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From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 03:05:58 +0200
Fwd Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 22:30:44 -0400
Subject: Space Coast UFO Conference: NASA And Newsmedia


Source: Florida Today

http://www.flatoday.com:80/space/today/101098i.htm

Stig

*******

FLORIDA TODAY Space Online
"Planet Earth's best source for online space news"

For Oct. 10, 1998

NASA, news media rapped at UFO conference

By Billy Cox
FLORIDA TODAY

COCOA BEACH, Fla. - Although NASA made an easy target during Friday
afternoon's opening session of the Space Coast UFO Conference at the
Hilton, the most rousing applause erupted after a swipe at the news
media.

Several hundred listeners gathered for an event billed as the NASA
Forum, which - for the first time, according to conference sponsors -
featured a space agency representative, Thomas Howard Smith.

But UFO researcher/author Stanton Friedman scored a crowd pleaser when
he charged, during the question-and-answer session, "If any newspaper
spent one-fifth of what they've spent (investigating) Monica Lewinsky,
we'd have the answers to flying saucers."

Twenty years ago, Friedman, a nuclear physicist whose contracts
included classified projects, was the first to investigate the 1947
accounts of a controversial crash in the New Mexico desert. Now
popularized as the Roswell Incident, that event has become what
Friedman contends was the beginning of a "Cosmic Watergate" engineered
by the military and civilian intelligence machinery.

But with a NASA rep sitting at his elbow, Friedman couldn't resist
venting some frustration at the space agency - "we don't have a
project, we don't have goals" - and he wondered what happened to the
UFO data supposedly collected by NASA's predecessor, the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Smith, a space station and human exploration specialist, preferred to
talk about NASA's more conventional history and a discussion of
upcoming projects. He described himself as a "sympathetic nonbeliever"
who wasn't here "to deliver any kind of revelation. It would be fine.
It would also be career limiting," he added, provoking laughter.

Forum panelist Vincent DiPietro also had a major bone to pick with
NASA. A senior systems engineer employed as a contractor at Goddard
Space Flight Center for 23 years, DiPietro was the first to study
enigmatic Martian surface features photographed during the 1976 Viking
mission.

Citing a September Space News report on the growing number of planetary
scientists disgruntled over the slow release of photo data from the
ongoing Mars Global Surveyor project, DiPietro suggested compelling new
images were being consciously withheld.

DiPietro criticized MGS camera operator Michael Malin, whose contract
gives him a six-month proprietary embargo on the images. He said other
scientists reported Malin had taken numerous pictures of the so-called
Face on Mars, other than the single one released to NASA in April that
appeared to reflect natural terrain rather than artificial features.

"This leads me to believe we are not getting all the facts from Malin
Enterprises," DiPietro said.

But not all the barbs came from the panelists; the audience took their
shots, too.

One man asked Smith a question he said he couldn't get NASA
Administrator Dan Goldin to answer several years ago during a public
forum: "When (are you) going to tell the public about the UFO
presence?" The perplexed Smith replied, "The next time I play golf with
him, I'll ask him."

Another exasperated audience member wondered where the space agency's
curiosity was when it came to UFOs, given the level of public interest.
"I've never heard a NASA official say, 'Y'know, this is interesting." '

Friedman said the problem was with "ancient academics and fossilized
physicists" and "a failure of leadership."

"It takes guts to say, 'I don't know' or, 'that's interesting,' as you
suggest."

The Space Coast UFO Conference, sponsored by Project Awareness of Gulf
Breeze, continues its lineup of speakers and workshops today and
Sunday.
                                                                      
           

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