How did life survive in the Snowball Earth? Scientists might have cracked the mystery

• The researchers do admit that ‘Snowball Earth is just a hypothesis’, but that period seems to have been an era of the most extreme long-term cold spell(s) ever detected on Earth.

There is very little life in Arctic tundras and glaciers. However that was the situation in a big portion of the world during Ice Ages, says Technology.org.

This is a dramatization of what happened 700 million years ago, when Earth fell into the deepest ice age in its history. This period is called the Snowball Earth.

Image credit: Neethis via Wikimedia

How did life survive these difficult periods? How didn’t everything just die, being cut off from any kind of sources of nutrition and oxygen?

Scientists examined the chemistry of the iron formations in Australia, Namibia, and California to get a window into the environmental conditions during the ice age. They selected rocks left there by the ice age, because they are representative of the conditions during that difficult period for life.

By analysing these rocks scientists from the McGill University were able to estimate the amount of oxygen in the oceans around 700 million years ago.

Oxygen concentration is a crucial condition for sustainability of life. Without oxygen everything dies in a massive domino chain. And scientists did find that a huge portion of the ocean was uninhabitable due to a low concentration of oxygen, but some areas, particularly where the grounded ice sheet begins to float there, became a critical source of oxygenated meltwater.

This effect, called the glacial oxygen pump, enriches water with oxygen. Air bubbles trapped in the glacial ice are released into the water as it melts, becoming a crucial supply of oxygen for various life forms, including eukaryotes.

Scientists believe that this explanation answers a question that has been puzzling them for decades – how did life on Earth survive the Snowball Earth time 700 million years ago, when our planet fell into the most severe ice age in its history?

Professor Galen Halverson, one of the authors of the paper, commented: “This study actually solves two mysteries about the Snowball Earth at once. It not only provides an explanation for how early animals may have survived global glaciation, but also eloquently explains the return of iron deposits in the geological record after an absence of over a billion years”.

Previous studies have hypothesized that oxygen-dependent life might have been restricted to meltwater puddles on the surface of the ice. However, now it seems that there were plenty of marine life forms as well, living in oxygen-enriched water. Furthermore, scientists think that this process of adapting to these extremely harsh conditions became one of the crucial accelerators for the evolution of life. They think that this situation enforced the  diversification of various species into more complex forms. It is always the environment that is the biggest factor in the course of evolution.

The Snowball Earth is just a hypothesis, stating that 650-700 million years ago Earth’s surface became entirely or almost entirely frozen over. Scientists cannot prove these claims, but there are many evidences pointing out that it could have been the case. Regardless, that period was the most extreme climate period for our planet and life managed to survive and rise for a new time for its evolution.

Source: 

• McGill University

{ https://www.technology.org/ }

07-01-2020 om 15:43 geschreven door peter  

On January 3, 2020 Vladimiir Kartsovnik posted a bizarre video on his Facebook page showing a blue glowing orb that appears at the edge of the forest.

Next, the orb hovers over the railway tracks and ends up on the other side of the tracks before it explodes.

Whether it is ball lightning or evidence of a spirit or alien orb, so far there is no explanation for this mysterious phenomenon.

Bottom photos rotated and in negative color show an alien face inside the orb.

Although Vladimiir did not mentioned the location, the recording seems to have been made in the regions of Russia.

  

• https://www.facebook.com/vladimiir.kartsovnik/videos/3199403310074816/

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

07-01-2020 om 15:08 geschreven door peter  

Ahomeowner appeared to vanish in a streak of light when he stepped off his porch in astonishing Ring doorbell footage.

According to coasttocoast it starts with the man exiting his house in Porter, Texas.

In the video, the man can be seen exiting the house and venturing down the front walk, when something very weird occurs. As he stands at the end of the path, he suddenly appears to transform into a ball of light that zips into the sky and disappears.

What happened to the homeowner, did aliens teleported or abducted him?

However, the man's financee explained that they were looking through their videos recorded on December 27, 2019 by Ring and they found a weird glitch. She told him: 'Look Ring had you abducted by aliens or you just been part of the rapture!'

But was it really a glitch or the homeowner just doesn't remember it.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

07-01-2020 om 15:00 geschreven door peter  

Cigar-shaped UFO recorded hovering near airport as 2019 drew to a close

Jeff Parsons

The strange object filmed hovering over Arizona

(YouTube/Disclose Screen)

Last year was a big one for the alien-hunting community.

There was the declassifying of secret military documents, a ‘flaming’ UFO on Friday 13th and – of course – the ill-fated attempt to storm Area 51.

But even as the year drew to a close, more footage was emerging.

While most of us were eating and drinking too much over the festive break, conspiracy theorists were debating a 14-minute video filmed on December 28 showing a cigar-shaped object floating in the sky in the US.

The UFO was filmed above Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona and uploaded to YouTube by conspiracist Disclose Screen The Grimreefar. It racked up over a thousand views after it was uploaded with commenters weighing in about what they thought the cylindrical object was.

Most were convinced it was some form of blimp that had drifted too close to the airport.

‘You can tell it’s a zeppelin when you pause a video. You can even see the square display and stabilizers,’ wrote YouTube user Ivan G. ‘And silver or gray color match the description. Flies like a Zeppelin, looks like a Zeppelin, located near a hangar for the Zeppelin…. Then it must be a UFO.’

Is this just a blimp?

(YouTube/Disclose Screen)

The fascination of UFOs and possible alien contact surged in 2019 and it’s unlikely to abate as we continue on into 2020.

‘Explaining the widespread interest in UFOs has proven more challenging than tracking it,’ said Greg Eghigian, a professor of history at Penn State University.

‘The most common explanation offered has focused on the Cold War: worries over possible alien invaders has been seen as an expression of anxiety about the threat of global nuclear destruction on the part of the scientifically uneducated,’ he told Metro.co.uk.

‘Academic research, however, has revealed that enthusiasts and their curiosity are more difficult to pin down than that. Studies conducted in the early-2000s showed that those reporting UFOs were generally lower income white males of moderate to high education.

‘And a survey in the 1980s of British UFO researchers indicated that a majority did not believe the objects came from outer space.’

A UFO sighting does not necessarily mean aliens

(Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images)

‘Overall, those who take a deep interest in UFOs have ranged widely in their motivations and beliefs. There are those who take up UFO study as a hobby akin to trainspotting or birding. There are sceptics who delight in treating each case as a challenging puzzle to crack.’

So, what we’re saying, is to expect plenty more bizarre sightings in the sky over the next 12 months.

{ https://metro.co.uk/ }

07-01-2020 om 01:43 geschreven door peter  

This Is Venus, Earth's Boiling Twin

By Jennifer Leman

NASA/JPL/USGS

Like Earth, our Twin planet Venus’s origins began around 4.5 billion years ago, in a gyrating cloud of dust, rock and rubble. In many ways, the two planets are similar—in size, density and gravity. Both have iron-rich cores, mantles filled with churning molten rock, and thin, rocky crusts that cover their surface.

Scientists suspect that, at one point, the surface of Venus looked a lot like Earth, with plate tectonics and shallow water oceans.

An artist’s rendition of an ancient, Earth-like Venus.

NASA

Then, 2 billion years into its life, everything changed. Shallow oceans on the Venusian surface began to evaporate, according to NASA. The amount of radiation emitted by the sun grew stronger and stronger. Atmospheric water vapor disintegrated, and hydrogen floated out into space, leaving a wealth of oxygen left to be cobbled into a choking cloud of carbon dioxide.

This cloud would encircle the planet for billions of years, trapping the Sun’s heat and energy in what scientists have dubbed a “runaway greenhouse effect.” Under these conditions, the planet absorbs more heat from the sun than it is able to radiate back out into space.

I'm Your Venus, I'm Your Fire

L. ESPOSITO (UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER), AND NASA/ESA

The surface of Venus is now far less-inviting.

It is the hottest planet in the solar system—scorching surface temperatures clock in at 880 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt lead. Ultra high temperatures have rendered the search for life on Venus's surface all but futile. Researchers don't think we're likely to find any sort of living organism—in any form.

For centuries, Venus was shrouded in mystery—literally. Scientists weren't able to peer past its cloudy atmosphere and weren't certain it even had a rocky surface. That's also one of the reasons why the planet is the brightest non-moon object in the sky—its bright, white haze reflects light readily. Its atmosphere is also a staggering 90 times more dense than Earth’s, we've recently discovered, exerting crushing forces on the planet's surface.

That thick atmosphere, made of 96.5 percent carbon dioxide, 3.1 percent nitrogen with piercing droplets of sulfuric acid, does a marvelous job of insulating the planet in a cushion of fire.

It doesn't sound very hospitable, but oddly, scientists believe the upper reaches of its thick atmosphere may be the spot we'd be most likely to find life. This is despite the fact that winds in the upper Venusian atmosphere churn and spiral at speeds of more than 220 miles per hour.

Temperatures at these altitudes are much more habitable—closer to that of Earth's surface. A 2018 paper published in the journal Astrobiology, suggested that dark, swirling clouds in Venus's atmosphere could be indicative of swirling colonies of light-absorbing bacteria.

Venus's close proximity to the sun, while still in the habitable zone, likely kicked off this unfortunate planetary process. It’s dramatic, but some researchers see the sweltering demise of Venus as a harbinger of things to come if we aren't able to control our own levels of carbon dioxide.

In any case, there are lessons to learn about our own future weather and climate from Venus’s atmosphere.

A Hidden Rocky Surface

NASA/JPL

Venus's impenetrable rocky surface is just as intriguing as its atmosphere. The crust is riddled with mountains, valleys, and volcanoes—like Maxwell Montes, the planet's highest peak, which stretches 20,000 feet above the surface. Atmospheric pressure on the surface of the planet, which has a radius of just 3,760 miles, is equivalent to what you might find more than half a mile beneath the ocean.

Large plateaus of lava spread across the planet's hemispheres. Last year, a paper published Aug. 9 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets called into question the composition of some of these highland plateaus, and, in turn, the Venus’s water-logged history. Instead of being composed fully of granitic rock, researchers reanalyzed old Magellan data and posited that these landforms could be made of basaltic lava. Basaltic rocks do not need water to form, unlike granitic rocks.

Our understanding of the surface of Venus is changing all the time. Venusian volcanoes on may be a lot more active than previously thought, according to research published on January 3, 2020, in the journal Science Advances. Researchers analyzed rates of weathering in olivine crystals—the chemical signature of which ESA's Venus Express Orbiter discovered in the early 2000s—and found that lavas containing these chemically altered minerals would have been just days old.

Venus has strange features seen nowhere else in the solar system, too. For example, ring-like structures jut out, warping the planet’s surface, according to Space.com. It does have craters, but only large ones—most meteoroids large enough to create craters smaller than .09 miles burn up as they tumble through the atmosphere.

Interestingly. the planet itself is the only one named for a woman. Venusian surface features are named after powerful female historical figures, such as Sacajawea and the Roman goddess Diana.

In a Weird Orbit

NASA/BILL DUNFORD

Venus also has a highly unusual orbit and rotation. It's one of two planets in our solar system—here's to you, Uranus!—to rotate "backwards" from east to west instead of from west to east. And with no axial tilt, there are also no seasons.

Because Venus rotates extremely slowly on its axis, a single day on the planet is equivalent to 243 Earth days, but it takes Venus 225 Earth days to orbit the sun. So, yes, a year on Venus is shorter than a day on Venus. Curiously, Venus also has a nearly circular orbit, whereas, other planets that circle the sun do so on along an elliptical orbit.

Because of Venus's sluggish race around the solar system, its iron core isn't able to generate a robust, protective magnetosphere like we have here on Earth. Eventually, like every other inner, rocky planet in our solar system, Venus will be gulped up by the sun. Fortunately, researchers say this won’t happen for roughly 7 billion years.

A Soviet Obsession

JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / DAMIA BOUIC

A new mission to Venus could be on the horizon. Recently, scientists have suggested lofting a fleet of hot-air balloons equipped with super-sensitive seismometers that can capture infrasound waves down into the thick Venusian atmosphere. Others have hatched wild plans to launch "cloud cities" in the upper reaches of the Venusian atmosphere.

The last NASA spacecraft to venture to Venus was Magellan, which spun around the planet more than 15,000 times in four years before crashing into its surface in 1994. Magellan painted a previously never-before-seen picture of the planet, mapping more than 90 percent of its surface. Before that, Mariner 2, sped past Venus, gathering temperature and atmospheric readings of the planet, along with the Pioneer orbiter of the 1980s.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union sent several probes to Venus, including the first spacecraft to successfully land on another planet, Venera 7, which touched down on the rocky surface on December 15, 1970, before being crushed and melted by Venus’ extreme pressure and scorching heat. In total, the Soviet Union sent seven missions to Venus, and returned a number of images, important atmospheric readings, and soil analysis.

RUSSIAN SPACE AGENCY

The European Space Agency's orbiter, Venus Express, which launched in 2006 circled the planet for eight years, revealed secrets about its dark side, and found evidence of lightning. The agency has ambitious goals to revisit the sweltering planet. At a meeting in Madrid in 2019, scientists proposed sending a pair of orbiters, a handful of landers, a balloon, and rocket which would return samples to Earth.

A GUIDE TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM

• 

Small Yet Mighty Mercury Is Still a Mystery

• 

Everything You Need to Know About the Sun

• 

Jupiter Is a Jerk

Currently, Akatsuki, JAXA's spacecraft, which launched in 2010, is the sole spacecraft orbiting the planet. It's unlocked secrets about the planet's atmosphere and, in 2017, caught sight of a strange atmospheric disturbance, an arc of gravity waves, which washed over the planet and slowed its rotation.

In December 2019, Park Solar Probe, which isn’t designed to study planets, swung close to Venus. While the spacecraft primarily studies the sun’s plasma, it will use the flyby to study the location of the Venus's bow shock, a protective boundary around planetary objects that protects them from solar winds, and make measurements about the loss of Venus’s atmosphere. In July, 2020, and Feb., 2021, Parker will circle back around to measure atmosphere loss, which is caused by intense solar winds, again.

The greatest challenge of visiting Venus, of course, is designing a lander that can survive the trials of operating on its scorching surface. NASA has steadily increased its investments in developing "hot technologies," which can last up to weeks on surfaces as hot as Venus.

Hopefully, someday, we'll get there.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

07-01-2020 om 01:10 geschreven door peter  

Anthropologist Russell Ciochon in his lab at the University of Iowa, holding a cast of a Homo erectus skull. The original fossils are in Indonesia.

Image via Russell Ciochon/ University of Iowa.

Scientists have determined the last known dates that Homo erectus, an early ancestor of human beings, walked the Earth. New analysis of a site at Ngandong, on the Indonesian island of Java, indicates that a population lived there as recently as 108,000 to 117,000 years ago. On December 18, 2019, the University of Iowa published a good description of this new study, which was led by Yan Rizal of the Bandung Institute of Technology, located in Bandung, Indonesia. The findings were published the same day in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Anthropologist Russell Ciochon of University of Iowa was a co-corresponding author on the study. Ciochon explained:

This site is the last known appearance of Homo erectus found anywhere in the world. We can’t say we dated the extinction, but we dated the last occurrence of it. We have no evidence Homo erectus lived later than that anywhere else.

The approximate location of Ngandong on the Indonesian island of Java in Southeast Asia. (Indonesia is shaded yellow in this map.)

Map of Indonesia via Uwe Dedering/ Wikimedia Commons.

Homo erectus arose in Africa about 2 million years ago, then dispersed throughout Asia and perhaps Europe. By about 400,000 years ago, this early relative of modern humans had largely disappeared. The date range for the last known Homo erectus holdout, in Ngandong, is 108,000 to 117,000 years ago. Around that same time, modern humans were roaming in Africa, and Neanderthals lived in Europe.

The fossils in Ngandong had been discovered in the 1930s by Dutch surveyors. Using notes left by these early surveyors, the researchers on the new study relocated the original bone bed where the Homo erectus fossils (12 skull caps and two tibia) had been found. In 2008 and 2010, the team excavated that site to collect animal fossil fragments for dating.

The new age ranges for the Homo erectus fossils – 108,000 to 117,000 years old – were determined using two strategies; besides dating the animal fossils in the original bone bed, the scientists further constrained the date range by geological dating of river terraces below and above the fossil bed.

Dutch surveyors excavated the original bone bed containing Homo erectus fossils in the 1930s. In 2008 and 2010, researchers led by Yan Rizal located and found the same site, using the earlier study’s notes. Dating of animal fossils at that site were used, in part, to determine the new age of the Homo erectus fossils.

Image via Russell Ciochon/ University of Iowa.

Around the same time that Yan Rizal’s team was excavating its site, another team, led by Kira Westaway of Macquarie University, was independently dating nearby surrounding landforms. Ciochon explained:

It was coincidental. With the data we had, we couldn’t really date the Ngandong fossils. We had dates on them, but they were minimum ages. So, we couldn’t really say how old, although we knew we were in the ballpark. By working with Kira, who had vast amount of dating data for the terraces, mountains, and other landscape features, we were able to provide precise regional chronological and geomorphic contexts for the Ngandong site.

Stalagmites from caves in the Southern Mountains of Ngandong were dated by Westaway’s team to determine when those mountains first rose. That helped them figure out when the Solo River started flowing through the fossil site and when sequences of river terraces were created. Westaway, who is listed as second author on the December 18, 2019, Nature paper, said:

The issues with the dating of Ngandong could only ever be resolved by an appreciation of the wider landscape. Fossils are the byproducts of complex landscape processes. We were able to nail the age of the site because we constrained the fossils within the river deposit, the river terrace, the sequence of terraces, and the volcanically active landscape.

Ciochon commented on the 52 new age estimates arrived at by the team:

You have this incredible array of dates that are all consistent. This has to be the right range. That’s why it’s such a nice, tight paper. The dating is very consistent.

According to previous research by Ciochon and others, Homo erectus arrived at Java, Indonesia, about 1.6 million years ago, and settled across the Indonesian islands. Back then, Ngandong was mainly a grassland with a rich flora and fauna, not unlike Homo erectus‘ original habitat in Africa. But around 130,000 years ago, it changed. Ciochon explained:

There was a change in climate. We know the fauna changed from open country, grassland, to a tropical rainforest (extending southward from today’s Malaysia). Those were not the plants and animals that Homo erectus was used to, and the species just could not adapt.

Ciochon also remarked on a unique feature of the Ngandong Homo erectus population. In a video statement, he said:

We assume that Homo erectus on the island of Java, because it was isolated, continued to encephalize – the brain got bigger. Does that mean that Homo erectus on Java was smarter than Homo erectus in Africa? We don’t know. But we can certainly document that the brain got bigger.

Casts of Homo erectus skulls at Russell Ciochon’s lab.

Via Russell Ciochon/ University of Iowa.

• Bottom line: The last known Homo erectus, a human ancestor, lived in Ngandong, Java, as recently as 108,000 to 117,000 years ago. These findings, published in the December 18, 2019, issue of Nature, are based on dating fossilized animals from the same bone bed in which the Homo erectus remains were found in the 1930s, and also by dating river terraces at the fossil site.
• Source: Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago
• Via University of Iowa

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

07-01-2020 om 00:54 geschreven door peter  

CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 - Part I

Gerald K. Haines

An extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent believe they are real. (1) Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan claim to have seen a UFO. UFOlogists--a neologism for UFO buffs--and private UFO organizations are found throughout the United States. Many are convinced that the US Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged in a massive conspiracy and coverup of the issue. The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)

In late 1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional CIA information on UFOs, (3) DCI R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces CIA interest and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s to 1990. It chronologically examines the Agency's efforts to solve the mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena.

Background

The emergence in 1947 of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union also saw the first wave of UFO sightings. The first report of a "flying saucer" over the United States came on 24 June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and reputable businessman, while looking for a downed plane sighted nine disk-shaped objects near Mt. Rainier, Washington, traveling at an estimated speed of over 1,000 mph. Arnold's report was followed by a flood of additional sightings, including reports from military and civilian pilots and air traffic controllers all over the United States. (4) In 1948, Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, head of the Air Technical Service Command, established Project SIGN (initially named Project SAUCER) to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the government all information relating to such sightings, on the premise that UFOs might be real and of national security concern. (5)

The Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio, assumed control of Project SIGN and began its work on 23 January 1948. Although at first fearful that the objects might be Soviet secret weapons, the Air Force soon concluded that UFOs were real but easily explained and not extraordinary. The Air Force report found that almost all sightings stemmed from one or more of three causes: mass hysteria and hallucination, hoax, or misinterpretation of known objects. Nevertheless, the report recommended continued military intelligence control over the investigation of all sightings and did not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial phenomena. (6)

Amid mounting UFO sightings, the Air Force continued to collect and evaluate UFO data in the late 1940s under a new project, GRUDGE, which tried to alleviate public anxiety over UFOs via a public relations campaign designed to persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary. UFO sightings were explained as balloons, conventional aircraft, planets, meteors, optical illusions, solar reflections, or even "large hailstones." GRUDGE officials found no evidence in UFO sightings of advanced foreign weapons design or development, and they concluded that UFOs did not threaten US security. They recommended that the project be reduced in scope because the very existence of Air Force official interest encouraged people to believe in UFOs and contributed to a "war hysteria" atmosphere. On 27 December 1949, the Air Force announced the project's termination. (7)

With increased Cold War tensions, the Korean war, and continued UFO sightings, USAF Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell ordered a new UFO project in 1952. Project BLUE BOOK became the major Air Force effort to study the UFO phenomenon throughout the 1950s and 1960s. (8) The task of identifying and explaining UFOs continued to fall on the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson. With a small staff, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) tried to persuade the public that UFOs were not extraordinary. (9) Projects SIGN, GRUDGE, and BLUE BOOK set the tone for the official US Government position regarding UFOs for the next 30 years.

Early CIA Concerns, 1947-52

CIA closely monitored the Air Force effort, aware of the mounting number of sightings and increasingly concerned that UFOs might pose a potential security threat. (10) Given the distribution of the sightings, CIA officials in 1952 questioned whether they might reflect "midsummer madness.'' (11) Agency officials accepted the Air Force's conclusions about UFO reports, although they concluded that "since there is a remote possibility that they may be interplanetary aircraft, it is necessary to investigate each sighting." (12)

A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The Air Force scrambled interceptor aircraft to investigate, but they found nothing. The incidents, however, caused headlines across the country. The White House wanted to know what was happening, and the Air Force quickly offered the explanation that the radar blips might be the result of "temperature inversions." Later, a Civil Aeronautics Administration investigation confirmed that such radar blips were quite common and were caused by temperature inversions. (13)

Although it had monitored UFO reports for at least three years, CIA reacted to the new rash of sightings by forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation. (14) Edward Tauss, acting chief of OSI's Weapons and Equipment Division, reported for the group that most UFO sightings could be easily explained. Nevertheless, he recommended that the Agency continue monitoring the problem, in coordination with ATIC. He also urged that CIA conceal its interest from the media and the public, "in view of their probable alarmist tendencies" to accept such interest as confirming the existence of UFOs. (15)

Upon receiving the report, Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) Robert Amory, Jr. assigned responsibility for the UFO investigations to OSI's Physics and Electronics Division, with A. Ray Gordon as the officer in charge. (16) Each branch in the division was to contribute to the investigation, and Gordon was to coordinate closely with ATIC. Amory, who asked the group to focus on the national security implications of UFOs, was relaying DCI Walter Bedell Smith's concerns. (17) Smith wanted to know whether or not the Air Force investigation of flying saucers was sufficiently objective and how much more money and manpower would be necessary to determine the cause of the small percentage of unexplained flying saucers. Smith believed "there was only one chance in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the security of the country, but even that chance could not be taken." According to Smith, it was CIA's responsibility by statute to coordinate the intelligence effort required to solve the problem. Smith also wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts. (18)

Led by Gordon, the CIA Study Group met with Air Force officials at Wright-Patterson and reviewed their data and findings. The Air Force claimed that 90 percent of the reported sightings were easily accounted for. The other 10 percent were characterized as "a number of incredible reports from credible observers." The Air Force rejected the theories that the sightings involved US or Soviet secret weapons development or that they involved "men from Mars"; there was no evidence to support these concepts. The Air Force briefers sought to explain these UFO reports as the misinterpretation of known objects or little understood natural phenomena. (19) Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. (20) This concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of a CIA conspiracy and coverup.

Amateur photographs of alleged UFOs

• Passoria, New Jersey, 31 July 1952
• Sheffield, England, 4 March 1962
• & Minneapolis, Minnesota, 20 October 1960

The CIA Study Group also searched the Soviet press for UFO reports, but found none, causing the group to conclude that the absence of reports had to have been the result of deliberate Soviet Government policy. The group also envisioned the USSR's possible use of UFOs as a psychological warfare tool. In addition, they worried that, if the US air warning system should be deliberately overloaded by UFO sightings, the Soviets might gain a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack. (21)

Because of the tense Cold War situation and increased Soviet capabilities, the CIA Study Group saw serious national security concerns in the flying saucer situation. The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States. The group also believed that the Soviets might use UFO sightings to overload the US air warning system so that it could not distinguish real targets from phantom UFOs. H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, added that he considered the problem of such importance "that it should be brought to the attention of the National Security Council, in order that a communitywide coordinated effort towards it solution may be initiated." (22)

Chadwell briefed DCI Smith on the subject of UFOs in December 1952. He urged action because he was convinced that "something was going on that must have immediate attention" and that "sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." He drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the National Security Council (NSC) and a proposed NSC Directive establishing the investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. (23) Chadwell also urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level scientists to study the problem of UFOs. (24) After this briefing, Smith directed DDI Amory to prepare a NSC Intelligence Directive (NSCID) for submission to the NSC on the need to continue the investigation of UFOs and to coordinate such investigations with the Air Force. (25)

The Robertson Panel, 1952-53

On 4 December 1952, the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) took up the issue of UFOs. (26) Amory, as acting chairman, presented DCI Smith's request to the committee that it informally discuss the subject of UFOs. Chadwell then briefly reviewed the situation and the active program of the ATIC relating to UFOs. The committee agreed that the DCI should "enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories" and draft an NSCID on the subject. (27) Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, Director of Air Force Intelligence, offered full cooperation. (28)

At the same time, Chadwell looked into British efforts in this area. He learned the British also were active in studying the UFO phenomena. An eminent British scientist, R. V. Jones, headed a standing committee created in June 1951 on flying saucers. Jones' and his committee's conclusions on UFOs were similar to those of Agency officials: the sightings were not enemy aircraft but misrepresentations of natural phenomena. The British noted, however, that during a recent air show RAF pilots and senior military officials had observed a "perfect flying saucer." Given the press response, according to the officer, Jones was having a most difficult time trying to correct public opinion regarding UFOs. The public was convinced they were real. (29)

In January 1953, Chadwell and H. P. Robertson, a noted physicist from the California Institute of Technology, put together a distinguished panel of nonmilitary scientists to study the UFO issue. It included Robertson as chairman; Samuel A. Goudsmit, a nuclear physicist from the Brookhaven National Laboratories; Luis Alvarez, a high-energy physicist; Thornton Page, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office and an expert on radar and electronics; and Lloyd Berkner, a director of the Brookhaven National Laboratories and a specialist in geophysics. (30)

The charge to the panel was to review the available evidence on UFOs and to consider the possible dangers of the phenomena to US national security. The panel met from 14 to 17 January 1953. It reviewed Air Force data on UFO case histories and, after spending 12 hours studying the phenomena, declared that reasonable explanations could be suggested for most, if not all, sightings. For example, after reviewing motion-picture film taken of a UFO sighting near Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952 and one near Great Falls, Montana, on 15 August 1950, the panel concluded that the images on the Tremonton film were caused by sunlight reflecting off seagulls and that the images at Great Falls were sunlight reflecting off the surface of two Air Force interceptors. (31)

The panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be extraterrestrials. It did find that continued emphasis on UFO reporting might threaten "the orderly functioning" of the government by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing "hysterical mass behavior" harmful to constituted authority. The panel also worried that potential enemies contemplating an attack on the United States might exploit the UFO phenomena and use them to disrupt US air defenses. (32)

To meet these problems, the panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities. (33)

The Robertson panel's conclusions were strikingly similar to those of the earlier Air Force project reports on SIGN and GRUDGE and to those of the CIA's own OSI Study Group. All investigative groups found that UFO reports indicated no direct threat to national security and no evidence of visits by extraterrestrials.

Following the Robertson panel findings, the Agency abandoned efforts to draft an NSCID on UFOs. (34) The Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOs (the Robertson panel) submitted its report to the IAC, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. CIA officials said no further consideration of the subject appeared warranted, although they continued to monitor sightings in the interest of national security. Philip Strong and Fred Durant from OSI also briefed the Office of National Estimates on the findings. (35) CIA officials wanted knowledge of any Agency interest in the subject of flying saucers carefully restricted, noting not only that the Robertson panel report was classified but also that any mention of CIA sponsorship of the panel was forbidden. This attitude would later cause the Agency major problems relating to its credibility. (36)

The 1950s: Fading CIA Interest in UFOs

After the report of the Robertson panel, Agency officials put the entire issue of UFOs on the back burner. In May 1953, Chadwell transferred chief responsibility for keeping abreast of UFOs to OSI's Physics and Electronic Division, while the Applied Science Division continued to provide any necessary support. (37) Todos M. Odarenko, chief of the Physics and Electronics Division, did not want to take on the problem, contending that it would require too much of his division's analytic and clerical time. Given the findings of the Robertson panel, he proposed to consider the project "inactive" and to devote only one analyst part-time and a file clerk to maintain a reference file of the activities of the Air Force and other agencies on UFOs. Neither the Navy nor the Army showed much interest in UFOs, according to Odarenko. (38)

A nonbeliever in UFOs, Odarenko sought to have his division relieved of the responsibility for monitoring UFO reports. In 1955, for example, he recommended that the entire project be terminated because no new information concerning UFOs had surfaced. Besides, he argued, his division was facing a serious budget reduction and could not spare the resources. (39) Chadwell and other Agency officials, however, continued to worry about UFOs. Of special concern were overseas reports of UFO sightings and claims that German engineers held by the Soviets were developing a "flying saucer" as a future weapon of war. (40)

To most US political and military leaders, the Soviet Union by the mid-1950s had become a dangerous opponent. Soviet progress in nuclear weapons and guided missiles was particularly alarming. In the summer of 1949, the USSR had detonated an atomic bomb. In August 1953, only nine months after the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, the Soviets detonated one. In the spring of 1953, a top secret RAND Corporation study also pointed out the vulnerability of SAC bases to a surprise attack by Soviet long-range bombers. Concern over the danger of a Soviet attack on the United States continued to grow, and UFO sightings added to the uneasiness of US policymakers.

Mounting reports of UFOs over eastern Europe and Afghanistan also prompted concern that the Soviets were making rapid progress in this area. CIA officials knew that the British and Canadians were already experimenting with "flying saucers." Project Y was a Canadian-British-US developmental operation to produce a nonconventional flying-saucer-type aircraft, and Agency officials feared the Soviets were testing similar devices. (41)

Adding to the concern was a flying saucer sighting by US Senator Richard Russell and his party while traveling on a train in the USSR in October 1955. After extensive interviews of Russell and his group, however, CIA officials concluded that Russell's sighting did not support the theory that the Soviets had developed saucerlike or unconventional aircraft. Herbert Scoville, Jr., the Assistant Director of OSI, wrote that the objects observed probably were normal jet aircraft in a steep climb. (42)

Wilton E. Lexow, head of the CIA's Applied Sciences Division, was also skeptical. He questioned why the Soviets were continuing to develop conventional-type aircraft if they had a "flying saucer." (43) Scoville asked Lexow to assume responsibility for fully assessing the capabilities and limitations of nonconventional aircraft and to maintain the OSI central file on the subject of UFOs.

CIA's U-2 and OXCART as UFOs

In November 1954, CIA had entered into the world of high technology with its U-2 overhead reconnaissance project. Working with Lockheed's Advanced Development facility in Burbank, California, known as the Skunk Works, and Kelly Johnson, an eminent aeronautical engineer, the Agency by August 1955 was testing a high-altitude experimental aircraft--the U-2. It could fly at 60,000 feet; in the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew between 10,000 feet and 20,000 feet. Consequently, once the U-2 started test flights, commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings. (44) (U)

The early U-2s were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays from 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 sightings 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.

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 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. (45) 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 1970s. The percentage of what the Air Force considered unexplained UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956. (46)

At the same time, pressure was building for the release of the Robertson panel report on UFOs. In 1956, Edward Ruppelt, former head of the Air Force BLUE BOOK project, publicly revealed the existence of the panel. A best-selling book by UFOlogist Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major, advocated release of all government information relating to UFOs. Civilian UFO groups such as the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) immediately pushed for release of the Robertson panel report. (47) Under pressure, the Air Force approached CIA for permission to declassify and release the report. Despite such pressure, Philip Strong, Deputy Assistant Director of OSI, refused to declassify the report and declined to disclose CIA sponsorship of the panel. As an alternative, the Agency prepared a sanitized version of the report which deleted any reference to CIA and avoided mention of any psychological warfare potential in the UFO controversy. (48)

The demands, however, for more government information about UFOs did not let up. On 8 March 1958, Keyhoe, in an interview with Mike Wallace of CBS, claimed deep CIA involvement with UFOs and Agency sponsorship of the Robertson panel. This prompted a series of letters to the Agency from Keyhoe and Dr. Leon Davidson, a chemical engineer and UFOlogist. They demanded the release of the full Robertson panel report and confirmation of CIA involvement in the UFO issue. Davidson had convinced himself that the Agency, not the Air Force, carried most of the responsibility for UFO analysis and that "the activities of the US Government are responsible for the flying saucer sightings of the last decade." Indeed, because of the undisclosed U-2 and OXCART flights, Davidson was closer to the truth than he suspected. CI, nevertheless held firm to its policy of not revealing its role in UFO investigations and refused to declassify the full Robertson panel report. (49)

In a meeting with Air Force representatives to discuss how to handle future inquires such as Keyhoe's and Davidson's, Agency officials confirmed their opposition to the declassification of the full report and worried that Keyhoe had the ear of former DCI VAdm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who served on the board of governors of NICAP. They debated whether to have CIA General Counsel Lawrence R. Houston show Hillenkoetter the report as a possible way to defuse the situation. CIA officer Frank Chapin also hinted that Davidson might have ulterior motives, "some of them perhaps not in the best interest of this country," and suggested bringing in the FBI to investigate. (50) Although the record is unclear whether the FBI ever instituted an investigation of Davidson or Keyhoe, or whether Houston ever saw Hillenkoetter about the Robertson report, Hillenkoetter did resign from the NICAP in 1962. (51)

The Agency was also involved with Davidson and Keyhoe in two rather famous UFO cases in the 1950s, which helped contribute to a growing sense of public distrust of CIA with regard to UFOs. One focused on what was reported to have been a tape recording of a radio signal from a flying saucer; the other on reported photographs of a flying saucer. The "radio code" incident began innocently enough in 1955, when two elderly sisters in Chicago, Mildred and Marie Maier, reported in the Journal of Space Flight their experiences with UFOs, including the recording of a radio program in which an unidentified code was reportedly heard. The sisters taped the program and other ham radio operators also claimed to have heard the "space message." OSI became interested and asked the Scientific Contact Branch to obtain a copy of the recording. (52)

Field officers from the Contact Division (CD), one of whom was Dewelt Walker, made contact with the Maier sisters, who were "thrilled that the government was interested," and set up a time to meet with them. (53) In trying to secure the tape recording, the Agency officers reported that they had stumbled upon a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace. "The only thing lacking was the elderberry wine," Walker cabled Headquarters. After reviewing the sisters' scrapbook of clippings from their days on the stage, the officers secured a copy of the recording. (54) OSI analyzed the tape and found it was nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station.

The matter rested there until UFOlogist Leon Davidson talked with the Maier sisters in 1957. The sisters remembered they had talked with a Mr. Walker who said he was from the US Air Force. Davidson then wrote to a Mr. Walker, believing him to be a US Air Force Intelligence Officer from Wright-Patterson, to ask if the tape had been analyzed at ATIC. Dewelt Walker replied to Davidson that the tape had been forwarded to proper authorities for evaluation, and no information was available concerning the results. Not satisfied, and suspecting that Walker was really a CIA officer, Davidson next wrote DCI Allen Dulles demanding to learn what the coded message revealed and who Mr. Walker was. (55) The Agency, wanting to keep Walker's identity as a CIA employee secret, replied that another agency of the government had analyzed the tape in question and that Davidson would be hearing from the Air Force. (56) On 5 August, the Air Force wrote Davidson saying that Walker "was and is an Air Force Officer" and that the tape "was analyzed by another government organization." The Air Force letter confirmed that the recording contained only identifiable Morse code which came from a known US-licensed radio station. (57)

Davidson wrote Dulles again. This time he wanted to know the identity of the Morse operator and of the agency that had conducted the analysis. CIA and the Air Force were now in a quandary. The Agency had previously denied that it had actually analyzed the tape. The Air Force had also denied analyzing the tape and claimed that Walker was an Air Force officer. CIA officers, under cover, contacted Davidson in Chicago and promised to get the code translation and the identification of the transmitter, if possible. (58)

In another attempt to pacify Davidson, a CIA officer, again under cover and wearing his Air Force uniform, contacted Davidson in New York City. The CIA officer explained that there was no super agency involved and that Air Force policy was not to disclose who was doing what. While seeming to accept this argument, Davidson nevertheless pressed for disclosure of the recording message and the source. The officer agreed to see what he could do. (59) After checking with Headquarters, the CIA officer phoned Davidson to report that a thorough check had been made and, because the signal was of known US origin, the tape and the notes made at the time had been destroyed to conserve file space. (60)

Incensed over what he perceived was a runaround, Davidson told the CIA officer that "he and his agency, whichever it was, were acting like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster Union in destroying records which might indict them." (61) Believing that any more contact with Davidson would only encourage more speculation, the Contact Division washed its hands of the issue by reporting to the DCI and to ATIC that it would not respond to or try to contact Davidson again. (62) Thus, a minor, rather bizarre incident, handled poorly by both CIA and the Air Force, turned into a major flap that added fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs and CIA's role in their investigation.

Another minor flap a few months later added to the growing questions surrounding the Agency's true role with regard to flying saucers. CIA's concern over secrecy again made matters worse. In 1958, Major Keyhoe charged that the Agency was deliberately asking eyewitnesses of UFOs not to make their sightings public. (63)

The incident stemmed from a November 1957 request from OSI to the CD to obtain from Ralph C. Mayher, a photographer for KYW-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, certain photographs he took in 1952 of an unidentified flying object. Harry Real, a CD officer, contacted Mayher and obtained copies of the photographs for analysis. On 12 December 1957, John Hazen, another CD officer, returned the five photographs of the alleged UFO to Mayher without comment. Mayher asked Hazen for the Agency's evaluation of the photos, explaining that he was trying to organize a TV program to brief the public on UFOs. He wanted to mention on the show that a US intelligence organization had viewed the photographs and thought them of interest. Although he advised Mayher not to take this approach, Hazen stated that Mayher was a US citizen and would have to make his own decision as to what to do. (64)

Keyhoe later contacted Mayher, who told him his story of CIA and the photographs. Keyhoe then asked the Agency to confirm Hazen's employment in writing, in an effort to expose CIA's role in UFO investigations. The Agency refused, despite the fact that CD field representatives were normally overt and carried credentials identifying their Agency association. DCI Dulles's aide, John S. Earman, merely sent Keyhoe a noncommittal letter noting that, because UFOs were of primary concern to the Department of the Air Force, the Agency had referred his letter to the Air Force for an appropriate response. Like the response to Davidson, the Agency reply to Keyhoe only fueled the speculation that the Agency was deeply involved in UFO sightings. Pressure for release of CIA information on UFOs continued to grow. (65)

Although CIA had a declining interest in UFO cases, it continued to monitor UFO sightings. Agency officials felt the need to keep informed on UFOs if only to alert the DCI to the more sensational UFO reports and flaps. (66)

The 1960s: Declining CIA Involvement and Mounting Controversy

In the early 1960s, Keyhoe, Davidson, and other UFOlogists maintained their assault on the Agency for release of UFO information. Davidson now claimed that CIA "was solely responsible for creating the Flying Saucer furor as a tool for cold war psychological warfare since 1951." Despite calls for Congressional hearings and the release of all materials relating to UFOs, little changed. (67)

In 1964, however, following high-level White House discussions on what to do if an alien intelligence was discovered in space and a new outbreak of UFO reports and sightings, DCI John McCone asked for an updated CIA evaluation of UFOs. Responding to McCone's request, OSI asked the CD to obtain various recent samples and reports of UFO sightings from NICAP. With Keyhoe, one of the founders, no longer active in the organization, CIA officers met with Richard H. Hall, the acting director. Hall gave the officers samples from the NICAP database on the most recent sightings. (68)

After OSI officers had reviewed the material, Donald F. Chamberlain, OSI Assistant Director, assured McCone that little had changed since the early 1950s. There was still no evidence that UFOs were a threat to the security of the United States or that they were of "foreign origin." Chamberlain told McCone that OSI still monitored UFO reports, including the official Air Force investigation, Project BLUE BOOK. (69)

At the same time that CIA was conducting this latest internal review of UFOs, public pressure forced the Air Force to establish a special ad hoc committee to review BLUE BOOK. Chaired by Dr. Brian O'Brien, a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the panel included Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer from Cornell University. Its report offered nothing new. It declared that UFOs did not threaten the national security and that it could find "no UFO case which represented technological or scientific advances outside of a terrestrial framework." The committee did recommend that UFOs be studied intensively, with a leading university acting as a coordinator for the project, to settle the issue conclusively. (70)

The House Armed Services Committee also held brief hearings on UFOs in 1966 that produced similar results. Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown assured the committee that most sightings were easily explained and that there was no evidence that "strangers from outer space" had been visiting Earth. He told the committee members, however, that the Air Force would keep an open mind and continue to investigate all UFO reports. (71)

Following the report of its O'Brien Committee, the House hearings on UFOs, and Dr. Robertson's disclosure on a CBS Reports program that CIA indeed had been involved in UFO analysis, the Air Force in July 1966 again approached the Agency for declassification of the entire Robertson panel report of 1953 and the full Durant report on the Robertson panel deliberations and findings. The Agency again refused to budge. Karl H. Weber, Deputy Director of OSI, wrote the Air Force that "We are most anxious that further publicity not be given to the information that the panel was sponsored by the CIA." Weber noted that there was already a sanitized version available to the public. (72) Weber's response was rather shortsighted and ill considered. It only drew more attention to the 13-year-old Robertson panel report and CIA's role in the investigation of UFOs. The science editor of The Saturday Review drew nationwide attention to the CIA's role in investigating UFOs when he published an article criticizing the "sanitized version" of the 1953 Robertson panel report and called for release of the entire document. (73)

Unknown to CIA officials, Dr. James E. McDonald, a noted atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, had already seen the Durant report on the Robertson panel proceedings at Wright-Patterson on 6 June 1966. When McDonald returned to Wright-Patterson on 30 June to copy the report, however, the Air Force refused to let him see it again, stating that it was a CIA classified document. Emerging as a UFO authority, McDonald publicly claimed that the CIA was behind the Air Force secrecy policies and coverup. He demanded the release of the full Robertson panel report and the Durant report. (74)

Bowing to public pressure and the recommendation of its own O'Brien Committee, the Air Force announced in August 1966 that it was seeking a contract with a leading university to undertake a program of intensive investigations of UFO sightings. The new program was designed to blunt continuing charges that the US Government had concealed what it knew about UFOs. On 7 October, the University of Colorado accepted a $325,000 contract with the Air Force for an 18-month study of flying saucers. Dr. Edward U. Condon, a physicist at Colorado and a former Director of the National Bureau of Standards, agreed to head the program. Pronouncing himself an "agnostic" on the subject of UFOs, Condon observed that he had an open mind on the question and thought that possible extraterritorial origins were "improbable but not impossible." (75) Brig. Gen. Edward Giller, USAF, and Dr. Thomas Ratchford from the Air Force Research and Development Office became the Air Force coordinators for the project.

In February 1967, Giller contacted Arthur C. Lundahl, Director of CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), and proposed an informal liaison through which NPIC could provide the Condon Committee with technical advice and services in examining photographs of alleged UFOs. Lundahl and DDI R. Jack Smith approved the arrangement as a way of "preserving a window" on the new effort. They wanted the CIA and NPIC to maintain a low profile, however, and to take no part in writing any conclusions for the committee. No work done for the committee by NPIC was to be formally acknowledged. (76)

Ratchford next requested that Condon and his committee be allowed to visit NPIC to discuss the technical aspects of the problem and to view the special equipment NPIC had for photoanalysis. On 20 February 1967, Condon and four members of his committee visited NPIC. Lundahl emphasized to the group that any NPIC work to assist the committee must not be identified as CIA work. Moreover, work performed by NPIC would be strictly of a technical nature. After receiving these guidelines, the group heard a series of briefings on the services and equipment not available elsewhere that CIA had used in its analysis of some UFO photography furnished by Ratchford. Condon and his committee were impressed. (77)

Condon and the same group met again in May 1967 at NPIC to hear an analysis of UFO photographs taken at Zanesville, Ohio. The analysis debunked that sighting. The committee was again impressed with the technical work performed, and Condon remarked that for the first time a scientific analysis of a UFO would stand up to investigation. (78) The group also discussed the committee's plans to call on US citizens for additional photographs and to issue guidelines for taking useful UFO photographs. In addition, CIA officials agreed that the Condon Committee could release the full Durant report with only minor deletions.

In April 1969, Condon and his committee released their report on UFOs. The report concluded that little, if anything, had come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years and that further extensive study of UFO sightings was unwarranted. It also recommended that the Air Force special unit, Project BLUE BOOK, be discontinued. It did not mention CIA participation in the Condon committee's investigation. (79) A special panel established by the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the Condon report and concurred with its conclusion that "no high priority in UFO investigations is warranted by data of the past two decades." It concluded its review by declaring, "On the basis of present knowledge, the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings." Following the recommendations of the Condon Committee and the National Academy of Sciences, the Secretary of the Air Force, Robert C. Seamans, Jr., announced on 17 December 1969 the termination of BLUE BOOK. (80)

The 1970s and 1980s: The UFO Issue Refuses To Die

The Condon report did not satisfy many UFOlogists, who considered it a coverup for CIA activities in UFO research. Additional sightings in the early 1970s fueled beliefs that the CIA was somehow involved in a vast conspiracy. On 7 June 1975, William Spaulding, head of a small UFO group, Ground Saucer Watch (GSW), wrote to CIA requesting a copy of the Robertson panel report and all records relating to UFOs. (81) Spaulding was convinced that the Agency was withholding major files on UFOs. Agency officials provided Spaulding with a copy of the Robertson panel report and of the Durant report. (82)

On 14 July 1975, Spaulding again wrote the Agency questioning the authenticity of the reports he had received and alleging a CIA coverup of its UFO activities. Gene Wilson, CIA's Information and Privacy Coordinator, replied in an attempt to satisfy Spaulding, "At no time prior to the formation of the Robertson Panel and subsequent to the issuance of the panel's report has CIA engaged in the study of the UFO phenomena." The Robertson panel report, according to Wilson, was "the summation of Agency interest and involvement in UFOs." Wilson also inferred that there were no additional documents in CIA's possession that related to UFOs. Wilson was ill informed. (83)

In September 1977, Spaulding and GSW, unconvinced by Wilson's response, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Agency that specifically requested all UFO documents in CIA's possession. Deluged by similar FOIA requests for Agency information on UFOs, CIA officials agreed, after much legal maneuvering, to conduct a "reasonable search" of CIA files for UFO materials. (84) Despite an Agency-wide unsympathetic attitude toward the suit, Agency officials, led by Launie Ziebell from the Office of General Counsel, conducted a thorough search for records pertaining to UFOs. Persistent, demanding, and even threatening at times, Ziebell and his group scoured the Agency. They even turned up an old UFO file under a secretary's desk. The search finally produced 355 documents totaling approximately 900 pages. On 14 December 1978, the Agency released all but 57 documents of about 100 pages to GSW. It withheld these 57 documents on national security grounds and to protect sources and methods. (85)

Although the released documents produced no smoking gun and revealed only a low-level Agency interest in the UFO phenomena after the Robertson panel report of 1953, the press treated the release in a sensational manner. The New York Times, for example, claimed that the declassified documents confirmed intensive government concern over UFOs and that the Agency was secretly involved in the surveillance of UFOs. (86) GSW then sued for the release of the withheld documents, claiming that the Agency was still holding out key information. (87) It was much like the John F. Kennedy assassination issue. No matter how much material the Agency released and no matter how dull and prosaic the information, people continued to believe in a Agency coverup and conspiracy.

DCI Stansfield Turner was so upset when he read The New York Times article that he asked his senior officers, "Are we in UFOs?" After reviewing the records, Don Wortman, Deputy Director for Administration, reported to Turner that there was "no organized Agency effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s." Wortman assured Turner that the Agency records held only "sporadic instances of correspondence dealing with the subject," including various kinds of reports of UFO sightings. There was no Agency program to collect actively information on UFOs, and the material released to GSW had few deletions. (88) Thus assured, Turner had the General Counsel press for a summary judgment against the new lawsuit by GSW. In May 1980, the courts dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the Agency had conducted a thorough and adequate search in good faith. (89)

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects. Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using US citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive US weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the US air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings.

CIA also maintained Intelligence Community coordination with other agencies regarding their work in parapsychology, psychic phenomena, and "remote viewing" experiments. In general, the Agency took a conservative scientific view of these unconventional scientific issues. There was no formal or official UFO project within the Agency in the 1980s, and Agency officials purposely kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released. (90)

The 1980s also produced renewed charges that the Agency was still withholding documents relating to the 1947 Roswell incident, in which a flying saucer supposedly crashed in New Mexico, and the surfacing of documents which purportedly revealed the existence of a top secret US research and development intelligence operation responsible only to the President on UFOs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. UFOlogists had long argued that, following a flying saucer crash in New Mexico in 1947, the government not only recovered debris from the crashed saucer but also four or five alien bodies. According to some UFOlogists, the government clamped tight security around the project and has refused to divulge its investigation results and research ever since. (91) In September 1994, the US Air Force released a new report on the Roswell incident that concluded that the debris found in New Mexico in 1947 probably came from a once top secret balloon operation, Project MOGUL, designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. (92)

Circa 1984, a series of documents surfaced which some UFOlogists said proved that President Truman created a top secret committee in 1947, Majestic-12, to secure the recovery of UFO wreckage from Roswell and any other UFO crash sight for scientific study and to examine any alien bodies recovered from such sites. Most if not all of these documents have proved to be fabrications. Yet the controversy persists. (93)

Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says. The belief that we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence.

From Studies In Intelligence Vol. 01 No. 1, 1997

06-01-2020 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 - Part II

Gerald K. Haines 

An extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent believe they are real. (1) Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan claim to have seen a UFO. UFOlogists--a neologism for UFO buffs--and private UFO organizations are found throughout the United States. Many are convinced that the US Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged in a massive conspiracy and coverup of the issue. The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)

In late 1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional CIA information on UFOs, (3) DCI R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces CIA interest and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s to 1990. It chronologically examines the Agency's efforts to solve the mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena.

Notes

(1) See the 1973 Gallup Poll results printed in The New York Times, 29 November 1973, p. 45 and Philip J. Klass, UFOs: The Public Deceived (New York: Prometheus Books, 1983), p. 3.

(2) See Klass, UFOs, p. 3; James S. Gordon, "The UFO Experience," Atlantic Monthly (August 1991), pp. 82-92; David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975); Howard Blum, Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); Timothy Good, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up (New York: William Morrow, 1987); and Whitley Strieber, Communion: The True Story (New York: Morrow, 1987).

(3) In September 1993 John Peterson, an acquaintance of Woolsey's, first approached the DCI with a package of heavily sanitized CIA material on UFOs released to UFOlogist Stanton T. Friedman. Peterson and Friedman wanted to know the reasons for the redactions. Woolsey agreed to look into the matter. See Richard J. Warshaw, Executive Assistant, note to author, 1 November 1994; Warshaw, note to John H. Wright, Information and Privacy Coordinator, 31 January 1994; and Wright, memorandum to Executive Secretariat, 2 March 1994. (Except where noted, all citations to CIA records in this article are to the records collected for the 1994 Agency-wide search that are held by the Executive Assistant to the DCI).

(4) See Hector Quintanilla, Jr., "The Investigation of UFOs," Vol. 10, No. 4, Studies in Intelligence (fall 1966): pp.95-110 and CIA, unsigned memorandum, "Flying Saucers," 14 August 1952. See also Good, Above Top Secret, p. 253. During World War II, US pilots reported "foo fighters" (bright lights trailing US aircraft). Fearing they might be Japanese or German secret weapons, OSS investigated but could find no concrete evidence of enemy weapons and often filed such reports in the "crackpot" category. The OSS also investigated possible sightings of German V-1 and V-2 rockets before their operational use during the war. See Jacobs, UFO Controversy, p. 33. The Central Intelligence Group, the predecessor of the CIA, also monitored reports of "ghost rockets" in Sweden in 1946. See CIG, Intelligence Report, 9 April 1947.

(5) Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 156 and Quintanilla, "The Investigation of UFOs," p. 97.

(6) See US Air Force, Air Material Command, "Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project SIGN, no. F-TR 2274, IA, February 1949, Records of the US Air Force Commands, Activities and Organizations, Record Group 341, National Archives, Washington, DC.

(7) See US Air Force, Projects GRUDGE and BLUEBOOK Reports 1- 12 (Washington, DC; National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, 1968) and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 50-54.

(8) See Cabell, memorandum to Commanding Generals Major Air Commands, "Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft," 8 September 1950 and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 65.

(9) See Air Force, Projects GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 67.

(10) See Edward Tauss, memorandum for Deputy Assistant Director, SI, "Flying Saucers," 1 August 1952. See also United Kingdom, Report by the "Flying Saucer" Working Party, "Unidentified Flying Objects," no date (approximately 1950).

(11) See Dr. Stone, OSI, memorandum to Dr. Willard Machle, OSI, 15 March 1949 and Ralph L. Clark, Acting Assistant Director, OSI, memorandum for DDI, "Recent Sightings of Unexplained Objects," 29 July 1952.

(12) Stone, memorandum to Machle. See also Clark, memorandum for DDI, 29 July 1952.

(13) See Klass, UFOs, p. 15. For a brief review of the Washington sightings see Good, Above Top Secret, pp. 269-271.

(14) See Ralph L. Clark, Acting Assistant Director, OSI, memorandum to DDI Robert Amory, Jr., 29 July 1952. OSI and OCI were in the Directorate of Intelligence. Established in 1948, OSI served as the CIA's focal point for the analysis of foreign scientific and technological developments. In 1980, OSI was merged into the Office of Science and Weapons Research. The Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), established on 15 January 1951 was to provide all-source current intelligence to the President and the National Security Council.

(15) Tauss, memorandum for Deputy Assistant Director, SI (Philip Strong), 1 August 1952.

(16) On 2 January 1952, DCI Walter Bedell Smith created a Deputy Directorate for Intelligence (DDI) composed of six overt CIA organizations--OSI, OCI, Office of Collection and Dissemination, Office National Estimates, Office of Research and Reports, and the Office of Intelligence Coordination--to produce intelligence analysis for US policymakers.

(17) See Minutes of Branch Chief's Meeting, 11 August 1952.

(18) Smith expressed his opinions at a meeting in the DCI Conference Room attended by his top officers. See Deputy Chief, Requirements Staff, FI, memorandum for Deputy Director, Plans, "Flying Saucers," 20 August 1952, Directorate of Operations Records, Information Management Staff, Job 86-00538R, Box 1.

(19) See CIA memorandum, unsigned, "Flying Saucers," 11 August 1952.

(20) See CIA, memorandum, unsigned, "Flying Saucers," 14 August 1952.

(21) See CIA, memorandum, unsigned, "Flying Saucers," 19 August 1952.

(22) See Chadwell, memorandum for Smith, 17 September 1952 and 24 September 1952, "Flying Saucers." See also Chadwell, memorandum for DCI Smith, 2 October 1952 and Klass, UFOs, pp. 23-26.

(23) Chadwell, memorandum for DCI with attachments, 2 December 1952. See also Klass, UFOs, pp. 26-27 and Chadwell, memorandum, 25 November 1952.

(24) See Chadwell, memorandum, 25 November 1952 and Chadwell, memorandum, "Approval in Principle - External Research Project Concerned with Unidentified Flying Objects," no date. See also Philip G. Strong, OSI, memorandum for the record, "Meeting with Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Executive Vice President and Provost, MIT and Dr. Max Millikan, Director of CENIS." Strong believed that in order to undertake such a review they would need the full backing and support of DCI Smith.

(25) See Chadwell, memorandum for DCI, ""Unidentified Flying Objects," 2 December 1952. See also Chadwell, memorandum for Amory, DDI, "Approval in Principle - External Research Project Concerned with Unidentified Flying Objects," no date.

(26) The IAC was created in 1947 to serve as a coordinating body in establishing intelligence requirements. Chaired by the DCI, the IAC included representatives from the Department of State, the Army, the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the FBI, and the AEC.

(27) See Klass, UFOs, p. 27.

(28) See Richard D. Drain, Acting Secretary, IAC, "Minutes of Meeting held in Director's Conference Room, Administration Building, CIA," 4 December 1952.

(29) See Chadwell, memorandum for the record, "British Activity in the Field of UFOs," 18 December 1952.

(30) See Chadwell, memorandum for DCI, "Consultants for Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects," 9 January 1953; Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). pp. 73-90; and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 91-92.

(31) See Fred C. Durant III, Report on the Robertson Panel Meeting, January 1953. Durant, on contract with OSI and a past president of the American Rocket Society, attended the Robertson panel meetings and wrote a summary of the proceedings.

(32) See Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects (the Robertson Report), 17 January 1953 and the Durant report on the panel discussions.

(33) See Robertson Report and Durant Report. See also Good, Above Top Secret, pp. 337-38, Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 95, and Klass, UFO's, pp. 28-29.

(34) See Reber, memorandum to IAC, 18 February 1953.

(35) See Chadwell, memorandum for DDI, "Unidentified Flying Objects," 10 February 1953; Chadwell, letter to Robertson, 28 January 1953; and Reber, memorandum for IAC, "Unidentified Flying Objects," 18 February 1953. On briefing the ONE, see Durant, memorandum for the record, "Briefing of ONE Board on Unidentified Flying Objects," 30 January 1953 and CIA Summary disseminated to the field, "Unidentified Flying Objects," 6 February 1953.

(36) See Chadwell, letter to Julius A. Stratton, Provost MIT, 27 January 1953.

(37) See Chadwell, memorandum for Chief, Physics and Electronics Division/OSI (Todos M. Odarenko), "Unidentified Flying Objects," 27 May 1953.

(38) See Odarenko, memorandum to Chadwell, "Unidentified Flying Objects," 3 July 1953. See also Odarenko, memorandum to Chadwell, "Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOB) Project," 17 December 1953.

(39) See Odarenko, memorandum, "Unidentified Flying Objects," 8 August 1955.

(40) See FBIS, report, "Military Unconventional Aircraft," 18 August 1953 and various reports, "Military-Air, Unconventional Aircraft," 1953, 1954, 1955.

(41) Developed by the Canadian affiliate of Britain's A. V. Roe, Ltd., Project Y did produce a small-scale model that hovered a few feet off the ground. See Odarenko, memorandum to Chadwell, "Flying Saucer Type of Planes" 25 May 1954; Frederic C. E. Oder, memorandum to Odarenko, "USAF Project Y," 21 May 1954; and Odarenko, T. M. Nordbeck, Ops/SI, and Sidney Graybeal, ASD/SI, memorandum for the record, "Intelligence Responsibilities for Non-Conventional Types of Air Vehicles," 14 June 1954.

(42) See Reuben Efron, memorandum, "Observation of Flying Object Near Baku," 13 October 1955; Scoville, memorandum for the record, "Interview with Senator Richard B. Russell," 27 October 1955; and Wilton E. Lexow, memorandum for information, "Reported Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft," 19 October 1955.

(43) See Lexow, memorandum for information, "Reported Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft," 19 October 1955. See also Frank C. Bolser, memorandum for George C. Miller, Deputy Chief, SAD/SI, "Possible Soviet Flying Saucers, Check On;" Lexow, memorandum, "Possible Soviet Flying Saucers, Follow Up On," 17 December 1954; Lexow, memorandum, "Possible Soviet Flying Saucers," 1 December 1954; and A. H. Sullivan, Jr., memorandum, "Possible Soviet Flying Saucers," 24 November 1954.

(44) See Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 (Washington, DC: CIA History Staff, 1992), pp. 72-73.

(45) See Pedlow and Welzenbach, Overhead Reconnaissance, pp. 72-73. This also was confirmed in a telephone interview between the author and John Parongosky, 26 July 1994. Parongosky oversaw the day-to-day affairs of the OXCART program.

(46) See Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p.�135.

(47) See Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 128-146; Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: Doubleday, 1956); Keyhoe, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy (New York: Holt, 1955); and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 347-49.

(48) See Strong, letter to Lloyd W. Berkner; Strong, letter to Thorton Page; Strong, letter to Robertson; Strong, letter to Samuel Goudsmit; Strong, letter to Luis Alvarez, 20 December 1957; and Strong, memorandum for Major James F. Byrne, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence Department of the Air Force, "Declassification of the `Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects,'" 20 December 1957. See also Berkner, letter to Strong, 20 November 1957 and Page, letter to Strong, 4 December 1957. The panel members were also reluctant to have their association with the Agency released.

(49) See Wilton E. Lexow, memorandum for the record, "Comments on Letters Dealing with Unidentified Flying Objects," 4 April 1958; J. S. Earman, letter to Major Lawrence J. Tacker, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, Information Service, 4 April 1958; Davidson, letter to Berkner, 8 April 1958; Berkner, letter to Davidson, 18 April 1958; Berkner, letter to Strong, 21 April 1958; Davidson, letter to Tacker, 27 April 1958; Davidson, letter to Allen Dulles, 27 April 1958; Ruppelt, letter to Davidson, 7 May 1958; Strong, letter to Berkner, 8 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Berkner, 8 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Earman, 16 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Goudsmit, 18 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Page, 18 May 1958; and Tacker, letter to Davidson, 20 May 1958.

(50) See Lexow, memorandum for Chapin, 28 July 1958.

(51) See Good, Above Top Secret, pp. 346-47; Lexow, memorandum for the record, "Meeting with the Air Force Personnel Concerning Scientific Advisory Panel Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, dated 17 January 1953 (S)," 16 May 1958. See also La Rae L. Teel, Deputy Division Chief, ASD, memorandum for the record, "Meeting with Mr. Chapin on Replying to Leon Davidson's UFO Letter and Subsequent Telephone Conversation with Major Thacker, [sic]" 22 May 1958.

(52) See Edwin M. Ashcraft, Chief, Contact Division (Scientific), memorandum to Chief, Chicago Office, "Radio Code Recording," 4 March 1955 and Ashcraft, memorandum to Chief, Support Branch, OSI, 17 March 1955.

(53) The Contact Division was created to collect foreign intelligence information from sources within the United States. See the Directorate of Intelligence Historical Series, The Origin and Development of Contact Division, 11 July 1946�1 July 1965 (Washington, DC; CIA Historical Staff, June 1969).

(54) See George O. Forrest, Chief, Chicago Office, memorandum to Chief, Contact Division for Science, 11 March 1955.

(55) See Support Division (Connell), memorandum to Dewelt E. Walker, 25 April 1957.

(56) See J. Arnold Shaw, Assistant to the Director, letter to Davidson, 10 May 1957.

(57) See Support (Connell) memorandum to Lt. Col. V. Skakich, 27 August 1957 and Lamountain, memorandum to Support (Connell), 20 December 1957.

(58) See Lamountain, cable to Support (Connell), 31 July 1958.

(59) See Support (Connell) cable to Skakich, 3 October 1957 and Skakich, cable to Connell, 9 October 1957.

(60) See Skakich, cable to Connell, 9 October 1957.

(61) See R. P. B. Lohmann, memorandum for Chief, Contact Division, DO, 9 January 1958.

(62) See Support, cable to Skakich, 20 February 1958 and Connell (Support) cable to Lamountain, 19 December 1957.

(63) See Edwin M. Ashcraft, Chief, Contact Division, Office of Operations, memorandum for Austin Bricker, Jr., Assistant to the Director, "Inquiry by Major Donald E. Keyhoe on John Hazen's Association with the Agency," 22 January 1959.

(64) See John T. Hazen, memorandum to Chief, Contact Division, 12 December 1957. See also Ashcraft, memorandum to Cleveland Resident Agent, "Ralph E. Mayher," 20 December 1957. According to this memorandum, the photographs were viewed at "a high level and returned to us without comment." The Air Force held the original negatives. The CIA records were probably destroyed.

(65) The issue would resurface in the 1970s with the GSW FOIA court case.

(66) See Robert Amory, Jr., DDI, memorandum for Assistant Director/Scientific Intelligence, "Flying Saucers," 26 March 1956. See also Wallace R. Lamphire, Office of the Director, Planning and Coordination Staff, memorandum for Richard M. Bissell, Jr., "Unidentified Flying Saucers (UFO)," 11 June 1957; Philip Strong, memorandum for the Director, NPIC, "Reported Photography of Unidentified Flying Objects," 27 October 1958; Scoville, memorandum to Lawrence Houston, Legislative Counsel, "Reply to Honorable Joseph E. Garth," 12 July 1961; and Houston, letter to Garth, 13 July 1961.

(67) See, for example, Davidson, letter to Congressman Joseph Garth, 26 June 1961 and Carl Vinson, Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services, letter to Rep. Robert A. Everett, 2 September 1964.

(68) See Maxwell W. Hunter, staff member, National Aeronautics and Space Council, Executive Office of the President, memorandum for Robert F. Parkard, Office of International Scientific Affairs, Department of State, "Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question," 18 July 1963, File SP 16, Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. See also F. J. Sheridan, Chief, Washington Office, memorandum to Chief, Contact Division, "National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)," 25 January 1965.

(69) Chamberlain, memorandum for DCI, "Evaluation of UFOs," 26 January 1965.

(70) See Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 199 and US Air Force, Scientific Advisory Board, Ad Hoc Committee (O'Brien Committee) to Review Project BLUE BOOK, Special Report (Washington, DC: 1966). See also The New York Times, 14 August 1966, p. 70.

(71) See "Congress Reassured on Space Visits," The New York Times, 6 April 1966.

(72) Weber, letter to Col. Gerald E. Jorgensen, Chief, Community Relations Division, Office of Information, US Air Force, 15 August 1966. The Durant report was a detailed summary of the Robertson panel proceedings.

(73) See John Lear, "The Disputed CIA Document on UFOs," Saturday Review (September 3, 1966), p. 45. The Lear article was otherwise unsympathetic to UFO sightings and the possibility that extraterritorials were involved. The Air Force had been eager to provide Lear with the full report. See Walter L. Mackey, Executive Officer, memorandum for DCI, "Air Force Request to Declassify CIA Material on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO)," 1 September 1966.

(74) See Klass, UFOs, p. 40, Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 214 and Everet Clark, "Physicist Scores `Saucer Status,'" The New York Times, 21 October 1966. See also James E. McDonald, "Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects," submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 29 July 1968.

(75) Condon is quoted in Walter Sullivan, "3 Aides Selected in Saucer Inquiry," The New York Times, 8 October 1966. See also "An Outspoken Scientist, Edward Uhler Condon," The New York Times, 8 October 1966. Condon, an outgoing, gruff scientist, had earlier become embroiled in a controversy with the House Unamerican Activities Committee that claimed Condon was "one of the weakest links in our atomic security." See also Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 169-195.

(76) See Lundahl, memorandum for DDI, 7 February 1967.

(77) See memorandum for the record, "Visit of Dr. Condon to NPIC, 20 February 1967," 23 February 1967. See also the analysis of the photographs in memorandum for Lundahl, "Photo Analysis of UFO Photography," 17 February 1967.

(78) See memorandum for the record, "UFO Briefing for Dr. Edward Condon, 5 May 1967," 8 May 1967 and attached "Guidelines to UFO Photographers and UFO Photographic Information Sheet." See also Condon Committee, Press Release, 1 May 1967 and Klass, UFOs, p. 41. The Zaneville photographs turned out to be a hoax.

(79) See Edward U. Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: Bantam Books, 1969) and Klass, UFOs, p. 41. The report contained the Durant report with only minor deletions.

(80) See Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense, News Release, "Air Force to Terminate Project BLUEBOOK," 17 December 1969. The Air Force retired BLUEBOOK records to the USAF Archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. In 1976 the Air Force turned over all BLUEBOOK files to the National Archives and Records Administration, which made them available to the public without major restrictions. Some names have been withheld from the documents. See Klass, UFOs, p. 6.

(81) GSW was a small group of UFO buffs based in Phoenix, Arizona, and headed by William H. Spaulding.

(82) See Klass, UFOs, p. 8.

(83) See Wilson, letter to Spaulding, 26 March 1976 and GSW v. CIA Civil Action Case 78-859.

(84) GSW v. CIA Civil Action Case 78-859, p. 2.

(85) Author interview with Launie Ziebell, 23 June 1994 and author interview with OSI analyst, 21 July 1994. See also affidavits of George Owens, CIA Information and Privacy Act Coordinator; Karl H. Weber, OSI; Sidney D. Stembridge, Office of Security; and Rutledge P. Hazzard, DS&T; GSW v. CIA Civil Action Case 78-859 and Sayre Stevens, Deputy Director for National Foreign Assessment, memorandum for Thomas H. White, Assistant for Information, Information Review Committee, "FOIA Litigation Ground Saucer Watch," no date.

(86) See "CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance," The New York Times, 13 January 1979; Patrick Huyghe, "UFO Files: The Untold Story," The New York Times Magazine, 14 October 1979, p. 106; and Jerome Clark, "UFO Update," UFO Report, August 1979.

(87) Jerome Clark, "Latest UFO News Briefs From Around the World," UFO Update, August 1979 and GSW v. CIA Civil Action No. 78-859.

(88) See Wortman, memorandum for DCI Turner, "Your Question, `Are we in UFOs?' Annotated to The New York Times News Release Article," 18 January 1979.

(89) See GSW v. CIA Civil Action 78-859. See also Klass, UFOs, pp. 10-12.

(90) See John Brennan, memorandum for Richard Warshaw, Executive Assistant, DCI, "Requested Information on UFOs," 30 September 1993; Author interviews with OSWR analyst, 14 June 1994 and OSI analyst, 21 July 1994. This author found almost no documentation on Agency involvement with UFOs in the 1980s.

There is a DIA Psychic Center and the NSA studies parapsychology, that branch of psychology that deals with the investigation of such psychic phenomena as clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, and telepathy. The CIA reportedly is also a member of an Incident Response Team to investigate UFO landings, if one should occur. This team has never met. The lack of solid CIA documentation on Agency UFO-related activities in the 1980s leaves the entire issue somewhat murky for this period.

Much of the UFO literature presently focuses on contactees and abductees. See John E. Mack, Abduction, Human Encounters with Aliens (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994) and Howard Blum, Out There (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).

(91) See Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, The Roswell Incident (New York: Berkeley Books, 1988); Moore, "The Roswell Incident: New Evidence in the Search for a Crashed UFO," (Burbank, California: Fair Witness Project, 1982), Publication Number 1201; and Klass, UFOs, pp. 280-281. In 1994 Congressman Steven H. Schiff (R-NM) called for an official study of the Roswell incident. The GAO is conducting a separate investigation of the incident. The CIA is not involved in the investigation. See Klass, UFOs, pp. 279-281; John H. Wright, Information and Privacy Coordinator, letter to Derek Skreen, 20 September 1993; and OSWR analyst interview. See also the made-for-TV film, Roswell, which appeared on cable TV on 31 July 1994 and Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 245-251.

(92) See John Diamond, "Air Force Probes 1947 UFO Claim Findings Are Down to Earth," 9 September 1994, Associated Press release; William J. Broad, "Wreckage of a `Spaceship': Of This Earth (and U.S.)," The New York Times, 18 September 1994, p. 1; and USAF Col. Richard L. Weaver and 1st Lt. James McAndrew, The Roswell Report, Fact Versus Fiction in New Mexico Desert (Washington, DC: GPO, 1995).

(93) See Good, Above Top Secret; Moore and S. T. Friedman, "Philip Klass and MJ-12: What are the Facts," (Burbank California: Fair-Witness Project, 1988), Publication Number 1290; Klass, "New Evidence of MJ-12 Hoax," Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 14 (Winter 1990); and Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (Burbank, California: Fair-Witness Project, 1990), Publication Number 1500. Walter Bedell Smith supposedly replaced Forrestal on 1 August 1950 following Forrestal's death. All members listed were deceased when the MJ-12 "documents" surfaced in 1984. See Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 258-268.

Dr. Larry Bland, editor of The George C. Marshall Papers, discovered that one of the so-called Majestic-12 documents was a complete fraud. It contained the exact same language as a letter from Marshall to Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey regarding the "Magic" intercepts in 1944. The dates and names had been altered and "Magic" changed to "Majic." Moreover, it was a photocopy, not an original. No original MJ-12 documents have ever surfaced. Telephone conversation between the author and Bland, 29 August 1994.

From Studies In Intelligence Vol. 01 No. 1, 1997

06-01-2020 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

Strange Dark Matter Findings Could Rewrite the Universe's History

In November, astronomers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijng published a paper identifying 19 galaxies which might violate the most fundamental theory of how the universe first formed.

They had been searching the sky for yet-undiscovered galaxies which seem to be lacking the usual dark matter component, aiming to add more evidence to a baffling phenomenon scientists had begun observing last year. And they claimed to have found a whole group of them.

Until recently, it was almost unanimously assumed that huge amounts of invisible dark matter was the key to galaxy formation; the gravitational effects experienced and induced by clumps of dark matter in the universe produced swirling disks of gas clouds, stars and dark matter. Dark matter had to make up the majority of matter in these galaxies, according to standard models of the universe, otherwise they would never have formed.

But since 2016, researchers keep stumbling upon galaxies that don’t seem to be dominated by dark matter. Some calculations imply that these galaxies lack dark matter entirely. Either way, galaxies which have far less dark matter than expected would give physicists a lot of explaining to do: why are they lacking dark matter, and how did they form in the first place?

Galaxies without dark matter could rewrite the history of the universe

Unlike the researchers in Beijing, Yale professor Pieter van Dokkum wasn’t trying to find anomalies among the "ultra diffuse" galaxies he studies—those with very few stars. After all, before van Dokkum made a chance discovery in 2018, there was very little reason to expect to find any galaxies which had formed and continued to exist without dark matter.

In fact, van Dokkum and his team expected to find dark matter everywhere they looked. Unlike our own star-packed Milky Way, where dark matter is only on the periphery, ultra-diffuse galaxies should be densely filled with dark matter. Their analysis instead identified, for the first time, a galaxy without any dark matter at all.

“The way the stars move should be entirely dominated by the amount of dark matter,” he says. “The fact we found this deficit was not a subtle result.”

Though van Dokkum's findings were and remain controversial, new analysis of galaxies observed through giant telescopes keeps poking holes in accepted theories. If nothing else, the latest study by researchers in Beijing highlights still-open questions about the shape and structure of galaxies.

Attempts to explain the apparent lack of dark matter in the identified dwarf galaxies fall into two broad categories: theories about how and why galaxies may have been stripped of the dark matter they once had, and theories which postulate the formation of galaxies without dark matter at all.

In the first group, researchers such as Go Ogiya at Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in France are exploring a phenomenon called "tidal stripping" in which matter is pulled away from a galaxy due to tidal forces that arise when it is interacting with the gravitational field of another galaxy. Even before van Dokkum reported his observations of two dark-matter-deficient galaxies, there was evidence that tidal stripping would disproportionately affect dark matter, which is less tightly bound than visible or “baryonic” matter (i.e. stars) in the centre of the galaxy.

“Whether the baryonic matter is stripped from the satellite galaxy depends on its structure: the distribution of stars determines their resilience to the tidal force,” Ogiya wrote in an email. “In my numerical simulations...stars are hardly stripped from the satellite galaxy while its size doubles as a result of dark matter stripping.”

Ogiya also suggests a process by which galaxies might form without ever containing dark matter. So-called “tidal dwarf galaxies” could form when dark matter and baryonic matter is “ejected” from an existing galaxy due to tidal forces, but the dark matter component evaporates due to its higher velocity, leaving only stars and gas to form a new galaxy.

However, the theories with game-changing potential are those which rewrite the history of the early universe, around 13 billion years ago, long before the “heyday of galaxy formation” when tidal stripping might have taken place. Though he says he's agnostic about proposed explanations of dark-matter-deficiency, van Dokkum favours a theory suggesting that dark matter and gas interacted just after the Big Bang in ways which are not currently predicted. This could cause gas clumps which would separate from the dark matter and then later form galaxies made up only of gas and stars.

“That would be really cool because then we would learn something about the conditions of the early universe and probe the epoch when galaxy formation was not yet underway,” he says.

Dark matter deficiency, or miscalculation?

Some scientists believe that van Dokkum's result, while striking, may not be reliable. Since dark matter can’t be seen, how much of it is present in a galaxy has to be inferred from the behaviour of stars in the galaxy, which can be seen. Calculating this behaviour (for instance, velocity of the stars), depends on other galactic traits, like the shape of the galaxy and its distance away from us.

Ignacio Trujillo, a scientist specializing in Extragalactic Astronomy at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, has shown that the strange behaviour of these ultra-diffuse galaxies can be explained away by measuring how far away they are using alternative methods. If the anomalous galaxies are in fact much closer to Earth than the distance used for van Dokkum’s calculations, then calculating their dark matter components gives results within the expected range.

"You find yourself in this strange regime where you have to ask yourself: how strange a hypothesis can I accommodate which is still less strange than finding no dark matter?"

According to Trujillo, it is indeed possible for very tiny galaxies to form without the presence of dark matter, but not the way galaxies were formed just after the Big Bang. Rather than gas and stars clumping together due to gravitational effects, these galaxies form when an existing galaxy collides with another and residual matter stripped from the colliding galaxies forms a new galaxy—all without any dark matter. In contrast to galaxies formed by the tidal-stripping effects Ogiya studies, these galaxies would live for a relatively short time by cosmic standards: a few hundred years. Examples have already been identified for decades, he says, but these aren’t the sort of dark-matter-deficient galaxies that challenge the current understanding of our universe.

“People have already found things they have called galaxies without dark matter, but they are transient features which then disappear,” he says. “The novelty would be to find a galaxy which was formed originally in the early universe without dark matter, and I don’t think we have any strong candidates yet.”

Already, Trujillo’s colleagues say they have also found issues with the research published last month identifying 19 possible galaxies lacking dark matter. This week the American Astronomical Society published a research note authored by Jorge Sanchez Almeida which argued that the dark matter calculations for the 19 galaxies failed to account for true shape of dwarf galaxies, simplifying them as being “disk-like” instead of elliptical 3D shapes.

For van Dokkum, questions on both sides of the debate are very much still open. The two anomalous galaxies he’s identified as being dark-matter-deficient are strange in a number of ways, by anyone’s standards, he says. If they do in fact contain dark matter, contrary to his own hypothesis, other assumptions about the distribution of dark matter, as well as the shape and orientation of the galaxies and their history will need to be revised.

“You can come up with unlikely scenarios in which these galaxies do contain dark matter,” he says. “And unlikely is relative in this case to the hypothesis that there is no dark matter.”

“You find yourself in this strange regime where you have to ask yourself: how strange a hypothesis can I accommodate which is still less strange than finding no dark matter?”

Future research

The “fun thing” about the ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxies van Dokkum and others are studying is that they are “nearby and bright," van Dokkum said, which makes it relatively easy to investigate their behaviour.

With the powerful telescopes available today, van Dokkum hopes not only to make more accurate measurements of galaxy velocities and distance, but also identify the epoch in which the galaxies formed, using new data from the Hubble telescope. This empirical evidence would rule out a whole class of explanations for the apparent dark matter deficiency, one way or another.

Nicolas Martin, a researcher at the Observatory Astronomical De Strasbourg in France, believes that the observations needed to drive research forward are just beyond the limits of what is possible with the best apparatus around at the moment. Emailing while on location at one such cutting-edge telescope, he said that the research community would likely have to wait for two next-generation telescopes, currently planned or under construction in Chile and Hawaii, before they could generate even more precise measurements of the velocity of stars in the dwarf galaxies.

In the meantime, Martin, van Dokkum, Ogiya, and others will all be searching the sky to determine how many other strange dark-matter-deficient galaxies might be out there.

“If they are very common, then they need to be naturally produced by our models of galaxy formation,” Martin says. “If they are not common, then maybe they are just weirdos, coming from environments that are poorly understood corner cases, which is less problematic overall.”

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

06-01-2020 om 23:13 geschreven door peter  

Ontmoet Bruie, de kleine NASA robot die op zoek gaat naar buitenaards leven op maan van Jupiter - HLN.be

Bron: NASA, NYT

Geen simpele opdracht want het oppervlak van Europa bestaat uit een dikke ijslaag die tot wel dertig kilometer dik kan zijn. Daaronder een diepe oceaan. De robot moet dus eerst zijn weg zien te banen doorheen de dikke ijslaag voordat hij de “vijandige oceaan” kan verkennen.

Lees ook

File op Mars

“De ijsmassa’s zouden op die manen het leven in de oceanen kunnen helpen voeden”, aldus Kevin Hand, hoofdwetenschapper van het Bruie-project. De NASA-wetenschapper gelooft dat Europa dankzij de dikke bevroren massa een van de beste locaties is om te zoeken naar buitenaards leven.

Antarctica

Dan blijft de vraag hoe NASA het voor elkaar zal krijgen om de robot doorheen de dikke ijslaag te sturen. “Antarctica benadert het dichtst de zeeën van een maan”, aldus Hand. Dus bezocht Bruie Antarctica afgelopen november.

Daar was het spannend afwachten voor de wetenschappers. De robot bleef iets meer dan 42 uur onder het ijs en werd daar blootgesteld aan de sterke stromingen van het water. Daardoor kost het de robot veel energie om zijn positie te behouden waardoor zijn batterij onvoldoende reserves overhoudt om langer dan gepland actief te blijven. Als de rover crasht, gaat zijn positie sowieso verloren.  

Ondanks de grootte van de uitdaging, wist de robot die tot een goed einde te brengen. Traag maar zeker bewoog hij zich voort onder het ijs. En dankzij een ingebouwde camera konden de wetenschappers meegenieten van het bijzondere uitzicht, dat er al behoorlijk buitenaards uitzag.

Bezoek aan Europa

Bruie is ongeveer een meter lang en uitgerust met twee wielen die elk zo groot zijn als een pizza. Dankzij de wielen kan de robot zich voortbewegen onder een dikke ijslaag. De Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration werd in 2017 ontwikkeld door technici van Jet Propulsion Laboratory van NASA in Pasadena en doorstond in 2019 zijn eerste succesvolle test in Antarctica. Wanneer hij Europa zal bezoeken, is vooralsnog onduidelijk.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

06-01-2020 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

According to a new study, there may still be active volcanoes on Venus and they could have erupted very recently. If this is correct, this would be a significant discovery as the only other known place in our Solar System (besides Earth) that contains active volcanoes that spew lava is Jupiter’s moon Io. Mars, as well as our own moon, had active volcanoes at one time, but they all died out a very long time ago.

Around a decade ago, scientists were studying data from the European Space Agency’s Venus Express probe that orbited the planet from 2006 to 2014 and found that lava flowed on the planet less than 2.5 million years ago and perhaps even as recently as 250,000 years ago. In fact, back in 2010, visible to near-infrared light was emitting from certain areas on Venus which indicated recent lava flows. But how recent the lava flows occurred remains unknown as it’s still unclear as to how the volcanic rocks react to Venus’ severely harsh atmosphere.

However, with traces of sulfurous gases in Venus’ atmosphere, it seems as though there are still active volcanoes on the planet.

In order to find out for sure how recent the lava flows occurred, researchers conducted an experiment using crystals of olivine, which are green minerals that are found in volcanic rocks. They studied how the crystals would be affected in conditions that are similar to Venus’ surface.

The researchers heated the olivine, as well as Earth air, inside of a furnace with temperatures as high as 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately a month. They discovered that within days, the olivine was coated with a red-black mineral hematite which causes some of the crystal’s features to become hard to detect.

Since signs of olivine were detected from space, this suggests that there were volcanic eruptions on Venus quite recently or else they wouldn’t have been detected if the eruptions happened a long time ago.

Researchers then conducted another experiment with different volcanic minerals heated with air containing carbon dioxide and sulfur – more similar to the atmosphere on Venus. “The results with those are pretty much the same,” Justin Filiberto, who is a planetary scientist at the Universities Space Research Association’s Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told Space.com. He went on to say, “This is the first time we may have seen active volcanism on another planet.”

The scientists’ findings were published in the journal Science Advances and can be read in full here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

06-01-2020 om 21:48 geschreven door peter  

Top UFO stories of 2019

2019 was a big year for UFO coverage, ranging from the U.S. Navy acknowledging for the first time that leaked videos were real to former and current politicians weighing in on what the military knows, and a wave of people attempting to "storm Area 51."

No one can say for certain whether life exists outside of this planet, but the public's interest levels in the subject have likely never been higher.

FIRST QUARTER

January saw the release of newly declassified documents from the Pentagon that revealed the Department of Defense funded projects that investigated UFOs, wormholes, alternate dimensions and a host of other subjects that are often the topics of conspiracy theorists.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released 38 research titles on Jan. 18, following a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. The research was funded by the Department of Defense under its Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

• MAN WHO EXPOSED 'AREA 51 UFO TESTS' CLAIMS US GOVERNMENT STILL MONITORS HIM 30 YEARS LATER

The existence of AATIP was initially described by The New York Times and Politico in 2017. It was subsequently reported by Fox News and a number of other news outlets that the Pentagon had secretly set up a program to investigate UFOs at the request of former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

A Pentagon spokesman said the UFO program ended in 2012, though The New York Times said the Defense Department still investigates potential episodes of unidentified flying objects.

SECOND QUARTER

Several months later, the U.S. Navy announced it was drafting new guidelines for pilots and other employees to report encounters with "unidentified aircraft."

"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy said in an April statement to Politico, which first reported the move.

"For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report."

"As part of this effort," it told Politico, "the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft."

The Navy also said it's taking a more proactive approach in briefing lawmakers, including several senators who were briefed in June.

One month later, the Pentagon admitted that it was still investigating UFOs as part of the AATIP.

“The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland,” spokesman Christopher Sherwood told the New York Post in May. “The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.”

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon told Fox & Friends in May the Navy has a right to be concerned about the unexplained sightings.

"We know that UFOs exist. This is no longer an issue," said Mellon, who has written on the topic and is associated with the History Channel series, 'Unidentified,' at the time. "The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from and what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?"

There are indications, Mellon said, that the objects reported by Navy pilots in 2014 and 2015 and mentioned in the New York Times report were doing things that aren't possible in this physical realm.

• ALIENS? HARVARD PROFESSOR DEFENDS CLAIM MYSTERIOUS INTERSTELLAR OBJECT COULD BE EXTRATERRESTRIAL PROBE

The speeds that were reported (about 5,000 miles per hour, according to Mellon) were only sustainable for about an hour by an aircraft in the air, and these objects would be flying around all day long, the pilots said.

"Pilots observing these craft are absolutely mystified and that comes through clearly in their public statements," Mellon continued.

In June 2019, Reid, now retired, expressed his desire for lawmakers to hold public hearings into what the military knows.

"They would be surprised how the American public would accept it," he said during a wide-ranging interview with a Nevada radio station. "People from their individual states would accept it."

THIRD QUARTER

What started as an internet joke in July to "see them aliens,"  turned into the headline-grabbing "Storm Area 51" event in September.

Although more than 2 million people signed up on Facebook saying they would attend the viral phenomenon event, a motley group of about 100 “alien-chasers” converged on the back gate of the secret site early Sept. 20, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Only a few people were arrested, Fox News previously reported.

People came from all over the U.S. to attend the viral event, which generated security concerns and garnered global attention.

"We figure Mars needs women, so we're here if they want to beam us up," one woman told Fox News in September.

• FORMER US DEFENSE OFFICIAL: WE KNOW UFOS ARE REAL - HERE'S WHY THAT'S CONCERNING

FOURTH QUARTER

Americans said in a September Gallup poll they are becoming increasingly skeptical that the government knows more than it is letting on as it pertains to UFOs and an ex-punk rocker may be the one who opens the proverbial pandora's box.

A spokesperson for To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (TTSA), co-founded by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge, told The New York Times in September that it "certainly" had obtained "exotic material samples from UFOs," but no further details were given at the time.

Later that month, the U.S. Navy acknowledged that three UFO videos that were released by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge and published by The New York Times are of real "unidentified" objects.

“The Navy considers the phenomena contained/depicted in those three videos as unidentified," Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher told The Black Vault, a website dedicated to declassified government documents.

• BLINK-182 FOUNDER'S UFO HUNTING GROUP CLINCHES DEAL WITH ARMY TO STUDY 'EXOTIC MATERIAL'

Gradisher added that “the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ terminology is used because it provides the basic descriptor for the sightings/observations of unauthorized/unidentified aircraft/objects that have been observed entering/operating in the airspace of various military-controlled training ranges.”

The videos in question, known as "FLIR1,” “Gimbal” and “GoFast,” were originally released to the New York Times and to the TTSA.

The first video of the unidentified object was taken on Nov. 14, 2004, and shot by an F-18's gun camera. The second video was taken on Jan. 21, 2015, and shows another aerial vehicle with pilots commenting on how strange it is. The third video was also taken on Jan. 21, 2015, but it is unclear whether the third video was of the same object or a different one.

In October, the TTSA  signed a deal with the U.S. Army to study its purported extraterrestrial "discoveries."

November saw the publication of an explosive report that detailed the involvement of two "unknown individuals" who told several Naval officers who witnessed the 2004 event, known as the USS Nimitz UFO incident, to delete evidence.

Earlier this month, Chris Rutkowski, a Canadian science writer and ufologist, donated his collection of more than 20,000 UFO reports filed over the past three decades, plus another 10,000 UFO-related documents from the Canadian government, including the so-called Falcon Lake incident, which Rutkowski said "beats even Roswell."

{ https://www.foxnews.com/ }

06-01-2020 om 21:17 geschreven door peter  

Whatever else you might say about the year 2019, it was certainly not boring, and this is doubly so when it comes to the UFO subject.

Richard and Tracey make the case that this could well be a year of historical importance.

All ten stories on this list were significant, and the #1 story will probably surprise many - until they stop and reflect on it.

Enjoy the countdown with Richard and Tracey.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

06-01-2020 om 20:53 geschreven door peter  

Klobuchar Teases UFO Docs Declassification If Americans Elect Her President

The 2020 US presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar suggested recently that she would allow journalists to look into classified stuff on UFO sightings if she won president.

Klobuchar spoke about her optimism towards the presidential race, telling that she thinks she’s well-positioned to win against President Donald Trump. The Minnesota senator also talked about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), specifically on the story of the Navy fighter pilot David Fraser about chasing a UFO in 2014 on the West Coast.

She said that we don’t know enough and she doesn’t know what’s occurred, not just with that sighting, but with others. And she believes one of the things a leader of the nation could do is to look into what is there in regards to what does the science say and what does our military say.

She added that the exciting part of that answer is that some of this is old before suggested that some of this information could be released to the public for journalists to look into and get the bottom of the truth.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

06-01-2020 om 20:28 geschreven door peter  

Somewhere in the mid 1800s, novelist and columnist and columnist Fanny Fern (real name Sara Wills) coined the adage: “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. While still popular today, the year 2020 may bring to the national lexicon a different one: “The way to full UFO and ET disclosure is through New Hampshire.” That’s because an intrepid reporter with The Conway Daily Sun has been putting tough questions about recent UFO sightings by military personnel to every Democratic and Republican presidential candidate to pass through the state which hosts the first presidential primary election (not a caucus) on February 11. On January 3rd, it was South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg’s turn in reporter Daymond Steer’s UFO hotseat and the former US Navy lieutenant showed why the key to electing a president willing to open the X-files to the public might be a military background.

Pete Buttigieg

“Well, strange things happen out there.”

In response to Steer’s UFO question about the USS Nimitz UFO incident in 2004 witnessed by New Hampshire’s own fighter pilot David Fravor, Buttigieg immediately defended the right and responsibility of military personnel to be able to report strange incidents like that without fear of ridicule or reprisal. He then tells a personal story from his childhood. On a New Mexico trip past a military base, he saw a strange-looking blimp under heavy security. Twenty years later when he was deployed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Buttigieg looks up and saw the blimp doing surveillance to protect the base and its troops. Does this mean he thinks all UFOs are secret military test aircraft?

“It’s very unlikely we’re alone in the universe.”

Buttigieg takes the safe approach in saying we’re not the only life forms around, but he doesn’t think we’ll see “concrete evidence” of it on Earth. However, that doesn’t mean we should stop watching the skies.

“As a curious species, we should always be looking at what’s going on around us.”

Mayor Pete is obviously a very curious guy. But is he openminded enough to accept the idea that “what’s going on around us” — or went on around us in the past with evidence stored in secret files — could indeed be visitors from another planet or galaxy if presented with proof?

“Unimaginably strange things often happened in the grand sweep of American and world history and we should never fail to be on the lookout for what’s happening around us.”

“Unimaginably strange things.” Could they be too unimaginably strange to reveal to the American public? If Pete Buttigieg were elected president, would he accept that it was because a majority of voters are part of his “curious species” and want to know “what’s going on around us” too?

An unimaginable strange thing that became a reality?

Pete Buttigieg was one of the most open to the UFO questions of the candidates sitting down for the Sun Editorial board meetings and the inevitable questions from reporter Daymond Steer. (You can watch the full clip here.) However, if Mayor Pete is too young for your taste in presidents, longshot candidate Joe Stesak, a retired three-star Navy admiral who commanded an aircraft battle group in Afghanistan and Iraq before serving two terms in Congress representing Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, had an admiral-like blunt answer to the same question about what Fravor saw. (Stesak dropped out of the race last month but he can still be a write-in.)

“If you’re an F-18 pilot, you’re nobody’s fool.”

The New Hampshire primary isn’t until February 11th and more candidates will be in the hotseat. Stay tuned.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

06-01-2020 om 12:15 geschreven door peter  

One of the most dramatic and harrowing supposed UFO encounters in not only Canadian history, but that of anywhere else, began in 1967 in the remote wilderness of a place called Falcon Lake, Manitoba, located just about 150 kilometers east of the city of Winnipeg. It was here in this peaceful wilderness where on May 20, 1967, industrial mechanic and Polish immigrant Stefan Michalak was out prospecting for mineral deposits. At one point he seemed to have found what he was looking for, a rich vein of quartz, but as he was getting ready to try and go about staking a claim on it a very bizarre sequence of events would unfold that would change his life forever, and would go on to become one of the most intriguing cases of a purported UFO attack ever.

As he scoped out the area, Michalak was startled by a gaggle of geese suddenly alighting into the sky with some commotion, which he followed skyward until his eyes fell upon an otherworldly sight hovering above. He says that the geese passed in front of two large, oval or cigar-shaped objects in the air surrounded by a reddish glow, and that one of these began to descend as he looked on in awe to land on a nearby flat shelf of rock, where it seemed to morph into a disc-like shape right before his startled eyes. As the strange object did this, the other craft allegedly ascended into the sky to disappear, leaving Michalak alone with the glowing disc that had landed only about 45 meters away from him.

The witness would claim that he had warily approached the curious sight, and as he did so a hatch would open on the side of the object as the glow subsided to reveal a metallic surface. He claimed that the opening belched forth a smell not unlike sulphur, and that a motorized whirring noise could be heard emanating from within, as well as the glare from a bright light. He still crept closer, and says that he could hear what sounded vaguely like voices echoing about within. Michalak allegedly called out to whoever it was, but there was no reply. The multilingual Michalak even tried calling out in Polish, Russian, and German, thinking that this was a manmade craft, but met with only that unearthly machine hum each time. Where as most people would have probably called it a day and gotten out of there with haste, Michalak was so curious that he moved ever closer to the craft, each call out to the occupants unanswered, until he was purportedly standing right at the portal that had opened in the craft, and it was here where things would get truly bizarre.

After taking a peek within to see various flashing lights, panels of some sort, all bathed in a purplish glow, he reached out to touch the side of the object to find it extremely hot to the touch, causing him to withdraw his hand in surprise. Inspecting his glove, he apparently found that it had been actually melted, and as he stared at his hand in bafflement the whole of the craft then began to rattle and shake. As this was happening, the now frightened man says he was struck in the chest by what felt like a stream of very hot air emitted from within the craft, which sent him sprawling back away from the disc. The bizarre craft then began to lift off the ground to hover over him, before shooting off over the trees into the sky to leave Michalak feeling nauseous to the point that he vomited where he stood. In his head he could feel an intense pain building, as well as an intense burning in his chest area, and he knew that something was very wrong. Wrapping himself close with his jacket, he meandered off towards the road and towards civilization, constantly vomiting along the way and eventually stumbling into the the parking lot of the Falcon Motor Hotel.

When hotel staff found him, he was delirious and rambling, disheveled and wild-eyed and still vomiting, and it was at first thought that he was just very drunk. Michalak managed to make it on his own on a bus back to Winnipeg, where he was whisked off to the hospital and things would get even stranger still. When examined it was revealed that he had a series of burn marks that formed a grid-like pattern over his chest, as well as signs of what appeared to be radiation sickness, the causes unknown. Michalak’s son, Stan Michalak, would later say of seeing his father in this state:

I recalled seeing him in bed. He didn’t look good at all. He looked pale, haggard. When I walked into the bedroom there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulphur and burnt motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores. It was bad. I was very afraid. My dad had been injured and I didn’t know anything about it.

Stefan Michalak after the incident

As soon as the man was lucid enough to give his version of events, the story hit the news and a UFO sensation was born. Apparently there was quite a lot of interest from the military and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Royal Canadian Air Force at he time, with numerous alleged searches of the area of the incident using tracker dogs and aircraft, and even Michalak himself was recruited to join in the sweep when he was feeling better. They apparently found the remains of Michalak’s scorched and melted glove, as well as some of his tools and allegedly a circular area on the rock that was strangely devoid of moss or any vegetation and which possessed soil high in radiation readings and some odd pieces of melted metal within the cracks of the rock, also radioactive in nature.

In the meantime the tale was really launching itself into local legend, and there was by many accounts a pronounced military presence in the area for weeks, with helicopters hovering above at all hours. There was also a deluge of reporters and curiosity seekers gravitating towards the Michalak home, and in the meantime there was also an intense investigation going on into the claims he had made. There were some efforts at the time to discredit Michalak, trying to paint him as a town drunk who had hallucinated the whole thing or completely fabricated it, but this didn’t stick and seems to have been wholly invented just to make him look crazy. He had been a military policeman in his former years and was known as an honest and responsible upstanding citizen, with no history of telling tall tales, by all accounts not someone who would be making these kinds of stories up or showing up stumbling about ranting about flying saucers. There was also the physical evidence left behind, which could not be easily explained and which was confirmed by doctors. UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski, who has written the definitive book on the whole incident, When They Appeared: Falcon Lake 1967: The inside story of a close encounter, has said of this:

Michalak certainly wasn’t an alcoholic. He didn’t drink to excess but he drank socially. To suggest that having a few drinks or even three or four drinks the night before his experience would make him imagine something to the point where he would be physically burned and leave radioactive debris behind is, I think, quite a quantum leap.

We have a witness who was judged by a psychiatrist to not fabricate stories. A person who was a good member of society holding a good job, a background in the military himself, and no reason to perpetrate such a hoax at all. He maintained until he died that this is what happened to him. He did not have a history of seeing aliens around every corner, like so many contactees and abductees maintain these days in their own stories. This was a very unusual experience that happened to him and he was as puzzled as anyone. Whether it was something from outer space or a military vehicle… there’s no question something happened. It’s a mystery. It’s quite fascinating. I knew the family quite well, and he wasn’t the type of guy to make up stories like this.

Michalak’s son would agree, having said, “If Dad hoaxed this — remember we’re talking about a blue-collar, industrial mechanic — if he hoaxed it then he was a freakin’ genius.” There were also the findings of official investigators and civilian researchers, who came to the conclusion that there was no explanation for the incident, the radiation, or what happened to Michalak, and to this day the Canadian Department of National Defence considers the case to be officially unsolved. Michalak himself would adamantly stand by his story right up until his death in 1999, so what happened to him? Was this just all some sort of elaborate hoax or something else, and if so, what? One idea is that he saw not aliens or extraterrestrials, but rather some sort of terrestrial experimental aircraft, and indeed Michalak himself thought this could be the case, never really specifically insisting that what he saw was aliens. His son Stan has said of this:

If you asked him what it was he saw, he could describe it in intimate detail but he would never say, ‘Oh, it was definitely extraterrestrials,’ because there was no evidence to prove that. He might ask, ‘What do you think I saw?’ but right up until he died, his story never changed one iota — nothing about it or how he told it. I’m not so close-minded that I can’t entertain the possibility that it’s otherworldly. I can’t discount that. But without specific evidence to show me that it is, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that I’m an aviation fanatic, a huge aviation buff, and I am very familiar with how aviation technology has advanced in the past 50 years. And there was nothing even close to that in the works anywhere at that time.

What are we dealing with here? Was this an extraterrestrial presence? Was it some type of top secret military craft? Was it all a tall tale, and if so how did he fake the injuries and the physical evidence that was allegedly found at the site? Or was it something else altogether? What caused those grid-like burns on his chest and was this some sort of attack directed at him? These are questions we still don’t have the answers to, and the case of the Falcon Lake Incident has become one of the great mysteries of the landscape of UFO lore.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

06-01-2020 om 12:07 geschreven door peter  

In a new article at his website titled “Codename Rendlesham,” Dr. David Clarke addresses the matter of the famous Rendlesham Forest UFO landing of December 1980. As Dave notes: “Next Christmas marks the 40th anniversary of the story that began on Boxing Day morning, 26 December 1980.” He also says: “As the legend moves into its fourth decade there is an ever growing cast of story-tellers and alleged experiencers, all armed with rival versions of the story. Each personality has their own group of followers ready to engage in flame-wars to win the credibility battle with rival story-tellers.” The main thrust of Dave’s article, however, is a forthcoming documentary on the still-mysterious affair: Codename Rendlesham. Dave says of this production: “It avoids the more sensational tropes that have emerged more recently, particularly those concerning alleged cover-ups and contactee stories. Instead, it concentrates on the how the story first emerged and how it developed, placing factual evidence under a withering examination.”

With that all said,  and the fact that in less than one year from now we’ll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the incident, I figured I would get the wheels moving. It’s time to share certain data with you that perhaps will be expanded upon by someone as Rendlesham gets closer and closer to forty. It was right around Christmas 1980 when one of the most significant of all UFO encounters occurred in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England – adjacent to the twin-Royal Air Force Bases, Woodbridge and Bentwaters. A memo prepared the Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant Charles Halt reveals the astonishing facts:

“Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately 0300L) two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate. The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.” The notable encounter remains unresolved to this day.

In case you may not know, an equally controversial affair occurred just two nights after the Rendlesham events went down – and on the other side of the world, specifically Texas, USA. When, shortly before 9:00 p.m., Vickie Landrum, her grandson, Colby, and Betty Cash exited the restaurant where they had just eaten, they couldn’t imagine what was just around the corner. As they headed towards the town of Huffman, they were terrified by the sudden sight of an unknown object in the sky. Worse, it was descending on a flight-path guaranteed to ensure it landed on the road they were on. As they got closer, they could see the aerial thing appeared to be in flames and shaped not unlike a diamond. It reached a perilously low level of around twenty-five feet, something which ensured a screeching of brakes and the car brought to a shuddering standstill. The interior temperature of the car suddenly reached intolerable levels. The three jumped out of the vehicle and could only stare in awe and fear. Then, out of the blue, around two dozen, double-rotor helicopters were on the scene, clearly intent on correlating the UFO. Or, perhaps they were escorting it. Cash was sure they were CH-47 Chinooks. They watched as both the UFO and the helicopters left the area and were finally lost from sight.

Within days, all three fell sick: nausea and vomiting were at the forefront. Betty Cash was the one affected most of all – which may be explainable by the fact that she was the one member of the group who got closest to the object. Her hair started to fall out, her skin was covered with pustules and blisters, and the nausea got worse. Despite attempts to force the U.S. government to come clean on what went down, there was nothing but denial after denial from the authorities. The case is a puzzling one, with some UFO researchers believing the three encountered a real UFO, while others suspect they were unfortunate enough to cross paths with a top secret, nuclear-powered, prototype aircraft that was in deep trouble.

It’s interesting to note that the witnesses at Huffman reported seeing multiple helicopters surrounding the craft. It just so happens that RAF Woodbridge had an interesting helicopter-based connection attached to it. As Captain John E. Boyle of the U.S. Air Force revealed to me in 1988: “In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the 67th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron stationed at RAF Woodbridge [provided] standby rescue coverage for the American space flights. Of course, they were never needed to provide emergency rescue actions, but at the time, the unit was trained and available to rescue astronauts with their HH-53 and HC-130 aircraft. In early 1988, the 67th ARRS was re-designated as part of the 39th Special Operations Wing, their primary mission changing from that of rescue to supporting U.S. Special Operations forces. Their secondary mission remains that of search and rescue and they would provide any assistance necessary in future space missions.”

So, we have two near-legendary UFO-themed events, which, time-wise, were very closer to each other. Also, the ARRS was still in place when the Rendlesham incident occurred. This brings us to the possibility of a Soviet connection. Ian Ridpath notes: “At 21.07 on the evening of 1980 December 25 (i.e. a mere six hours before the supposed UFO landing in Rendlesham Forest) the Russian Cosmos 749 rocket re-entered over north-west Europe and was widely reported as a UFO.” Was something Russian secretly retrieved in the forest? Let’s see what Jenny Randles, who has written a number of books on the Rendlesham case, has to say about this. In her 1998 book, UFO Crash Landing? Friend or Foe?, Randles says: “It seems inconceivable that if a Soviet nuclear motor was retrieved from Rendlesham Forest several days earlier it would have been ferried across the Texas countryside in this way. However, the links between the cases are stunning. The shape is very like that described by Burroughs and Penniston. Then there is the radiation.” And as Randles is careful to note: “The NASA-trained Aerospace Rescue and Recovery squadron at Woodbridge links with the main NASA HQ near Huffman [italics mine].”

Perhaps, someone reading this article will feel up to the challenge and pursue this theory – and the intriguing threads – to a much greater degree, in time for the 40th anniversary in December 2020. It’s time to get moving; there’s a little less than twelve months to go.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

06-01-2020 om 11:59 geschreven door peter  

100% Proof That Aliens Once Lived On Mars Surface, UFO Sighting News.

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/219270

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

06-01-2020 om 11:37 geschreven door peter  

Devastated dairy farmer Craig Calvert, who spent 13 hours fighting fires threatening his property in Victoria, has shared an eerie image of the blaze which depicts "a big devil face" in the billowing smoke.

The picture was taken in the Gippsland fires near Sarsfield, Victoria. The demonic apparition in right hand corner of the blaze can’t be unseen.

Craig Calvert told Sunrise: "I'm not really into hokey pokey spooky stuff but there's a big devil face right in the fire".

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

06-01-2020 om 11:13 geschreven door peter  

Contactee Claims That Our Moon Is Artificial And Brought Here By Aliens From Other Galaxy

Alex Collier is one of the most famous characters who claim to have made contact with an alien race. And his statements do not end here.

Alex claims that the Moon is an artificial construction and was brought to orbit around Earth by the gray aliens at the order of the reptilian masters.

In case you didn’t already know, the reptilians are supposed to be our ancestors.

I mean the creators of the human race. Alex Collier and Job Robinson claim that they have come into contact with an alien civilization.

In the video below you can see widely the statements of the two and the conversations, they had with this alien race.

Watch the following video and see for yourself:

{ https://trueblog.net/ }

05-01-2020 om 23:19 geschreven door peter