From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac@compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 22:59:31 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 08:42:18 -0500
Subject: Re: NewsFlash: UFO News Sightings
>From: Steven L. Wilson Sr <Ndunlks@aol.com>
>Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 17:10:21 EST
>Subject: NewsFlash: UFO News Sightings
>To: updates@globalserve.net
>From: Iam Dorian>
>To: <Ndunlks@aol.com> (Researcher Steven L. Wilson, Sr)
>From: Capt AJ 3
> http://www.bufora.org.uk/times/news/news.htm
>UFO News Sightings
>UFO News
>New Information or Dis-information?
>WASHINGTON (AP) -- With growing hysteria over alleged UFO
>sightings in the 1950s, the Air Force repeatedly concocted false
>cover stories to hide the fact that their super-secret spy
>planes had been spotted, an intelligence study says. >
>Historian Gerald K. Haines writes that the Air Force, responding
>to alleged UFO sightings during the Cold War years, frequently
>provided explanations that were untrue to deflect attention away
>from the spy planes.
>"Over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the
>1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights
>(namely the U-2) over the United States," Haines wrote in the
>spring issue of Studies of Intelligence, an unclassified CIA
>journal. The article was found Saturday on the Internet. >>
Deja vue or what?
This was hot news in August of 1997 when the US press
"discovered" the Haines article in "Studied in Intelligence"
that had been published in May 1997.
Oh well, it's still garbage a year later. To see why, read the
following paper:
CIA'S UFO EXPLANATION IS PREPOSTEROUS
by Bruce Maccabee
June 3, 1997
"The CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90" is a recently
published article that describes CIA involvement in the history
of UFO phenomena. The article, by CIA historian Gerald Haines,
is published in the unclassified version of "Studies in
Intelligence," a twice-yearly CIA journal (Volume 1, 1997, pg.
67).
The article presents the history of CIA involvement as
determined mostly from documents released by the CIA nearly 20
years ago. There is also some updating on CIA activities since
the documents were released in December, 1978.
According to the CIA documents, in the early days (late 40's
early 50's) the CIA got its UFO information from the Air
Technical Intelligence Center at the Air Materiel Command
headquartered at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.
This was the "home" of Projects SIGN, GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK (see
below). Consequently the CIA was "fed" the conventional AF
position on the subject (no evidence of truly new technology; no
evidence of a threat). In the late summer of 1952 the CIA
investigated Project Blue Book and concluded that it was
satisfactory if all one wanted to do was separate explainable
sightings from those which were not explainable. However, the
CIA analysts were critical of the Air Force for not studying the
unexplained sightings to find out the underlying causes of the
reports. The CIA evaluated the whole subject and concluded
that there might really be something unusual going on. During
the fall of 1952 at least one CIA official, Marshall Chadwick,
apparently believed that the unexplained sightings were a real
mystery. However, before carrying out an in-depth study to be
authorized by the National Security Council, he wanted to have a
panel of experts review the situation. This panel, which came
to be known as the Robertson Panel after its chairman, carried
out its review in early 1953. After this review, which
basically adopted the AF official position that everything could
be explained, the CIA apparently lost interest in the subject.
All of the above has been known for years. However, the new
article reveals some information which was still classified Top
Secret in December, 1978 when the FOIPA documents were released.
According to Mr. Haines' article, when the U-2 high altitude spy
plane began flying (first flight on August 4, 1955), CIA project
directors discovered that
"commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began
reporting a large increase in UFO sightings."
The U-2 is the high altitude spy plane made famous by the
1960 shootdown of Gary Powers as he flew over the Soviet Union
and by photos taken from a U-2 of Russian missile sites in Cuba
during the "Cuban Missile Crisis."
Mr. Haines has written,
"According to later estimates from CIA officials who
worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71 or
Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from
the late 1950's through the 1960's were
accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely
the U-2) over the United States. This led the Air
Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to
the public in order to allay public fears and to protect
an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.
While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the
later conspiracy theories and the coverup controversy of
the 1970's.
The percentage of what the Air force considered unexplained
UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent
in 1956."
This explanation for many ("over half of all") UFO reports
has never before been publicized. It was not contained within
documents released by the CIA in December, 1978 after a lawsuit
filed under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FOIPA)
by Ground Saucer Watch, a civilian UFO organization which ended
its activitied in the early 1980's.
According to Mr. Haines the U-2 was reported as a UFO because
"the early U-2's were silver (they were later painted black) and
reflected the rays of the sun, especially at sunrise and
sunset. They often appeared as fiery objects to observers
below. Air Force BLUE BOOK investigators, aware of the secret
U-2 flights, tried to explain away such sghtings by linking
them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature
inversions. By checking with the Agency's U-2 Project Staff in
Washington, BLUE BOOK investigators were able to attribute many
UFO sightings to U-2 flights. They were careful, however, not
to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public."
Project BLUE BOOK was the publicly known Air Force effort to
collect and explain, if possible, UFO sightings. Any sightings
which they could not explain were categorized as unknown. No
careful analyses of the unknowns were carried out. Project
BLUE BOOK ran from early 1951 through 1969. When it closed
BLUE BOOK and its predecessors (Project SIGN, 1948, and Project
GRUDGE, 1949-1951) had collected about 13,000 sightings, of
which about 700 were left unexplained.
The claim that the U-2 caused "over half of all UFO reports from
the late 1950's through the 1960's" is, to put it gently,
preposterous. The U-2, with its 80 ft long by 6 ft wide (front
to back) wingspan flew at 60-70,000 feet and at that altitude
was essentially invisible during the day.It created no contrail
because of the lack of moisture at that altitude. It was, after
all, designed to be attract little attention from the ground as
it flew at a higher altitude than could be attained by any
Russian defense missiles! Nevertheless, during the hour before
sunrise and the hour following sunset it would be possible for
an unpainted aircraft to reflect the sun enough to be visible,
perhaps with a reddish glow resulting from the reddening of
sunlight (caused by passage of the sunlight through the
atmosphere, which acts like a filter that removes blue and green
relative to red). High altitude balloons (e.g., Project
SKYHOOK) did cause some UFO reports during these times of day
and were so identified by the Air Force and civilian
investigators. However, only a small fraction of sightings
occur during these times. The largest fraction of sightings is
at night when the U-2 can't be seen and the next largest
fraction is during the daytime.
A check of the Project BLUE BOOK sighting statistics in the
"Condon Report" ("Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying
Objects," D.S. Gilmor, Ed., Air Force publication, 1968; Bantam
edition, 1969, pg. 514), which includes sightings by pilots and
air traffic controllers as well as by military personnel and
civilians, shows the following numbers of sightings for the six
months before to the six months after flights began in early
August: Feb - 34, Mar -41, Apr - 33, May - 54, Jun - 48, Jul -
63, Aug - 68, Sep - 57, Oct - 55, Nov - 32, Dec - 25, Jan (1956)
- 43. Notice that the August increase of 5 reports over the
number in July may have been just a continuation of the overall
increase that began in April, 1955. Then the number of reports
per month dropped even though the number of U-2 flights
increased. The total number of reports during the 6 months
before the start of U-2 flights is 273. The total number for the
6 months following the start (Aug - Jan) is 280. Thus there was
a 100 x (7/273) = 2.6% increase in the number of reports
following the start of U-2 flights using the six month totals.
These numbers are the sum of explained and unexplained sightings
and so include U-2 sightings, if any. These statistics suggest
that the U-2 was causing no more than a few percent of the
sightings (and may have caused NONE of the sightings!).
Comparing yearly statistics in the Condon Report we find: 1953 -
509, 1954 - 487, 1955 - 545. In 1956 there was an increase
during the summer months with 72 in July, 123 in August and 71
in September which, when added to the nominal rate for the other
months (40 to 50 per month) resulted in a total of 670 for the
year. The year 1957 had 1005 reports, mostly as a result of
the "Sputnik Flap" (103 in October, 361 in November and 136 in
December; other months were in the range 40 - 70 reports).
Although the number of U-2 aircraft and the number of flights
increased during the following years the number of sightings
showed no correlation: 1958 - 627, 1959 - 390, 1960 - 557, 1961
- 591, 1962 - 474, etc.
Statistics based on a different set of data are contained within
the "U Database" of over 14,000 sightings by Larry Hatch (Larry
Hatch Software, 142 Jeter St., Redwood City, CA 94025-1957).
This excellent PC based software provides statistics that are
based on unexplained sightings recorded by Project BLUE BOOK and
by other organizations (civilian UFO groups). If Project BLUE
BOOK investigators explained some sightings as the U-2, these
sightings would not appear in the list of unexplained BLUE BOOK
sightings and hence would not be included in this database. On
the other hand, the far larger collection of non-Blue Book
sightings in this database could include U-2 sightings, if the
CIA is correct, that were not identified by civilian
investigators who were unaware of the U-2's existence. Hence a
comparison of the sighting statistics before and after U-2
flights started could provide evidence that the U-2 was being
reported as a UFO. In this database I find the following:
YEAR/MONTH Ja Fe Ma Ap Ma Ju Ju Au Sep Oc Nov De TOTAL
1954 13 13 12 17 25 28 18 14 18 4 15 10 187
1955 11 8 9 4 12 11 30 29 12 13 12 6 157
1956 10 11 7 5 13 20 33 43 9 6 12 3 174
1957 3 6 7 3 6 5 12 7 9 10 110 11 189
1958 5 0 4 8 3 5 2 8 4 12 6 1 58
As one can see from the above table, there is no evidence of an
increase in monthly sighting rate following the first flight of
the U-2 on Aug. 4, 1955. The large increase in November, 1957
occurred just after Sputnik 2 was launched. (This flap is
noted for the large number of close-range car-stopping events.
Most of the sightings were not sightings of Sputnik itself.)
An even more telling set of statistics uses the sightings which
occurred near sunrise or sunset when, according to Mr. Haines,
the U-2 would have appeared as a shiny or fiery bright spot in
the sky.
TIME 0400 to 0700 (which encompasses the time before sunrise)
(With a time window this wide we get an overestimate of the
number of sightings just before sunrise; the time of sunrise
varies during the year.) August 1955 is noted by *2*.
YEAR/MONTH
1953 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 5
1954 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 1 2 0 0 0 7
1955 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 *2* 1 1 1 0 7
1956 0 1 0 1 1 2 6 2 1 0 1 0 15
1957 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 13 1 19
1958 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
TIME 1700 to 2100 (which encompasses the time after sunset)
(With a time window this wide we get an overestimate of the
number of sightings just after sunset; local sunset time varies
during the year.)
YEAR/MONTH
1953 9 3 2 1 2 3 2 4 6 2 7 3 44
1954 3 2 0 5 5 8 5 2 4 2 4 0 40
1955 5 3 3 0 5 0 10 *7* 2 4 5 2 46
1956 5 1 2 2 2 2 6 12 2 0 3 0 37
1957 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 3 1 2 26 3 38
1958 1 0 1 2 1 0 1 1 2 0 1 0 10
Clearly there is no statistical support for a sudden increase in
the number of sightings at sunrise or sunset when the U-2
started flying. In fact, the number of sightings during the
evening time period was lower in August, 1955, than during July.
In the early 1960's many of the U-2s were painted black or other
camouflage colors thus reducing the number of U-2's that could
potentially be seen by glint reflection from the sun. Hence
the probability of seeing one was even less than before.
Aside from the statistics it should be pointed out that many of
the unexplained sightings involved relatively nearby, structured
objects rather than far distant, nearly invisible points of
light. Many of the unidentified objects were reported to move
rapidly at apparent (angular) speeds that would far exceed the
apparent speed of a U-2 (about 500 mph) flying at 60 - 70,000 ft
(the U-2 would seem to move slowly, if seen at all).
The documented history of the agency involvement has been
published in "Clear Intent" by Larry Fawcett and Barry
Greenwood, In "UFOs, The Public Deceived" by Philip Klass (in my
opinion, Phil deceived the public!) in "Above Top Secret" by
Timothy Good and most recently in "The FBI-UFO Connection/the
REAL X-files" by Bruce Maccabee (available from the author).
The complete CIA history paper is available on the web page of
the Center for the Study of Intelligence at www.odci.gov/csi
(where odci = Office of the Director of Central Intelligence....
shudder!). When you get to the "front page" look under What's
New and then check through the table of contents of Studies in
Intelligence, No. 1, 1997, semiannual unclassified edition.
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