The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
11-01-2020
Navy Admits To Having Additional Footage Of Nimitz UFO Encounter But Won’t Release It
Navy Admits To Having Additional Footage Of Nimitz UFO Encounter But Won’t Release It
The United States Navy has admitted to having additional footage/information about the 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFO encounter, but won’t release it because it could jeopardize national security.
A researcher named Christian Lambright sent a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in October requesting information on the encounter. He recently received a response to his request and while the Navy didn’t offer him any new evidence, they did provide very important information regarding a secret video and documents. They said that they did have “top secret” documents and “secret” video footage but they weren’t allowed to release them as they could cause “grave damage” to national security.
USS Nimitz
The response from ONI read in part, “We have discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET. A review of these materials indicates that are currently and appropriate Marked and Classified TOP SECRET under Executive Order 13526, and the Original Classification Authority has determined that the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States,” and, “We have also determined that ONI possesses a video classified SECRET.” The entire letter can be read in full here.
This is a very interesting development as several of the USS Nimitz sailors have reported watching longer videos than those that were made public in 2017. However, when journalists questioned the Pentagon about these allegedly longer videos, spokesperson Susan Gough said that the three videos released to the public were the only ones.
So is there another video of the encounter or not? According to a Navy pilot who chased the tic tac shaped UFO, there are missing tapes of the encounter. In an interview with The Fighter Pilot Podcast last year, Commander David Fravor said that “All the radar tapes from the Princeton are missing and they can’t find [them].” Additionally, he mentioned that after the encounter, he made copies of the tapes which also went missing.
USS Princeton
Another U.S. Navy veteran (Lead Petty Officer Ryan Weigelt) claimed that secret officials boarded the USS Princeton and took “something” off the helicopters which made them unable to fly.
Are these missing tapes the ones that the Navy won’t release to the public? And what exactly did the secret officials take off the Princeton? What are they trying to hide and why would it cause “grave damage” to national security? With each new bit of information regarding the tic tac UFO encounter, there seems to be more questions than answers.
Mockup of the Kecksburg UFO made for the Unsolved Mysteries TV program in 1990. The object is displayed at the Kecksburg Volunteer Fire Department in Pennsylvania.
In the chronicles of UFO oddness, there's been a long-standing oddity ? some say folklore, others deem it reality. This saga, now over four decades old, centerson a reported out-of-the-sky incident involving the small town of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
The date is Dec. 9, 1965: Residents see a ball of fire shooting through the darkeningevening sky and then, seemingly, the object purportedly shaped like a jumbo-sizedacorn after impact makes some sort of controlled crash into the woods. From there, the strangeness factor escalates with purported military personnel isolating the area from curious onlookers and toting something out of the localeon a flatbed truck.
A meteorite? A wayward classified aircraft? Reentering space hardware of Earthlyorigin? An aliencraft from afar?
You pick.
Upagainst NASA
Whatevertook place in Kecksburg, a dutiful look into the episode escalated to a lawsuit against NASA for access to information on the incident.
A central figure in the weirdness is New York-based investigative journalist, LeslieKean. Working with the Coalition for Freedom of Information, she was on the receivingend of loads of documents an outcome of winning the lawsuit.
This stage of the saga began in 2002, when Kean was asked to spearhead a Freedom ofInformation Act (FOIA) initiative sponsored by the Sci Fi Channel an effort to acquire government documents on the Kecksburg case. The following year, sheended up as the plaint iff in a federal, FOIA lawsuit filed against NASA in Washington, DC.
After previously promising to conduct an expedited search for files related to the 1965 Kecksburg UFO crash case, NASA had stonewalled and was withholdingdocuments, leaving no recourse but this one, Kean explained in a just-issuedreport. A settlement four years later, in October 2007, required NASA toprovide hundreds of new documents and pay my attorney?s legal fees.
Nosmoking gun
NASA's resulting search, monitored by the court, was completed in August 2009. The outcome of the investigation is available in Keans paper, which was postedonline this month to the coalition?s Web site.
The report,flatly titled, The Conclusion of the NASA Lawsuit - Concerning the Kecksburg, PA UFO case of 1965, explains how the process worked and the results of thesearch after the 2007 settlement in federal court.
The bottomline: No smoking gun documents were released, Kean notes, but many provocativequestions and unresolved contradictions were raised by what was received, aswell as by the fact that many files were missing or destroyed.
One open-endedaspect of Kean?s reportage is the role of ?Project Moondust? ? a U.S. government-run activity involved in examining non-U.S. space objects, or objects of unknown origin. Indeed, variousState Department documents show that NASA played a role in the recovery andexamination of space object debris.
Coldtrail, hot caveats
After months of studying the material received, Kean reports that the trail is colbut with caveats.
I amconvinced that something came down and landed in Kecksburg, Kean told SPACE.com.
Kean thinksthat a UFO connection of the extra-Earth type is a possibility that has to be considered. It can't be ruled out, she said.
Other potentials, Kean added, ?include a very secret U.S. project or another nation?shardware. But both of these explanations are unlikely.
Keans research indicates that it appears doubtful that the object in question waseither Russian or from any other country on our planet backed up by NASA orbital debris elucidation. Also, data from the U.S. Space Command and the Russian Space Agency fortifies the fact that whatever came down that day was nota Russian satellite or space probe, she stated.
So I would rule that out, and say it's either a UFO or a secret American device of somesort, Kean said. If it was our own, she added, why couldn't they tell usabout this 40 years later?
Therefore, thats why the UFO possibility ?has to be kept in the running, as hard as it may be toaccept, Kean said. Possibly it was some kind of secretive U.S. government project or program or the testing of something. Maybe it was highlyradioactive so they don't want anybody to know about it.
However, acentral take home message from Kean has no connection with alien visitation ?more a governmental encounter of the lack-of-transparency kind.
The effort highlights the problems inherent to the use of the Freedom of Information Act in our democracy, Kean explained.
It hasbeen a long, long process, she said. The important thing about this hasnothing to do with UFOs. It just points out the problems with the Freedom of Information Act as it standstoday.
A caseworth investigating
The NASA lawsuit was made possible because of the support of a major television network,Kean said. Also add to the investigation, John Podesta -- President Clintons former Chief of Staff -- an archival research group, a lawyer, and a publicrelations firm in Washington, D.C.
Larry Landsman, then Director ofSpecial Projects at the Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy), launched the UFO advocacy initiative, with the Kecksburg lawsuit as one component of that larger undertaking.He is now an independent television producer working on various specialsand miniseries.
In early 2002, a group of us beganto seriously explore what initiative could be launched that would beappropriate to the spirit of the network, Landsman told SPACE.com. ?After muchbrainstorming, I proposed a campaign that pushed for the truth behind allof the many reports of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena. We were thefirst -- and so far, only -- company ever to pursue such an initiative and we attackedthe issue on a number of fronts both on air and off air, he said.
As for Kecksburg, Landsmancontinued, ?we felt it was a case worth investigating, supporting KeansFreedom of Information pursuit of the full and uncensored reports about the incident.
There were too many lives that we reupended from this event and American citizens had -- and have -- the right to know the truth. Clearly many things are going on in our world that cannot be easily explained, Landsman said. Polls show that a majority of Americans believe the government is covering up information on UFOs. Thetruth should not be kept in the hands of only a relative few at various government agencies and military departments
Keep an open mind
For Stan Gordon, a steadfast on-scene investigator of what took place in Kecksburg thosemany years ago, the case is far from closed.
My feelings today in regards to the Kecksburg incident are unchanged. I remainconvinced that an object of still undetermined origin fell from the sky into awooded area near Kecksburg, said Gordon.
Gordon told SPACE.com that multiple independent witnessesdescribed the object traversing the sky. As it turned and neared Kecksburg,the object was described as moving and descending slowly, as if making a controlledlanding.
The semi-buried metallic acorn shaped object was observed on the ground by a numberof independent eyewitnesses. Whatever that object was, it was important enoughfor the military to quickly arrive on the scene and recover the object in question,Gordon said.
One plausible theory, Gordon suggested, is that the object was an advancedsecretive human-made space device with re-entry control capabilities whichapparently failed. Another is that this could have beenan extra-terrestrial spacecraft, he noted.
Until definitive evidence is found that will conclusively explain the object, I willcontinue to keep an open mind concerning all theories as to the origin of theobject, Gordon concluded.
For Kean,even after years of work trying to unravel the Kecksburg incident, what tookplace there is an unanswered question.?
LeonardDavid has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Heis past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and SpaceWorld magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.
Alleged UFO crashes always generate interest, these cases of possible aliens from another word finding themselves stranded on Earth. There is a surprisingly large number of such accounts, yet some of these are not as well known as Roswell, and a few have managed to remain mostly relatively obscure. One of these supposedly happened in a small rural town in the United States, when something fell down from the heavens to leave bafflement that continues to this day.
On the otherwise peaceful evening of December, 9, 1965, the people of the small town of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, around 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, were startled when a strange glowing object sped across the night sky from the north. The object was seen by hundreds of people, many of who would describe it as somewhat acorn-shaped and emanating wisps of yellow, purple and orange colors, as well as claiming that the object seemed to change directions and to be under intelligent control. One of the witnesses at the time, a boy named Robb Landy was out with his brother when it roared overhead, and he would say of it:
We were riding up the road and we just happened to look up into the sky and we saw this thing coming over the tops of the trees. It just glided right across the sky, like across the horizon of the trees. We were just, like, in awe, you know, as we watched it. Then it disappeared, and we ran.
It would later turn out that this strange object had been seen by thousands of witnesses streaking across a large swath of the northeastern United States and Canada, and the thing’s eerie trail reportedly was visible for hundreds of miles around. Yet it seems that after this fantastic light display the object, whatever it was and wherever it came from, would end its journey at Kecksburg, where it reportedly crashed right there in a small wooded hollow near a farm owned by the Kalp family. At the time many people believed that the object had been simply a plane on fire, and so curiosity seekers were soon flocking to where the smoke and fire of the impact site could be seen. It was not long after that police and firefighters were also converging on the scene, and this was when it would slowly become apparent that whatever it was that had fallen out of the sky onto that farm was no plane.
Some of the first descriptions of something very weird going on out in those darkened woods were from search teams that had been brought in to find where the crash site actually was, with these teams mostly formed of state troopers and firefighters. Some of these searchers would claim to have seen a very bright blue light flashing intermittently through the trees through the gloom of the smoke, and some even claimed to have come across the object itself. One of the most spectacular reports of this happening would come from volunteer fire fighterJames Romansky, who would say of the outlandish sight awaiting his team:
Here was this humongous metal object, half buried in the ground. About six, seven, eight foot around, and it was every bit of eight, ten, twelve foot long. And to me the object looked like exactly like a fresh acorn that you’d pick off of a tree. There was no wings, there was no motors. There was no propellers. There was no identification whatsoever that would identify it as a aircraft that I would know. There was a bumper on the bottom part of it. On that bumper there was what I call, it looked to me like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was markings like stars, and shapes and figures and circles, and lines, and what it was, I don’t know. To this day I’ve never seen anything like it. So we’re all standing around this thing, wondering what in the heck it could be, and finally here come two men down through the woods. And they took one look at the object, and immediately told us to leave. ‘We are in charge, we’re taking command, get out of here.’ So we left there, and by the time we got back down here to the fire hall, I mean, this place was wall to wall military.
Indeed, by all accounts the military was amazingly quick to arrive on the scene and take charge, within an hour moving in to disperse curious locals and eject all reporters and local authorities from the area. It was amazingly efficient and quick, but there were several witnesses who allegedly got a peak at what they were up to before being chased off. Some of them saw armed personnel swarming about, trucks marked with a white star, and people entering the area with special instruments and in some sort of radiation or HAZMAT suits. One witness named Bill Weaver would say:
I looked down in there myself. I seen there was something down in there, that had bright lights on it. But I couldn’t see the object itself. Some time later, I seen a van type truck pull up there. There was some men dressed in moon suits, we called them at the time, and they had a light colored box, roughly five foot square. They carried it down into the ravine.
Many others made similar claims of radiation suit clad personnel fanning out over the crash site, but the most interesting accounts are of those who say they saw the military whisking the actual mystery object away, which happened within an hour of them arriving. Most witnesses say they were only able to see a large, flatbed truck, flanked by jeeps and holding something large upon it covered with tarps, but some of them would say that they had seen the actual object, and this is where things get weird, as some witnesses insist that it was a large metallic craft of some kind, while others say it was a smaller object about the size of two suitcases put together. For their part, the military officially stated it was a meteorite and then took off without further explanation. The thing is, everyone who got a glimpse of the object maintain that it was no meteorite, and there is also the very distinctive appearance and behavior it had before it fell to earth, as well as the fact that everything was so hush hush. UFO researcher Stan Gordon has explained of what is wrong with the meteorite theory:
Astronomers who looked into the case at the time basically felt that the object in question was a bolides, which was a very bright fire-ball type meteor. But we now know the thing basically was coming down from the tip of Ontario, and appeared to have made about a 25 degree turn to the east, near Cleveland, Ohio. And the interesting thing is, now that the new data suggests that the object made a turn towards the south, and then the object made another turn towards the village of Kecksburg where it was proceeding towards the northeast. Within several miles of the crash site, multiple witnesses tell us that this object was coming in at a very, very slow speed of descent. Meteors do not make controlled turns. They do not come in at a slow speed like this. And they in fact do not glide in, which this thing apparently did.
In the aftermath of the strange incident, the people of Kecksburg and UFO researchers alike have struggled to find an answer for what happened that night in the void of any from the government. It seems fairly certain and undisputed that something did indeed come down out of the sky in this rural hamlet, and that the military did move in to clear it out, but just what that was has remained hotly debated. One idea is that this was a downed spy satellite either from a foreign country or domestic, the kind that the government would be keen to sweep under the carpet as much as possible. Another idea is that this was just some random space debris, but if this were the case, then why would the military be on the scene so fast in such full force to so totally lock the place down and keep it all so secret? It has also been found that there are no official records of any space debris being tracked to fall in that area at the time. Neither of these explanations explains the speed and maneuverability of what witnesses had seen either. There is also the possibility put forward that this was perhaps some experimental aircraft that crashed, which could explain some of the details of what witnesses claimed to have seen and the military interest. Of course there is also the idea that this was a genuine UFO and it is being covered up and kept in a secret location. What just about everyone agrees on, except the government, is that this was no meteorite, and Stan Gordon has said:
There was quite a lot of interest by government agencies as to what the object may have been. There were memos there and requests for information from Houston Space Center, from NORAD, from the Air Force Command Post, the Pentagon, even the Chairman of the Office of Emergency Planning requested information. The official Air Force explanation was that it was likely a meteor. And basically what it goes on to say is, the fact that the search was called off around 2:00 A.M. and that nothing was found. But evidence indicates that something indeed was found at the site.
Whatever came down in Kecksburg that night, is of high importance to the military agencies. The most mysterious thing about the whole case is the fact that after 25 years, the government still refuses to give us any actual information on what occurred. Either way, we’re dealing with some highly advanced space probe, probably of a foreign nation, that appears to be very highly technical for what we knew about 1965. Or, the possibility exists that we may indeed be dealing with an extraterrestrial spacecraft. I’ve always said this thing was either a very secretive, very advanced man-made space vehicle or it was extraterrestrial. In the 50 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve looked at all sorts of American and Soviet objects and nothing ever seemed to fit the description of what we saw in Kecksburg.
It’s a mystery and after so many years it would be great if we could find that conclusive information about what it was that fell from the sky that night in 1965, but it might be one of those things that we may never have the answer for.
To this day the town remembers the event well, hosting a UFO festival every July and keeping a Styrofoam mockup of the UFO that was used for the case appearance on an episode of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. We are left to wonder just what in the world came down here in this small, rural town. Was it a UFO from another world, a spy satellite, a test aircraft, a meteorite, or what? No one seems to really know, and there has been no forthcoming answer in decades. It certainly seems as if the incident at Kecksburg will live on for some time to come.
Is it aliens or is it the government? Welcome to 2020, where the real question is what’s the difference, and does it even matter? It’s already pretty obvious it’s going to be a weird year in just about every department, including the skies. We’ve already had mysterious packs of drones in the sky over Colorado—and absolutely no one seems to know what’s going on with that—and now a couple of videos have surfaced showing a large triangular UFO floating in the sky over Texas and New York.
The triangle UFO is not a new phenomenon. It’s one of the more well-known UFO shapes. It’s also the UFO voted least likely to be aliens. Some speculate that the big triangle with three lights on it is the secret TR-3B spy plane which, thanks to the internet, isn’t so secret anymore. Is that what this is? Maybe, maybe not. Is it the same thing over both Texas and New York? I don’t know. It’s a very basic geometric shape, after all.
Lot’s of things look like triangles.
But have a look at the videos for yourself. The first sighting occurred on December 28, 2019 over Ilion, New York. The video was uploaded by the Youtube channel Tales From Out There and you can watch it here. In the description of the video, the witness says that before they started recording, a red orb flew out of the cloud. As that happened before they started recording, there’s no way to tell if that’s true or not. But if someone was going to make stuff up to make their flying triangle more impressive, you’d hope it’d be a little more entertaining than that.
The video shows three floating lights in broad daylight that do, in fact, make the shape of a triangle. It seems as if there is a sort of structure between the lights. If there is, however, then there would need to be some sort of invisibility cloak on the thing. Or it’s just a sky blue UFO, which would be kind of funny.
The second video was shot over Houston, Texas on New Year’s Eve. Again, it shows three lights floating in a static triangle shape. The lights move together in unison, suggesting that they may belong to the same craft or object. It’s night time, so the fact that the space between the lights matches the black of the night sky is a little more believable if it is a spy plane. Secret government projects are definitely more of a black than a sky blue. In the background are sounds of fireworks. Being New Year’s Eve, there was a lot more activity in the sky than normal and these lights could have something to do with that. A possible explanation is someone using a drone to film fireworks, but that’s also speculation.
This one’s coming next.
Regardless, it’s a pretty common UFO shape and the fact that both of these were right around the new year might mean they’re the same thing. Either the government keeping tabs on a period of increased activity with their fancy new toys, or aliens who came to get drunk and watch fireworks. At this point, it’s hard to say.
The night an Air Force jet mysteriously disappeared over Lake Superior—November 23, 1953—was a stormy one.
Near the U.S.-Canadian border, U.S. Air Defense Command noticed a blip on the radar where it shouldn’t have been: an unidentified object in restricted air space over Lake Superior, not far from Soo Locks, the Great Lakes’ most vital commercial gateway. An F-89C Scorpion jet, from Truax Air Force Base in Madison, Wisconsin, took off from nearby Kinross AFB to investigate, with two crew members on board. First Lieutenant Felix Moncla—who had clocked 811 flying hours, including 121 in a similar aircraft—took the pilot’s seat, while Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson was observing radar.
The men would not return from their intercept mission.
What followed, according to Donald Keyhoe, the former Marine Corps naval aviator and UFO researcher who wrote about the incident in his 1955 book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy—was “one of the strangest cases on record.”
F-89C Scorpion jet pictured 1956, the same aircraft Moncla was flying the day of the incident.
United States Air Force
Once airborne, Lieutenant Wilson had difficulty tracking the unknown object, which kept changing course. So with ground control directing the aviators over the radio, the Scorpion gave chase. The jet, traveling at 500 miles per hour, pursued the object for 30 minutes, gradually closing in.
On the ground, the radar operator guided the jet down from 25,000 to 7,000 feet, watching one blip chase the other across the radar screen. Gradually, the jet caught up to the unknown object about 70 miles off Keweenaw Point in upper Michigan, at an altitude of 8,000 feet, approximately 160 miles northwest of Soo Locks.
At that point, the two radar blips converged into one—“locked together,” as Keyhoe would put it later. And then, according to an official accident report, the radar return from the F-89 simply “disappeared from the GCI [ground-controlled interception] station’s radar scope.”
And then the first radar return, indicating the unidentified object, veered off and vanished too.
The United States Air Force, United States Coast Guard and Canadian Air Force conducted an extensive search-and-rescue effort. No wreckage, or sign of the pilots, was ever found.
Felix Moncla by a T-33 at Truax Field in Madison, Wisconsin, 1953.
Gordheath/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0
The Air Force’s official news release about the disappearance, delivered to the Associated Press, stated that the vanished jet “was followed by radar until it merged with an object 70 miles off Keweenaw Point in upper Michigan.” The statement appeared in a story in the Chicago Tribune with the headline, “JET, TWO ABOARD, VANISHES OVER LAKE SUPERIOR.”
The Air Force soon retracted the statement and changed its story: According to the new statement, the ground control radar operator had misread the scope. In fact, the F-89 had successfully completed the mission, intercepting and identifying the UFO as a Dakota—a Royal Canadian Air Force C-47 aircraft—flying some 30 miles off course. Lieutenant Moncla, probably stricken with vertigo, crashed into the lake during the return to base. Canadian officials refuted the account—no flights had taken place in the area that night.
According to Keyhoe, who would write about the Kinross Incident again in his 1973 book Aliens From Space, two separate Air Force representatives provided Lieutenant Moncla’s widow with contradictory explanations of the incident. In one version of events, the pilot had crashed into the lake while flying too low. In the other, the jet exploded at a high altitude.
Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major, holds a copy of his book, "Flying Saucers from Outer Space," in which he claims the Air Force has secret motion pictures of the apparitions proving that they are interplanetary craft.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
The case file from Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s own UFO investigatory team, reiterated the Air Force assertion that the jet “successfully accomplished its mission,” and that the crash was an accident, “probably” caused by an “attack of vertigo.” It attributed the abnormal radar behavior to unusual “atmospheric conditions” and deemed the inability to recover wreckage as understandable, given the deep water.
Meanwhile, investigators from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) discovered that any mention of the mission had been expunged from official records. And the Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center’s official line on the case was: “There is no record in the Air Force files of sighting at Kinross AFB on 23 November 1953… There is no case in the files which even closely parallels these circumstances.”
In the absence of a thorough and satisfying official explanation, “civilian saucer groups,” as Project Blue Book would call them, developed their own theories. According to one, the jet had crashed into the UFO’s protective beam like a “concrete wall.” Others speculated that the jet may have been “scooped” out of the air and taken aboard the spacecraft—perhaps so the captured men could teach their alien captors the English language.
In 1968, there were local newspaper reports of military jet fragments discovered near the shore of Lake Superior, but the find was never verified.
In 2006, Adam Jiminez, claiming to be a representative of the Great Lakes Dive Company, corresponded with UFO bloggers and members of the UFO community. He claimed that not only had an airplane wreck been discovered in the area, but a metallic object resembling a chunk of a flying saucer as well.
UFO researchers soon exposed inaccuracies in Jimenez’s story, and concluded that the Great Lakes Dive Company did not exist. Eventually, Adam Jimenez, too, vanished without a trace.
Now that the navy has confirmed that these UFOs recorded by its pilots are “real”
The spokesperson for the United States navy’s deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, Joseph Gradisher, has confirmed to Time magazine that the videos recorded by its pilots showing a series of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and released to the public are, in fact, real.
These videos, which show what the navy prefers to refer to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, were sourced from the US department of defence, and were initially reported on in the New York Times in December 2017 as being part of the department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme, which monitored and documented UFO activities from 2007 to 2012. The programme was funded by the Senate to the tune of $22-million a year, which means that taxpayers’ contributions were used to fund it.
This is the first time that an identified current official from the US government has publicly acknowledged that the videos — which started being released in 2017, with more following in 2018 — are officially genuine recordings of UFOs conducting manoeuvres that are not possible by human pilots, as seen by US navy pilots in the course of the flight missions. However, the navy has declined to comment on “who” could be piloting these aircraft.
It appears that there is now a concerted campaign by a certain section of the US government to roll out a partial and gradual “official disclosure” process, designed to begin to release previously classified information to the wider public. If a partial disclosure is indeed under way, then the logical inference is that there has also been a deliberate programme of “official denial” with regards to UFOs that we can surmise has been operational since at least the initial debunking of the 1947 “Roswell” flying saucer incident, which was widely reported in the media. In 1972, the US defence department conducted a series of investigations into the regular sightings that were being reported across the country, which were ultimately compiled into a report titled Project Blue Book — now converted into a popular television series.
Now that the navy has confirmed that these UFOs recorded by its pilots are “real”, it suggests that the countries of the world collectively need to begin to articulate how they plan to engage with them in the event that an initial public contact event takes place. As the situation stands, the United Nations does not have a protocol to engage with interstellar aerial craft that traverse the Earth’s atmosphere at will. There is a designated UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), based in Vienna, Austria, which was established following the adoption of a Treaty on Principle Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies.
Unoosa’s mandate is to promote “international co-operation for the peaceful uses of outer space” and to undertake research and training on the use of space science and technology to advance the social, economic and developmental initiatives on the planet. However, it does not have a programme or unit specifically dedicated to engaging with interstellar aircraft that are not human in origin, and that traverse Earth’s atmosphere and its immediate space vicinity.
Unoosa has listed the South African Space Agency (Sansa) as one of its partners. The agency is based in Pretoria, and was established in 2010 with a mandate to “promote the use of space and strengthen cooperation in space-related activities”. Sansa also states that its mission is “to lead and inspire the South African space community to create a better future”, and it pursues this through four programme areas: Earth observation; space engineering; space operations and space science.
However, despite the existence of these space-oriented international and national institutions, there are no programmes or projects designed to address the inevitable question of how humanity will engage and interact with prospective interstellar visitors from within or beyond our solar system and galaxy. If the US navy’s confirmation of the reality of UFOs leads to a prospective “first contact” scenario, humanity will be confronted by a whole range of questions, which it lacks an institutional framework to begin to address. This is a major and serious oversight in terms of forward planning and preparing the policy, scientific and societal constituencies to engage with potential interstellar aviators.
This year, the US government will formally operationalise its so-called Space Force within the defence department, as an additional and separate branch of its military complex, which is tasked with confronting threats in space. Regrettably, this typically US response to militarise and securitise any prospective engagement with nonhuman interstellar aerial craft could precipitate a number of unforeseen challenges.
Some analysts have irreverently questioned whether the launch of the Space Force, is intended to fight “space pirates”. Perhaps the US Space Force is based on a fundamental knowledge of who is piloting these confirmed UFOs, with a view to establishing a counterforce to contain or repel a possible attack. However, this is speculation until we have additional data as to who exactly is operating these UFOs.
An important question from a sociological and cultural perspective, is why the media and citizens have not asked more questions about the UFO sightings, which the navy now confirms are “real”. There could be a number of reasons why the story has not gone viral, linked to the distrust that people have towards governments in general, notwithstanding their predisposition to believe anything that emerges from the authorities through a partial disclosure, despite the fact that it could be a global game-changing event.
In addition, people could be viewing this as a deliberate attempt to distract them from their everyday struggles, given the age of austerity that is depressing economies and societies around the world. An alternative reason could be that reality of the implications of the existence of extra-terrestrial civilisations is too onerous to contemplate for a human society that is still predominantly beguiled and ensnared by its dogmatic religious and ideological convictions, which distracts people from dealing with such otherworldly realities. The investigative, print and broadcast media have a moral responsibility to interrogate this question further because public resources have been, and are still being, used to track and monitor UFOs.
In terms of a framework to understand the emerging phenomenon, the distinguished theoretical physicist Professor Michio Kaku — based at the City University of New York and a co-founder of string field theory — notes in his most recent book, The Future of Humanity, that “there might be 20-billion Earth-sized planets orbiting a sun-like star in our galaxy alone”. Kaku suggests that we could analyse the atmospheres of these planets “for oxygen and water vapour, a sign of life, and listen for radio waves, which would signal the existence of an intelligent civilisation”.
Kaku delivered a keynote address at the most recent Ufology World Congress — held in Barcelona, Spain, in September last year — in which he elaborated on a classification of planets, into Type-1, Type-2 and Type-3 civilisations on the basis of their energy consumption and their ability to undertake interstellar travel. The classification of advanced civilisation was proposed by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. He suggested that a Type-1 civilisation is planetary, consuming all of the energy that falls on the planet from the sun, and is capable of space travel in the vicinity of the planet. A Type-2 civilisation is stellar, consuming all of energy of the planet plus all of the energy of emitted by its sun, and is capable of travel within the galaxy with the ability to reach about 100 nearby stars. A Type-3 civilisation is galactic, consuming the energy of billions of stars in its entire galaxy, and is capable of interstellar travel across the entire galaxy, with the ability to settle and build new civilisations. Kaku, notes that Earth is only approaching a Type-1 planetary civilisation, because we still primarily rely on “dead plants”, namely oil and gas, for our sources of energy.
According to Kaku’s presentation at the Ufology World Congress, based on the information that the US navy is now gradually releasing to wider society, the confirmed interstellar aircraft are most probably visiting Earth from Type-2 or Type-3 planetary civilisations. It is necessary for civilian institutions such as the Sansa and the Unoosa — working in tandem with citizen groups, which are already raising awareness across different communities around the world — to develop a protocol urgently to engage these prospective interstellar aviators, so that humanity is not caught off-guard in the event of an actual first contact scenario.
It is also incumbent on all of us to continue to raise awareness among our families, schools and places of work and worship to assist in the processing of the information and shifting our mindsets in terms of the now emerging reality of UFOs, and humanity’s place in the universe, as we enter the second decade of the 21st century.
Professor Tim Murithi is head of the Peacebuilding Interventions Programme at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, and editor of the Routledge Handbook of Africa’s International Relations. Follow him on Twitter @tmurithi12
Navy Admits It Has More Information/Video On The Nimitz UFO Encounter That They’re Not Sharing
Navy Admits It Has More Information/Video On The Nimitz UFO Encounter That They’re Not Sharing
JAZZ SHAW
There’s been an interesting, if not terribly informative development in the story of those UFOs encountered by the Nimitz aircraft carrier battle group back in 2004. As you may recall, there were three videos released over the past couple of years by the Navy through the efforts of To The Stars Academy (TTSA) showing encounters with bizarre flying objects exhibiting performance characteristics that defy much of our understanding of physics. One was from the Nimitz incident and the others were from a much later encounter involving the carrier Roosevelt. The videos were somewhat grainy and short in length. Many journalists have attempted to find out if more such videos exist, or at least if longer, clearer versions of the ones we’ve seen are available. All such requests were answered in the negative.
That is… until now. One researcher named Christian Lambright submitted a FOIA request to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) back in October looking for some very specific information along these lines. He finally received a response recently. The military didn’t supply him with any new videos or documents, but they did concede that they located other documents and another video that would be applicable to his request. They could not release them, however, because the documents were classified TOP SECRET and the video footage was SECRET. Their release, the Navy claims, could cause “grave damage” to national security. This information was published recently by Paul Dean. (Emphasis added)
Our review of our records and systems reveal that ONI has no releasable records related to your request. ONI has searched our records for responsive documents. We have discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET. A review of these materials indicates that are currently and appropriate Marked and Classified TOP SECRET under Executive Order 13526, and the Original Classification Authority has determined that the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States. Specifically, under Section 1.4, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory c), the Intelligence Activities of the United States, as well as the Sources and Methods that are being used to gather information in support of the National Security of the United States. In addition, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory e), Scientific and Technological Matters related to the National Security of the United States. For this reason, the materials are exempt from release under the (b) (1) Exemption for Classified Matters of National Defense. As a result these records may not be released and are being withheld.
We have also determined that ONI possesses a video classified SECRET that ONI is not the Original Classification Authority for. ONI has forwarded your request to Naval Air Systems Command to make a determination on releasability…”
We should immediately place these revelations in context, so let’s review a couple of important points.
Starting early last year, the Pentagon seemed to grow tired of fielding all of these questions about UFOs and started referring all journalistic inquiries to a single spokesperson, Susan Gough. This is an important point to make because we’ve heard testimony from several of the sailors from the Nimitz battle group who witnessed these events saying that they remembered seeing longer videos. However, when journalists asked the Pentagon about this, Ms. Gough informed us on multiple occasions that those three videos were the only ones they had and no longer or clearer versions existed.
Now ONI has gone on record stating that there is at least one additional video from the Nimitz encounter and it can’t be released because it’s classified SECRET. (They are reviewing that classification to see if it can be changed now so perhaps we’ll eventually see it.) So once again we have the Pentagon, through Ms. Gough, saying there are no more videos and we have ONI saying there is at least one more. Both of these things can not be simultaneously true. In other words, somebody is lying… again.
Who should we believe? We might able to apply a bit of a logic test to this situation and come up with a pretty good guess. One possibility is that someone at the Office of Naval Intelligence has decided to fabricate a fairy tale about nonexistent UFO video footage and send it out to researchers and journalists to… I don’t know. Gaslight them?
The other possibility is that when the Pentagon was asked about additional videos they lied to us. You may recall that I wrote a rather lengthy screed about a month ago about the Pentagon (and really most of the government) and their somewhat dubious relationship with the truth. This is the same Susan Gough who told us repeatedly for many months that the AATIP program was real and it investigated UAPs. (That’s their term for UFOs now.) Then on December 7th, she inexplicably put out a statement saying that AATIP had never had anything to do with UAPs. She also told us that TTSA’s Louis Elizondo was never in charge of or associated with AATIP (which may still be true) while numerous other sources claim that he ran the program and his name shows up on one of the only verifiable documents about AATIP associated with Harry Reid.
So I don’t know, sports fans. If we have to decide whether ONI is fibbing or the Pentagon is, which way are you leaning?
One additional thing to note here is that the response from ONI speaks of a set of briefing slides and a single video. But if you follow the link and look at Lambright’s FOIA request, you’ll note that it is structured very specifically to request information relating to UAP encounters happening in relation to the Nimitz battle group over a period from 10-16 November 2004. Having battled through the FOIA process myself on a number of occasions, I can assure you that the government never, ever gives up more than they have to under the law. Lambright apparently got exactly what he asked for, but nothing more.
To put it bluntly, ONI might be sitting on thousands of documents and as many videos. But if they originated from any time prior to November 10, 2004, or any date from November 17th of 2004 to the present, or if they happened anywhere else in the world but the Nimitz training exercise area, they would not include those items in the response.
What does that mean? Well, we’ve heard from the pilots involved in both the 2004 Nimitz encounter and the 2015 Roosevelt incident that they’ve been seeing these things “all the time.” This happens frequently enough to alarm some senior people in the military and they want answers. If that’s the case, do you really think they only managed to record three (or now possibly four) videos in the past sixteen years (at a minimum)? Unlikely in the extreme.
This is yet another example that’s turned up of the government feeding us bogus information on this subject and being caught. More than likely they have a mountain of evidence and they’re withholding it all. And they’re still lying about it. Mind you, this still doesn’t automatically mean that any of this has anything to do with extraterrestrials. For example, why was the slide presentation and the other video so classified? Perhaps that evidence might reveal some secret program of ours or the Russians or the Chinese demonstrating incredible technological advancements. You could understand how that might need to be classified. But without emptying the bag entirely, they should tell us whether it’s one or the other. And just as a favor… STOP. LYING. TO. US.
UFO sightings in North America jumped to nearly 6,000 in 2019
UFO sightings in North America jumped to nearly 6,000 in 2019
California, Florida and Washington top the rankings for most UFO sightings.
By IVAN PEREIRA
There was a rise in the number of North Americans who looked up into the sky in 2019 and found something that didn’t look like a bird or a plane.
The National UFO Reporting Center, which tracks calls and messages from people around the U.S. and Canada about strange sightings in the sky, reported that it received 5,971 sightings in 2019 -- a jump from 3,395 in 2018.
Peter Davenport, who runs the independent organization that's based in Davenport, Washington, said he couldn’t explain why more people called about seeing flashing white lights, fireballs, disc-shaped objects or other oddities in 2019.
"One of the mysteries of ufology is there is a fluctuation in the number of reports over the years," he told ABC News in a phone interview. "Some years it’s been low, but it’s gotten higher recently."
California led the country last year with the most number of UFO observations to the site: 485 in total, an increase of 182 sightings from 2018. Florida came in second with 385 sightings in 2019, which was 156 more reports than in 2018, according to UFO Reporting Center data.
Washington came in third with 222 reports last year, which represented an increase of 51 from 2018, according to the site.
Davenport’s site takes reports from callers and online submissions, many of which are anonymous, and lists them with as much detail as possible. For example, on April 15, a man and his girlfriend reported they saw a formation in the sky near Bakersfield, California.
"We witnessed 3 unidentified objects, one in middle being the larger escorted by two other smaller unidentified objects one to the left and one on the right having no lights and no sound and dark colored objects heading southeast traveling at an unknown speed and disappeared into the clouds beyond sight," the report said.
Davenport said he does not investigate any of the claims he collects and noted that some of the sightings may have been the same object that was seen by multiple people.
Rick Fienberg, a spokesman for the American Astronomical Society, emphasized that the "u" in UFO stands for unidentified, and many people are unaware of astronomical goings on in space on any given day. For instance, Jupiter and Venus were more visible to Earth last year and they can stand out in the night sky, according to Fienberg.
He also noted that Space X launched 180 new satellites into space last year, and those devices have lit up the night skies.
"If you’re not keeping up with the news and not familiar with the skyline, you might mistakenly see an unidentified flying object. It may be unidentified to you, but known to others," Fienberg said.
'It looks like a craft': UFO ball which 'interacted with the light' spotted in the skies of West Yorkshire
'It looks like a craft': UFO ball which 'interacted with the light' spotted in the skies of West Yorkshire
A blue-purple ball UFO which 'interacted with the light' was spotted in the skies of West Yorkshire by a concerned resident, a freedom of information request revealed.
The object was spotted after a resident was woken by a 'bright white light'.
The resident reported the sighting to police after filming video footage of the 'craft' "turning to her as she looked at it".
Weather conditions at the time were fine and it was not raining, the log states.
UFO spotting cc Adobe
The resident told police the UFO - which was spotted in Bradford in April 2018 - 'sounded like a helicopter'.
A police officer was not dispatched to the incident, the log confirmed.
Another caller in Bradford reported a 'triangle shaped red and blue' craft moving in the skies in August 2017.
The log states: "His friend stated it may have been a satellite but he does not think it is."
In August 2015, a Bradford resident also spotted an 'oblong shape with three flashing blue lights' moving exceptionally fast, according to the call log released by police.
194 UFO sightings reported in Wash. state last year
194 UFO sightings reported in Wash. state last year
Photo: MGN Online
DAVENPORT, Wash. - Some 194 UFO sightings were reported in Washington state last year - about one every 45 hours on average, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.
That's greater than the 160 observations reported in Washington in 2018, and reflects a worldwide upturn in sightings of "unidentified aerial phenomena," as the U.S. military now terms these reports.
The National UFO Reporting Center, based in Davenport, Wash., receives reports from all around the world, but says it makes no claims as to the validity of the information in any of these reports.
“Obvious hoaxes have been omitted, however most reports have been posted exactly as received in the author's own words," the center says. "We hope that this information will prove to be useful to the general public and the UFO community at large.”
The center reports that Washington state has the third-highest number of total sightings in its database, behind California (No. 1) and Florida (No. 2).
The reports from the Evergreen State are diverse. Many described triangular- or cigar-shaped objects, spheres, lights, disks, fireballs and even formations of multiple objects.
The reports came from all over the state at all times of the day and night. Some sightings lasted only two or three seconds while others continued for several minutes or, in rare cases, an hour or more.
Some excerpts from those reports:
March 24 nighttime sighting of pulsating orange light off the Washington coast at Ocean Shores: "I could see a particularly bright red pulsing light stationary towards the west over the ocean. I (awakened) my wife and I told her she has to see this. ... By the time she got up and was observing it it had doubled in magnitude. ... This was orange red and it began pulsing. We both were in amazement. ... After several minutes of it getting progressively brighter, all of a sudden it got very bright then completely just vanished. I am a retired school teacher and my wife a real estate agent and are rational people but this was as clear as it could be. We have not seen anything like it before over the ocean at night here at our beach home."
-Jan. 13 nighttime encounter with a "17- to 20-foot tall alien robot" at a large business campus in Federal Way: "I was sitting in my car while my dogs were out for a run. ... About 100 yards away, I saw colored lights high up in the trees. In that same glance I saw my dogs very rapidly, running back and forth while jumping and running repeatedly. ... I could tell it was something standing (that) I quickly concluded was some kind of machine or a robot. ... It had a large round red light in the center of its head. ... On the right side and a bit lower was round medium dark blue light. On the left side was a green light and a white/yellow light. ... The robot was taller than the trees. ... The robot was looking for something and it swayed gently from side to side with each step.
Feb. 28 sighting of a multi-colored triangle in Lakewood at about 4 a.m.: "I was outside with my dog (when I see) a light hovering behind the trees. ... It slowly starts moving out from the trees and its orange, blinking quickly. Suddenly once I had full view it started blinking a weird pattern of green and red, and moved to the east of me behind a building. Five minutes later ... I see a very bright light approaching me super slowly at tree top level, it flew right above me ... and it was a triangle. It had a red and green flashing light ... and it almost looked transparent, if all lights were off you wouldn't be able to see it. ... I've never seen anything like this before but I got a warm feeling from it, no fear. Welcome our visitors with love, don't be afraid."
May 18 daylight sighting by a couple of a black craft near Fife: "I turned my truck towards the south and we immediately spotted a black craft moving strangely. It was shaped like a cell phone, kind of rectangular. It was falling like a leaf, then shooting forward for a distance before coming to a stop and spinning. When it would shoot forward, it would move very fast and come to a stop without noticeably braking. Just an instant stop. It would then fall like a leaf again, swaying side to side and slowly dropping, before shooting forward again. While we were watching this, another object appeared. A silver sphere. ... I turned the corner, parked again and could not see either object again. I saw neither leave."
May 31 nighttime sighting of of an orange orb and a "human like greenish thing" in North Seattle: "I just witnessed a bright orange orb or ball across the street from 24th Ave. NW and 95th Ave. About 1:30 a.m. I walked out to have a cigarette, looked to my right, saw the orange light object at roof level and then as I watched, a streak of a grey/green human shape leaped into it from the side and then it vanished. I felt like something realized it was being watched so it stopped whatever it was doing. ... Anyway, it has me shaken up. I feel like I saw something, like a shooting or a kidnap, and I know that no one will believe me. Since I'm the only witness to this."
June 7 daytime sighting of a "shimmering wing shape" traveling at ultra-fast speed near Port Angeles: "I was standing on the back deck, with a beautiful, mostly sunny day. ... Something caught my eye, coming from the south, moving very fast! By my calculations, it traveled from directly over my house, to east of Victoria, B.C., in two seconds! Made a 90-degree turn and headed towards Whidbey Island. ... There seemed to be a shimmer around what looked like, a wing shape, with no fuselage visible. ... The leading edge of the wing appeared dark. Looked like a flying wing. And jet engine noise. The estimated distance traveled in two seconds was fifty miles!!!"
Aug. 13 sighting of an "ambient glowing cloud sky ghost" over Tacoma just after midnight: "As I was driving I kept an eye on it because it just seemed so out of place. ... What caught my eye is that it was changing shape, almost dancing in a very graceful way around the top of the moon. I’m not religious but I could say it looked like a huge angel. ... It wasn’t a solid “craft” or “vessel” of any sort but something that could be literally not of this physical world. ... I’m not on anything, I saw this completely sober. I’ve never seen anything like it. ... We really don’t know what’s going on up there."
Sept. 7 nighttime sighting of a circular object in the clouds that followed a husband and wife as they drove home near Rochester: "As I made the second curve, I almost wrecked the car! I caught sight of the craft just to the left of me and a bit ahead. ... You could see 6 white lights rotating in a pattern and 4 red lights that spun, then the white lights ran to the inside or center of the craft, made a star formation, then reversed direction and made a circle around the center star like light. ... As we parked, the craft stopped and hovered. ... There was no engine noise at all! ... We got the dogs out of the kennel ... they had been raising holy hell, and were frantic! ... As I walked up the road I looked and saw at least 25 rays of light pointing up to the sky, they were like spotlights and were bouncing all over the place! ... I am still shaken up, and just a bit afraid they will come back."
Oct. 2 sighting of a fleet of triangular craft by a father and son as they were seated around a campfire at night in the Port Orchard area: "The entire formation moved as one and traveled sideways. Each triangle appeared to be separate. There was nothing visible that connected them. ... There was no sound. It seemed to move with great speed. ... There were no lights we associate with aviation. The only light was a white-yellowish glow coming from each triangle."
Oct. 12 nighttime sighting of 25 to 30 white pulsating objects by a retired firefighter and his wife in University Place: "The objects seemed to rise into view from the north and proceed in a relatively quick manner to the south. The objects made no sound. ... Where we live is near Joint Base Lewis McChord and we are very familiar with the various aircraft that fly in the area skies. ... These objects were not rotary or fixed wing aircraft using the regular flight paths. ... This event lasted for about 10-12 minutes and consisted of approximately 25, to as high as 30 objects."
Nov. 30 nighttime sighting of a bright circular object emitting rays at about 2:20 a.m. over Redmond: "Woke up looking out window with open blinds. ... (Observed) very bright (appx 4x more than Venus) light emitting six to eleven rays. ... Woke up wife/partner. Asked her to stand up and report what was seen outside. Both (of us) viewed something never seen before. Both sober. Both viewed rays from object moving as if defying law of gravity. Only white in color. Only watched for appx 30 minutes."
View all the reports from Washington state here ...
View reports from other states and countries here ...
UFO encounters always skirt the realm of the fantastical and weird, always perplexing and begging for answers on whether they really happened or not. Often there is no real evidence, and we are left with mere stories with no discernible substance, free to swirl about in the limbo of speculation and debate. Yet, there are those cases that are well-documented, recorded, and which serve to be genuine enigmas that stand out among the rest. Truly one of the great UFO cases of recent memory revolves around a flight of an experienced crew, and which was fully verified by numerous sources at the time to firmly cement itself into UFO legend.
It was July of 1957, and a highly advanced RB-47H reconnaissance aircraft loaded with state-of-the-art electronic countermeasure equipment was preparing for a mission. The 6-man crew was highly experienced, consisting of seasoned pilot Lewis D. Chase, copilot James H. McCoid, and navigator Thomas H. Hanley, as well as monitors John J. Provenzano, Frank B. McClure, and Walter A. Tuchscherer. It was to be a routine training mission beginning at Forbes AFB in Topeka, Kansas, and flying out over Gulf of Mexico to perform navigation and enemy radar detection exercises before returning back across the south-central U.S., after which they were to be deployed to Germany. The crew was seasoned and tested, the aircraft cutting edge, with the most sophisticated electronic intelligence available, and when they took off in the early morning hours of July 17, 1957 in clear, calm, and cloudless weather there was no reason to think this would be anything other than a by-the-books, typical training exercise, but it was soon to prove to be anything but.
At approximately 4:00 AM, the first part of the mission had already been completed without incident, and the aircraft was making its way back over Gulfport, Mississippi, to continue its exercises when an anomalous airborne signal was picked up by McClure to the rear of the aircraft somewhere out over the Gulf of Mexico. It was first thought that this signal was coming from a ground radar installation due to the nature of its frequency, but it was soon determined that the signal was moving at a rather fast clip, indeed surpassing the plane’s 500 mph airspeed to circle around it to fade and then disappear out over Mississippi. At this point no visual confirmation had yet been made of the object, and indeed McClure made no mention of it at the time, thinking it must have been due to a glitch.
In the meantime, the rest of the crew was oblivious to the whole strange incident, and the aircraft continued on its course over Jackson, Mississippi, where they were due to engage in a series of simulated war exercises against Air Force ground radar units stationed there. Things went smoothly until over Winnsboro, Louisiana pilot Lewis Chase noticed a rather odd sight up ahead. He reported a bright light approaching at a very fast speed. He at first took this to be possibly from the landing lights of an airliner, but it soon became clear that there were no navigational lights, and that the object was a singular very bright bluish-white light moving toward them at a dangerously high speed, and was described as being as big as a house. Alarmed, Chase warned the crew to prepare for evasive maneuvers, but before they even had time to get ready the light had sped by them in a flash and vanished. At this time only the pilot and copilot had actually visually seen the anomaly, and they described it to the rest of the crew even as they reconfigured their equipment to try and pick up whatever it was. McClure at this point came clean about his own odd experience, and they managed to pick up the signal again on several pieces of equipment, showing that this was no glitch, this time seeming to be keeping perfect speed with the RB-47H, and it was agreed that this was not from any ground based radar or normal aircraft.
Throughout all of this the pilot radioed it in and found that ground radar at the Carswell Air Force Base Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) station was also picking up an unexplainable signature of something up there with them, and he asked for permission to approach the mysterious object, which was granted. However, as soon as the RB-47H moved in to intercept, the signal rapidly dropped over 20,000 feet in altitude almost instantaneously, beyond what any known aircraft was capable of. The mysterious object would then toy with the plane for over an hour, elusively evading them for over 600 miles, all while ground radar registered it and it emitted a powerful radar signal of its own. It was seen to change directions suddenly, speed up, slow down, and rise or dip far beyond what any known aircraft was capable of, as well as intermittently “winking out,” during which time it would be invisible to both ground radar at several locations and the plane’s instruments, before appearing again as if from nowhere. It also was starting to take on the appearance of a bright red light, and this was all very unsettling for the crew.
Low on fuel by this point, the RB-47H was forced to stop trying to engage the object and headed north into Oklahoma to land. The mysterious object showed up on their readings all the way up to Oklahoma City, before fading away, this time for good. In Edward U. Condon’s 1969 book Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, he would report that shortly after landing “electronic counter-measures, graphic data, and radar scope pictures which had been taken during the flight were removed from the plane by Intelligence personnel,” the crew was interrogated heavily, and the whole thing was kept very hush hush, with a “security lid” placed over the incident. Indeed, the case of the RB-47H would remain classified for years, and it was only with its declassification that it ever got out into the wild to be discussed and debated by the UFO community.
In the end it is all a rather harrowing encounter that is notable for the fact that it was fully registered visually by the crew of the plane, picked up on the aircraft’s on board electronic detection devices, and also documented by ground based radar in several locations, which when taken with the experienced crew on board points to this being one of the most authentic and credible reports of a UFO and airplane encounter on record. Nevertheless, Project Bluebook would try to wave it off as a misidentification of a passenger airliners, which, considering all of the available evidence and what was seen and detected, is rather absurd. What was it that harassed that crew up there? Surely it could not have been any normal plane. Was this some sort of experimental aircraft or something else, and why should it deem this training flight to be the subject of its game? Although we may never know, the account of the RB-47H remains one of the best documented and genuine unexplainable UFO cases out there, and will probably hold that title for some time to come.
These four questions need to be answered in 2020 to solve the mystery of UFOs
These four questions need to be answered in 2020 to solve the mystery of UFOs
By Jasper Hamill, Science & Technology Reporter
You might not know it, but we’re currently living in a golden age of ufology.
In the 20th century, anyone who saw mysterious objects in the sky was dismissed as a crank or a fraudster.
But that changed almost exactly two years ago when a bombshell article published in the New York Times revealed the existence of a shadowy US government project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) which gathered information about ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAP).
This secret programme gathered information on at least three sightings of aircraft travelling at impossible speeds which were recorded by US airmen or military personnel.
In the most famous incident revealed during the uncovering of AATIP, two Navy pilots chased a ‘whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane’. This ‘Tic Tac’ UFO was observed off the coast of San Diego in 2004 and followed by two by jets launched from the USS Nimitz.
Since this report, details of the strange and almost unbelievable work carried out by AATIP has slowly leaked into the public domain. And in that time, Metro has worked closely with Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence UFO investigator, to cover all the revelations.
Now he’s set out four questions which need to be solved in order for us to solve the UFO mystery once and for all.
He told Metro: ‘We’ve recently passed the second anniversary of the New York Times story revealing the existence of the Pentagon’s AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) initiative, and in those last 2 years the UFO phenomenon has come out of the fringe and into the mainstream.
‘Expectations are high that 2020 will bring further bombshell revelations, but it’s difficult for the UFO community and the wider public to navigate this complex story. There’s information overload, with so much data that most people struggle to identify the parts of the story that are not just interesting, but important.
‘To help people focus on the key issues, I’ve used my insider knowledge of having run the UK government’s UFO project to identify four critical questions. The answers would clear up much of the confusion.’
Of course, it’s worth remembering that we have no official explanation of the sightings yet. The advanced aircraft could be experimental flying machines built secretly by the US Government or even one of its enemies. Last year, we uncovered a patent granted to the US Navy for an exoticaircraft which used ‘mass-reduction’ technology to reduce its mass and lessen inertia (an object’s resistance to motion) so it can zoom along at high velocities.
Although we don’t know if the patented tech was used in a real aircraft, the invention was so advanced that it resembled the anti-gravity mechanisms found in science fiction movies.
So what’s really going on in our skies? Here are the questions Nick Pope hopes to solve this year in order to crack the mystery once and for all.
1. What is the US Government’s current ‘best assessment’ of the objects depicted in the 3 US Navy videos?
‘Everyone has been asking the wrong question. People ask “what are the objects” and this opens the door to responses such as a previous statement from a spokesperson which said: “The Navy considers the phenomena contained/depicted in those three videos as unidentified.”
‘Fair enough, but we know President Trump and various Senators have been briefed on this and I know from my MoD experience as a briefer that you never go into such meetings with an assessment that goes no further than “we don’t know”.
‘That’s because even if that’s true, the follow-up question is: “Fine, but what’s your best current assessment?”
‘And when you’re dealing with senior political leadership, you simply must have something meaningful to offer, when that inevitable question is asked. The best assessment may be wrong – think of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – but there absolutely will be one!’
Nick Pope greets fans and supporters at an AlienCon event
2. What’s the truth about the ‘metamaterials’?
Early media reports about AATIP talked about buildings at Bigelow Aerospace – the company which got the AATIP contract from the DIA – being modified to store materials said to have recovered from UAP which are called metamaterials.
‘Just when this story was being dismissed with the suggestion that the debris was mainly material sent in by UFO witnesses and researchers over the years, Luis Elizondo stated that while some material did indeed come from the public, some came from “governmental sources”.
‘Additionally, it was revealed that the US Army had signed a research and development agreement with Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science – the non-profit group for whom Luis Elizondo and other key players in AATIP now work. This isn’t the first time that the military seemed to step in to keep the story going, just when things were dying down. That’s interesting, because it reverses the usual situation where the military tries to downplay or kill off UFO stories.
‘Isotopic ratio analysis and x-ray diffraction will be able to determine if any of these materials have been in space, or if there’s anything unusual about their structure. These tests are so obvious that they must already have been carried out. One would expect the US Army to know this and to know the results, so the fact that they’re still interested is potentially telling here.’
Navy Pilots Were Seeing UFOs on an Almost Daily Basis in 2014 and 2015.
(Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)
These pictures were taken by cockpit-cameras
(Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)
Pilots were shocked disbelief by what they saw
(Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)
3. Why is the Pentagon walking back on its earlier admission that AATIP investigated UAP?
Early official statements about AATIP described it as being a program to assess “far-term foreign advanced aerospace threats to United States” and added “including anomalous events (such as sightings of aerodynamic vehicles engaged in extreme manoeuvres, with unique phenomenology, reported by U.S. Navy pilots or other credible sources)”.
‘A May 2019 statement to New York Post journalist Steven Greenstreet from a US Navy spokesperson confirmed that AATIP “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena”.
‘However, in a recent statement to UFO researcher John Greenewald Jr., a Pentagon spokesperson stated that AATIP was not UAP related’.
‘This contradicts former DIA official and AATIP point man Luis Elizondo, who said “AATIP was a 100% UFO program”, as well as former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who set up AATIP. To further complicate matters, in January 2019 DIA’s Office of Corporate Communications released to me a copy of a DIA letter to Congress where they attached “a list of all products produced under the AATIP contract”, which included studies into anti-gravity, invisibility, stargates, warp drive, wormholes and the Drake Equation, the latter being a theoretical construct designed to estimate the number of other civilizations in our galaxy – clearly not something you’d need to know if the concern was Russian and Chinese aircraft.
‘Whether it’s the President or someone in Congress, someone needs to step in and sort out this mess, because at present we have one part of the government saying one thing, while another says something else. It’s farcical and it makes everyone look foolish.
4. What’s the status of Congressional interest in all this?
‘There’s been previous interest in AATIP and the US Navy encounters from several parts of Congress: the Armed Services Committee, the Intelligence Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. There have also been suggestions that the Space subcommittee and/or the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee should be involved.
‘However, the fact that Congress has two chambers – the Senate and the House of Representatives – complicates things. The public don’t know what committee or subcommittee – if any – has the current lead on all this, what documents have been generated by this Congressional activity and how much of this documentation will be releasable under the Freedom of Information Act.
‘It’s also not known whether or not this Congressional interest will evolve into formal hearings and, if so, whether these will be public hearings, or closed hearings, as may be the case if much of the information is highly classified.’
Since just before Christmas, armies of unidentified drones have been appearing each night in the skies above Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. The drones are approximately 6 feet wide and they have red and white lights, but nobody knows where they are from or who owns them. This is a story that is now receiving national attention, and the FBI, the FAA and the U.S. Air Force are all investigating this mystery. According to eyewitnesses, these drones can move “much faster than a regular aircraft”, and that would seem to indicate that they are highly sophisticated. So far, the U.S. military, every government agency that has been asked, and many of the major companies in the area have all denied operating the drones. Federal, state and local law enforcement officials have been doing all that they can to solve this mystery, but so far they have come up completely empty.
And even though these drones are now receiving so much attention, they just keep coming back night after night. According to one northern Colorado resident, when the drones come out it looks like “something from a movie”…
For the last week, Michelle Eckert has spotted a high-flying, night-time mystery above her rural northern Colorado home. She has seen drones, sometimes a dozen or more with wingspans 6 feet wide.
“The sky is lit up with Christmas lights basically,” she told CBS News. “There’s lights and things flying all over. It reminded me of something from a movie.”
Sometimes eyewitnesses just see one drone. In other cases, the drones are working in pairs. And in other instances, there are large groups of up to 30 drones working in very close coordination.
On Thursday night, a Denver Post reporter went out in search of these drones, and it wasn’t long before some of them were spotted…
As light turned to dark Thursday, stars appeared in the night sky. And soon after, so did drones. Around 6:10 p.m., a Denver Post reporter and photographer spotted two unmanned aircraft whizzing west above I-70, 8 miles outside Limon.
More drones could be seen outside Last Chance, a slight whir audible as they passed overhead. The aircraft flashed one red light and one white. Two other yellowish lights remained on throughout the flight. In 20 minutes, a half-dozen flying objects could be seen traversing over the barren wind farms.
The fact that there are so many of them and that they are operating over such a large area would seem to indicate that this is not the work of some rogue individual.
But at this point we don’t have any answers.
Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Nestor has been working on this case for quite a few days, and his county map is now “dotted with blue and yellow thumbtacks” because so many people have been reporting sightings…
Inside the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in Hugo on Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Tom Nestor and Capt. Yowell stared at a county map hanging in a narrow hallway.
It’s dotted with blue and yellow thumbtacks, depicting sightings from across the county of just under 5,500 people. There’s a series of tacks clustered around Interstate 70 in Limon, with a few scattered north and south of the interstate. Some people reported the drones flying in packs. Others saw solo flights.
Nestor immediately suspected that a local company may be doing some mapping, but that theory didn’t turn up anything. And other law enforcement officials in the region have come up empty as well…
Nestor said he has spoken to local oil companies and drone experts, learning information but getting no answers. Neighboring sheriffs have spoken to the military, which has denied involvement, he said. The Air Force, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the University of Colorado Boulder have told The Denver Post that they’re not flying the drones.
The FAA has gotten involved, and you would think that they should be able to get to the bottom of this, but they are just as puzzled as everyone else…
Already, the FAA has contacted test sites, drone companies and companies that have received authorization to operate drones in the affected areas. But the agency has not been able to determine who is flying the aircraft, spokesman Ian Gregor said in a statement Monday.
The FAA also asked area airports and pilots to report sightings or people they see operating the drones from the ground.
So far there is no evidence that these drones are malicious, but just a few days ago we received a reminder of how deadly they can potentially be. Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by a drone, and he probably never even knew that the attack was coming.
On Monday, dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement officials gathered in the town of Brush to talk about these drones. At the conclusion of the meeting, reporters were told that there is still “no explanation” for this mystery…
Mysterious drone sightings remains a mystery on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. Monday, more than 70 local, state and federal officials met in Brush to talk about findings and reports from the last couple of weeks.
Multiple law enforcement agencies, the FBI, United States Air Force and the FAA ended the meeting with no explanation of what the objects hovering over vast properties really are.
People living in Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas desperately want some answers, and now a similar sighting has been reported in Minnesota…
Drones were reported flying over Juniata and Hastings Sunday night. An operator has not been identified at this time.
Minneapolis Air Traffic Control contacted the Hastings Police Department with a report from an airplane pilot about the drones.
Air traffic control reported the drones were flying in a grid pattern around 9-10 p.m. Sunday, Police Capt. Mike Doremus said.
This sounds very similar to many of the other sightings, but nobody has been able to examine one of these drones up close yet, and so we still don’t know precisely what we are dealing with.
Hopefully this is just some relatively harmless top secret U.S. military program that the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about.
Because if these drones do not have a U.S. origin, then that opens up a completely different can of worms.
About the Author:
I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.
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.
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.
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.
CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 - Part II
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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
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).
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?"
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.
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.
“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.
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."
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 Sunhas 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.
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.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.