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From: Don Ledger <dledger@istar.ca>
Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 12:19:09 +0100
Fwd Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 11:54:35 -0500
Subject: Re: Author: NASA Profits By High Interest In UFOs

Hello List,

Since I haven't been active lately on this list I made up for it
with the lengthy offering below. I also sent a copy of it to
Martin Burkey at "The Huntsville Times" in Alabama.

Martin Burkey's article on Dr.Benson Saylor's assessment of the
UFO situation, once more makes it clear that the press and media
in the nineties are completely incapable of doing a sound
investigative piece, preferring rather to fall back on the flawed
interpretations of another, in this case, Dr. Benson Saylor. 
There are too many reporters nowadays that are getting a free
ride on the work done by Woodward and Berstein during the
Watergate incident. That story was then regarded as a masterful
piece of detective work and journalism, which indeed it was, on
the part of two people.

The NASA connection in this article, completely escapes me.

> From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
> To: updates@globalserve.net
> Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 04:37:28 +0100
> Subject: Author: NASA Profits By High Interest In UFOs

> >>From The Huntsville Times (Alabama). URL:

> http://groupmaster.al.com/city/huntsville/List.asp?Section=3D1&ID=3D25038

> *******

> March=BF20, 1998    Author: Blame NASA for high interest in UFOs

> By MARTIN BURKEY
> Times Aerospace/Science Writer
> 3/20/98

> NASA doesn't advertise flying saucers as a space program spinoff,
> but the agency gets at least a share of the credit, the author of
> a book about UFOs said Thursday.

> "The exploration of space makes reverse exploration seem
> reasonable," said Dr. Benson Saylor, professor of anthropology at
> Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

> Saylor, author of "UFO Crash at Roswell, The Genesis of a Modern
> Myth", talked about the UFO "subcommunity" during a public
> lecture at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

> Asked why UFOs have become so popular in the face of
> contradictory, ambiguous or nonexistent evidence, Saylor
> suggested more people are searching for "enhancement, wonder,
> spirituality."

Speaking of "myths", here is the same old lie, dragged out and
dusted off once more, the unproved statement that there is no
evidence. Is Dr. Saylor prepared to remain on record as accusing
millions of people in his own country of being liars or mentally
disturbed, fabricating their sightings out of whole cloth simply
to gain a little publicity.  He will no doubt point to Adamski
and others to support this claim.But for every one he can find,
the field of UFO research can find a thousand who did not seek
publicity, people who incidentally were and are much more
qualified than he to make an assessment of whether there is
evidence to support their claims.

Too many of these "experts" such as Saylor attempt to tie the
sightings of and reporting of UFOs to some spiritual need in the
witness, as he is quoted as suggesting that "people are searching
for enhancement, wonder and spirituality". Whenever some expert
on the human condition  seeks a reason for these sightings, i.e.
why they see them and why they report them, they drag out
religion or some need to have some wonder or enhancement in their
poor, dull, dreary, little lives. What twaddle.
=09
When Harry and Ethel climb in their Chevy one night to go down to
the mall or supermarket, she to pick up some groceries while he
goes to the local auto parts store to check out the price of
snow tires, and then all of a sudden they find that they are being
followed by a brilliant light that decides to play tag with them
or hover silently over their car, is Dr. Saylor then saying that
for some unknown reason these people, just out of the blue - and
coincidentally at the same time, suddenly needed a spirituality
break supplemented by enhancement and wonder. Suppose that we
substitute Clyde Wambaugh - the astronomer who discovered Pluto -
and his wife in this scenario and who admitted after the first
time he saw a UFO his whole belief system had been cocked on its
ear.

Would Dr. Saylor be so quick to claim that Wambaugh was so in
need of some spirituality, so lacking in wonderment (like staring
into the heart of the Universe is not enough wonder for anybody)
that he therefore needed the enhancement and resulting publicity
to liven up his other wise dull and uneventful life. 

> It also resonates strongly with recurring mythology, specifically
> the "hoarded object myth" in which some entity controls crucial
> resources and refuses to give it to humanity, Saylor said. In
> Greek mythology, the gods controlled fire until Prometheus stole
> fire and gave it to mortals. India has a similar myth about
> water, he said.

Yeah, tell that to all of the military fighter jocks, airline
pilots, naval personnel, astronomers, engineers, air traffic
controllers, radar technicians, university professors, doctors,
nurses, theologians, presidents, generals, farmers, welders,
teachers, lawyers, policemen, etc. etc.etc..that have reported
these things.  All of the foregoing, I'm sure, will be tickled
pink by the allegations that they are spiritually deprived, are
seeking wonder in their lives and are "enchanted" the latter
which in the old days was another way of saying that someone was
crazy.

The real sin here is that by dismissing years of testimony by
such people as "no evidence" Dr. Saylor has placed himself in a
position of superiority, the king of the mountain, and thereby
has regulated those many people below him, the UFO witnesses, as
being nothing more than self seeking liars and charlatans.

> "In Roswell, the monster is the U.S. government, which controls
> the knowledge that we are not alone," said Saylor, who noted that
> he does not believe in UFOs.

It may surprise Saylor and Burkey that the Roswell Incident is as
much of a hot potato amongst experts in the UFO field as it is
outside the field, with its own detractors and supporters. Burkey
and Saylor should also make note that Roswell is not the be-all
and end-all in the UFO field. There are plenty of highly puzzling
incidents around the world to keep everyone busy for a long time.
 

> Saylor said UFOs are used for "individual empowerment," a way for
> people to make themselves popular.

I don't know how to spell a Bronx cheer, but that last statement
is so done to death, it deserves one. Of course there is
individual empowerment, the same as there is in any field. If Dr.
Saylor took a few moments he could probably come up with number
of individuals in his own field of anthropology who make use of
individual empowerment. He is also probably aware of many more
who work diligently away in obscurity, making small gains that
eventually will result in some other less scrupulous person
practicing "individual empowerment" at the expense of the formers
hard work.

> UFOs also are a vehicle for anti-government fears in the wake of
> Watergate and the Vietnam War, Saylor said. "Shaken confidence in
> government makes it seem more plausible. The government cant win
> this case."

In the first place, Watergate was not a government action, it was
a party action, carried out by the Republican election machine.
that's why it was so easy to expose it. There were no
professionals involved here. Those involved were ex-newspaper
reporters, spin doctors, marketing people and politicians who
tried to use the privacy of the office of the President as a
block against the whole story coming out. Can you imagine a less
qualified bunch of people trying to cover up Watergate. Had
there been a concerted effort supported by various covert
government agencies who deal in such black operations then the
Watergate affair would probably never have seen the light of day.
As well, had the reporter of this story bothered to check, and Dr.
Saylor as well, he might have found that the Vietnam war seems to
have depressed UFO sightings to some degree rather than bring
them out. This might have something to do with the fact that the
United States was fighting in Vietnam, not the rest of the world
where life went on as usual.

> The appeal of UFOs is also driven by docu-dramas and other media
> that make them seem more real, he added.

These docudramas are presented by reporters and producers who for
the most part have, like Dr. Saylor, little knowledge of the
phenomenon.

> Polls indicate half of adults in the United States believe UFOs
> are real and there is intelligent life in the universe, Saylor
> said. Another 27 percent maintain alien ships have landed and
> have contacted humans.

Yes so what's the point?

> Unlike true stories, like Watergate, which gradually unfolded
> around a handful of facts that didnt change, the Roswell incident
> and other UFO stories change or contradict themselves, Saylor
> said.

Again, Saylor uses Watergate as an example. I've already given
the reasons why Watergate was so easy to expose but here is
another, self-serving interest on the part of the press. They
were a willing ally in the pre-prosecution of Nixon.

The only body to profit from the Watergate Affair was the press
and the media.  Nixon lost, his henchmen lost, the American
people lost (innocence and faith in the system), but the press
and the media profited. The media profited not only by gaining
some "integrity" brownie-points on the back of the Washington
Post and Woodward and Berstein as seeming defenders of the
constitution, not to mention brilliant detectives to boot, but
they profited monetarily as well, which is really the bottom
line.

> "Its not what you find in a journalistic expose," he said. "Its
> what you find in myths."

If the UFO phenomenon had the press and media onside or at least
in the middle, there might be more rapid developments in
discovering the truth about Unidentified Flying Objects. Those
people that don't come forward for fear of ridicule, those
persons who deal with it during their professional careers and
who can't talk because of some bogus belief that there are laws
saying they can't speak, might open up if they believed they were
going to get half of a chance with a press and media that seeks
only sensationalism.

I would suggest to Martin Burkey that the next time he needs a
filler piece, because its a slow day on the revelations of
Clinton's sexual proclivities, that he go to the real experts
instead of some ill-informed, self appointed defender of the
human psyche such as Dr. Saylor.

If you want to know who the experts are, then this will be a good
test of your investigative abilities, because like any other
field there are many, seemingly obvious experts-like Dr.Saylor
for instance, that stand out because they make an effort to do
so. They will at first blush appear to be experts, and SOME are,
due to their excellent investigative work over the years, but
many are not. Beware.

By the time you have found your experts you will have learned
much that you did not know when you wrote this piece, not the
kind of self-serving tripe offered up by the good Doctor. And
please, remember those witnesses I mentioned earlier, make an
effort to give them a break.

Don Ledger

Bedford, Nova Scotia


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