flying Objects)
Hynek recommends reliable reports be searched by computer for
common features such as the appearance of the object and where
and when it was sighted. Then, says Hynek, the investigators
could try to be on scene to observe the UFO's.

Hynek claims a pattern 'has already begun to emerge from the
"hard-data" cases. They contain, he says, "Frequent allusions to
hovering, wobbling and rapid take-off. Other often reported
features are oval shapes, flashing lights or brilliant lights
whose glare is uncomfortable." This is an apt description of
ball lighting-the glowing mass of ionized air molecules that can
occur during stormy weather--but Hynek things that relatively
few UFO sightings can be explained by ball lighting. Many have
been seen, he says, when atmospheric conditions are not right
for ball lighting.

If an inquiry is launched (the Air Force is searching for a
university to do the job) Hynek wants only an advisory role.
"I'm not whipping up a bonfire," he says. "so I can dance around
it."

Gullible:  How soon, if ever, Hynek's program will be carried
out is anyone's guess. Yet the need for a systematic
investigation of UFO reports to end the uncertainty is
undeniable. The national capacity for gullibility is enormous.
Look magazine's story, for example, recounts the adventures of
Barney and Betty Hill, as revealed under hypnosis performed by a
Boston psychiatrist named Benjamin Simon.

Look insists that he story is a "human document" and not an
attempt to convince the public that the Hills actually boarded a
flying saucer. But the title of Fuller's series--"Aboard a
Flying Saucer" --seems to contradict that and so does the prose:
Barney found himself remembering that "The men had rather
odd-shaped heads, with a large cranium, diminishing in size as
it got toward the chin. And the eyes continued around to the
sides of their 'heads'."  The Hills have earned $24,000 from
their story so far and author Fuller and Dr. Simon will share
earning from a projected book and possibly a movie.

Until the U.S. acts on Hynek's proposals, it seems, the public
will continue to be taken for a ride aboard UFO's.

End - Newsweek article
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A brief discussion concerning the article:

The publication of the preceding Newsweek magazine report is the
first time this researcher realized that Hynek was admitting
there were cases he couldn't solve and that he believed further
study should be performed on them.

We might ask ourselves; "Why did Hynek say "it's not all
nonsense" in that release?" What could be gained for Hynek by
this move other than to ostracize himself from _both_ the Air
Force and the Scientific community?  It was almost professional
suicide for any scientist to say this. Why ruin your main
career? He already had had a prestigious post with NASA in
charge of tracking our first satellites shot into orbit. If he
remained silent at Blue Book's demise, there probably would have
been other such projects he would have been in line for.
Instead, here he was refuting the very people who hired him.

In an article written by Hynek and published in the Saturday
Evening Post about two months later, he officially informs us
the Air Force wasn't always using his analyses and yet we had
all thought the Air Force evaluations were all his, some of
their explanations were missing the mark scientifically,
"difficult to explain cases" were beginning to mount, the press
was getting annoyed, the public was getting riled up, the Air
Force was embarrassing him, and Hynek could see his scientific
reputation gradually becoming tarnished in the process. He
obviously didn't like the position the Air Force was putting him
in and he really couldn't explain certain cases if he were
pressed to do so.

Hynek had previously lived through the embarrassment of the
August 2nd, 1965 Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas
sightings where those states were deluged with UFO reports
including some from police officers. [1]  The weather bureau in
Wichita tracked an object at 3:40 A.M. Bob Campbell, television
newsman in Sherman, Texas near Oklahoma took a picture of a
strange object. [2]  The Air Force attempted to explain them
away but Robert Risser, the director of Oklahoma City's
Kirkpatrick Planetarium disagreed with the Air Force's
explanation that the sightings were "either twinkles from the
planet Jupiter or stars Rigel, Capella, Betelgeuse or
Alderberan." Risser said "Somebody has made a mistake. ...  Many
of those objects mentioned by the Air Force are not visible
until just before dawn in Oklahoma City and other aren't visible
at all." [3]   Who else bore the direct brunt of this but Hynek,
the Air Force's number one civilian scientific advisor.

Six months later (2/66), an article appeared in Look Magazine by
author John Fuller. It concerned UFO incidents that allegedly
took place _one month_ after the Texas, New Mexico sightings,
beginning approximately Sept. 3, 1965 at Exeter, N.H. [4] (We
are all still trying to explain those folks.) The Exeter
sightings continued over a period of several weeks and were
claimed to have been witnessed by approximately 60 people
including police personnel.

Simply for the record, an odd coincidence had occurred just
_two_months_ after the claimed Exeter incidents, in November
1965, the lights went out along the Northeast coast. We were in
the midst of the 1st great Northeast Power Failure. [5]  After
all the "hubbub" died down, when the final report came in as to
the cause of the failure, it turned out to be a relay switch of
some kind that had tripped at Niagara Falls. No one knew _why_
it had tripped. They knew the sequence _after_ it tripped but
not the reason for its tripping.

And then, Hynek suffered another major embarrassment after a
rash of UFO sightings which occurred near Dexter/Hillsdale,
Michigan (3/66). Dr. Hynek flew to Dexter/Hillsdale to
investigate. Being pressed by reporters as to what he thought
the sightings might be, he guessed that some might possibly have
been _swamp gas_. [6]  The press jumped on this, and both the
newspapers and the public went crazy. They had had enough.  [7]

Although the Dexter/Hillsdale case wasn't the strongest, the
summation of the aforementioned circumstances, eventually led to
Congressional hearings on Capitol Hill. [8]  As some of you may
remember, those hearings ultimately led to an Air Force
sponsored University study concerning UFOs; it was none other
than the greatly disputed Condon Study or Colorado Project. [9]

In the end however, the Colorado (Condon) Report was negative
and the Air Force was finally able to shut down project Blue
Book and silence Hynek who had defected from their camp. [10]
Hynek disagreed with the report and bravely said so to other
scientists in no uncertain terms. [11]

So, why did Hynek take this incredible stand? The simple reason
is he spoke out because all his experience had indicated to him
other scientists were missing the mark with regard to this UFO
thing and he felt it wasn't totally impossible it might be the
most important scientific "event" to happen to mankind since man
discoved the sun didn't revolve around the earth.

He firmly believed in his heart and soul it was time to have the
rest of the world look closely at something extraordinary he
himself was not able to solve. Hence the Newsweek & Post
articles [12] and eventually his book "The UFO Experience"
which, amongst many other things finally explained to the public
why he had to break with the Air Force and disagree with the
Colorado report. [13] Hynek, the scientist, had looked at this
subject for a period of approximately 18 years. His in-depth
investigation for all those years indicated to him that the
Colorado Committee may have made a grave error; one the
scientist within him couldn't ignore.

Additionally, after evaluating what others that worked with him
closely have said about his character, etc. after his death,
[14] I am fairly certain Hynek's press releases were his honest
evaluation of the entire situation, written with hope the
Colorado committee would perform an honest assessment. As we all
know, this didn't happen back then.

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continued: Hynek 10/10/66 Newsweek.2 (footnotes)