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02-04-2021 om 00:58 geschreven door peter  

UFO and secret alien base reports found in declassified U.S. Forest Service documents

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas 

The photograph was taken at about 2:30 pm on September 12, 2015.

It is hard to make out what exactly the object in the image is, but the USFS files did not include a high resolution image. Greenewald says he did inquire if higher resolution images were available, but they were not.

Without better images, this blob of light and shadows could be anything, and is likely a bird in flight. Often vacation photos with weird objects that were not noted at the time of their taking turn out to be birds or bugs that look strange in photographs once they are reviewed back home.

The USFS did not include their response to the UFO photog, or if they responded at all.

UFO Sighting at Yaak Air Force Station in Kootenai National Forest

Following the UFO photos letter and was a copy of an article regarding Yaak Air Base. According to the article, Yaak Air Base was in operation from April, 1952 to July, 1960, as part of a number of stations throughout the country that served as an early warning system during the cold war in case of a potential Russian attack. The base was near Yaak, Montana, in the Kootenai National Forest.

For our purposes, the most interesting paragraph in the article is the last, and in the file provided to Greenewald, is highlighted in yellow.

It reads:

The Yaak Radar Station also had its share of mystery, on Sept. 1 , 1952, Yaak, Montana. 4:45 a.m: Two USAF enlisted men, and three men using AN/FPS-3 radar set. Report visually sighting two small, varicolored lights becoming black silhouettes at dawn, and flying erratically for one hour. The crew at the radar station saw a, “dark, cigar shaped object,” right where the radar had the UFO pinpointed. What these people saw is a mystery to this day.

This is my favorite part of the USFA UFO files. Unfortunately, no further information is provided.

Alien Base Construction in Tonto National Forest

The most sensational claim in the files, and the one picked up by silly UK tabloids, is a report of a secret government installation being constructed that has something to do with aliens. The subject of the report is “Secret govt installation being built in the Salt River Canyon area on the TNF [Tonto National Forest].”

What is scary is that this is not far from my house. However, it does make it less scary for me that I do not believe an alien base was actually built there.

Here is a report regarding the call that was taken by David of the Forest Service on the morning of December 30, 2013 regarding UFOs, aliens and one detached head.

David received a call this morning at the front desk from a male caller reporting the construction of a secret government installation upstream from the Salt River Canyon past Pinal Creek (upstream from Roosevelt Lake). Aliens and at least one detached head are involved.

Caller claims to have seen construction cranes coming out the side of the cliffs, miniature stealth planes and UFOs, aliens and people working together at the site, aliens eating people. He found a severed head and claims to have pictures of some of this stuff.

Caller reported that he is 60, not crazy, and doesn’t do drugs. He said he had already called the “office at the lake,” but he didn’t know if those people were turning the other cheek or maybe those people have been paid off.

David had him leave a message with Bray.

Please let me know if t here are any Talking Points to be developed. I’m sure the Phoenix media will be all over this.

Thanks.

P.S. David and I aren’t doing drugs either.

The only other item in the files was a report in 2012 of a meteor or space junk that landed in George Washington & Jefferson National Forests and caused a fire. It was determined the fire was caused by a lightning strike. The report states, “Witnesses saw flaming space junk or satellite crash land in these mountains [Massanutten Range, Virginia] which may have caused the forest fire of last year: June 24, 2012, at around 1150PM Sunday.”

You can check out the files yourself at TheBlackVault.com.

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{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

16-11-2020 om 01:19 geschreven door peter  

How US Intelligence Community Insiders Got the Senate’s Attention Regarding UFOs

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas

When they couldn’t get credible data regarding UFOs in front of the Secretary of Defense, two intelligence insiders hatched a plan to get the world to pay attention and succeeded.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has requested that the Director of National Intelligence organize research into Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP – aka UFOs) and provide a public report on what has been done thus far. It is an extraordinary move that further legitimizes a topic that has historically been relegated to mythological stories like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. However, the public did not know that there were those in the US military and intelligence communities who took the issue seriously and wanted more to be done to figure out what those UFOs are.

“We have an intelligence community for a reason, partly to support our military, partly to avoid strategic surprise, and the intelligence community was failing on both counts,” former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon told OpenMinds.tv in a recent interview. “The intelligence community was completely unresponsive, completely dropping the ball. I mean, it could be Russian, it could be Chinese, it could be something else.”

Mellon served for ten years as a Staff Director of the SSCI. From 1998 to 1999, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations, and from 1999 to 2002, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

In a recent interview for a documentary called The Phenomenon, Mellon says his professional interest in the topic of UAP began with a request by astronaut Gordon Cooper.

Cooper was a part of the famed Mercury Seven, the first seven US astronauts to go into space. He claims to have had two UFO incidents. The first was in 1951. He claims his squadron of jet fighters chased a group of round objects that could stop mid-air and make instant 90 degree turns. He also claimed that in 1957 a crew he managed at Edwards Air Force base filmed a saucer-shaped object land on a dry lake bed and then take off again. He reviewed the film and reported it. The Air Force sent a courier to collect it. He never saw the film again.

According to Mellon, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Michael Cohen, tasked him to investigate the matter.

“Astronaut Cooper had spoken with the President,” Mellon says in The Phenomenon. “At a cabinet meeting, he raised this with Secretary Cohen, and then Cohen’s office called me and asked me to pursue this and chase it down.”

“The Air Force colonel that I spoke with got very frustrated, and when I asked him what happened to all of these records,” explained Mellon. “He said, ‘Well, that was all cleaned up or thrown out to save space.’ Something like that. It sounded ludicrous, but that’s what he told me.”

Mellon’s interest in the UFO topic was the focus of an article in The Huffington Post in May 2016 titled Is There a UFO Cover-up? A Government Insider Speaks Out. The article was written by Leslie Kean and was about Mellon joining a group of scientists interesting in developing a UFO monitoring system called UFODATA.

Kean was also one of The New York Times authors, along with Ralph Blumenthal and Helen Cooper, who broke the news in December 2017 that the Pentagon had run a secretive UFO program from 2007 to 2012 called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The article’s primary source was Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who claims he retired to get more attention to what he felt was important information regarding UFOs. He also claimed AATIP did not end in 2012 and that it continues to this day.

Along with Elizondo’s claims, The New York Times article also included two videos allegedly showing infrared camera footage from F-18 fighter jets of unidentified aerial phenomenon. Although Elizondo was the one who got those videos cleared for release, he has maintained he was not the source of the videos for The New York Times.

As featured in a recent Vice article, and covered by blogger Danny Silva, in a sneak peek clip for The Phenomenon (seen below), Mellon admits he was the source for the videos. He claims, “I received the videos, the now-famous videos in the Pentagon parking lot from a Defense Department official. I still have the packaging.” 

“This is a case where somebody bent the rules a little bit, and they did so for the larger good, and we’re absolutely all better off because of it,” Mellon continued.

Mellon says he was never a part of AATIP. In our OpenMinds.tv interview, he revealed that he believed it was some time in 2017 that he discovered AATIP’s existence. Although he did not say how he came to be aware of AATIP, Mellon says he was surprised when he found it.

“I was surprised because I was involved in, I had my hand in pretty much all the spooky stuff when I was there,” says Mellon. “There didn’t seem to be anything going on in this particular topic. And it was something that I had always been interested in. So, I was surprised to see they had anything organized at all.”

Mellon quickly offered his support to Elizondo, who was trying to get his findings regarding UAP encounters, such as the Nimitz Strike Carrier Group encounter featured in The New York Times article, to the Secretary of Defense. 

“What motivated me to a great degree, and Lou, I was outraged, just outraged, that these military pilots were not getting more support,” explained Mellon. “As a member of the intelligence community and somebody who cares about national security, I was appalled and determined to see if I could do something to help fix that problem.”

The problem was that the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) did not want to escalate the issue.

“People were still afraid to touch it and afraid to let the secretary even be exposed to the issue,” says Mellon. “They were afraid that even a mere briefing for him would somehow taint him or compromise is his Sterling reputation.”

“What I tried to do was introduce Lou to some very senior people in the department that I knew that I had connections to who were very close to the secretary of defense,” Mellon recounted. “I tried to help him. They worked through the system first, and some meetings were held, and more briefings were held and so forth, but ultimately they proved impossible to get this in front of the secretary. “

This was the point at which Mellon and Elizondo began to consider more drastic measures.

“When that didn’t pan out, ultimately, Lue faced the choice between essentially, living with an inadequate program or throwing in the towel or going public to try to inform the public and Congress and help make something happen.”

Resigning and going public was the route Elizondo chose. But before leaving, Elizondo and Mellon hatched their plan.

“We had a strategy from the outset and a plan before he even left,” said Mellon. “We discussed what that would look like, and we’ve been executing on that ever since.” 

Elizondo and Mellon began to approach journalists with their UFO videos, documents, and data. In an interview on Open Minds UFO Radio, Politico’s Bryan Bender says he was approached in the middle of 2017 and was able to confirm AATIP’s existence with his sources “on the hill.”

In a separate Open Minds UFO Radio interview, Kean says she was invited to a meeting with Elizondo held on October 4, 2017, “arranged by some of Elizondo’s colleagues” who knew her.

“I went down and went to Washington, and we spent three or four hours together,” says Kean. “I was shown the videos that were eventually released with our story. And just given, you know, told all about Harry Reid, was shown documents about Harry Reid’s involvement and just the story was kind of laid out for me at this meeting.”

“I realized at that point that it was a New York Times level story, given the documentation that was available for the program and for the people involved and everything else,” Kean continued. “And so that’s how it all started.”

While Kean and Bender worked on developing their AATIP stories, the world was introduced to Elizondo on October 10, 2017, with the launch of Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (originally TTS/AAS, now referred to as TTSA). The announcement was launched with Kean’s article in The Huffington Post titled Inside Knowledge About Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Could Lead To World-Changing Technology. TTSA also held a press conference hosted by DeLonge featuring members of the team, including Elizondo and Mellon.

“I was especially curious to meet Luis Elizondo because he ran a program at the DOD involving the study of anomalous aerial threats,” Kean wrote in the article. “Luis had resigned this position literally the day before we met.”

DeLonge received the most press regarding the launch of TTSA, but no one seemed to take notice of the guy who claimed he ran a UFO program despite the government telling us for decades they had no interest in the topic.

Then, on December 16, 2017, The New York Times and Politico published their articles on AATIP, and the story went global. Elizondo, Mellon, DeLonge, and witnesses to the Nimitz UFO encounter, including jet fighter pilot and wing commander David Fravor, were inundated with interview requests throughout 2018. On March 9, 2019, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Mellon titled The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care? In 2019, it was announced TTSA and AATIP would be featured in a History Channel program called Unidentified.

But a significant milestone came for Elizondo and Mellon when the Navy admitted they took UFOs seriously and announced new guidelines for reporting them. The story was broke by Bender for Politico in an article titled US Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs.

“Since our show Unidentified started, since The New York Times article appeared, my op-ed in The Washington Post with another video and so forth, that first of all, engaged the Navy and required the Navy to own up to the fact that this was real,” says Mellon. “They couldn’t any longer deny it. When they had active-duty pilots and others going on the record, that also then led to the briefings for Congress.”

An article by Bender regarding Senate briefings on UFOs was published in June 2019, titled Senators get classified briefing on UFO sightings. Unidentified featured Elizondo and Mellon taking witnesses to Washington D.C. for briefings.

Mellon’s op-ed suggested, “Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability.”

TTSA posted suggested verbiage for such an effort, and their ideas did not go unnoticed. The Senate took action.

Bender broke this story on June 23, 2020, in an article titled Senators want the public to see the government’s UFO reports. It was a tweet by Steve McDaniel, founder and lead software developer of Sky Hub, who discovered the SSCI UAP request in an SSCI exploratory committee report, that alerted blogger Danny Silva to the matter. He wrote a blog that caught Bender’s attention, and Bender informed the world.

“Ultimately, this reporting requirement is a recognition that there is something going on with national security ramifications,” says Mellon. “It’s a forcing function that hopefully will force the executive branch to get its act together and pool all the intelligence, regardless of which stovepipe it’s in, which organization has it, and establishes some accountability and forces them to take a position in black and white, as opposed to just giving some briefings.”

In less than three years, Mellon and Elizondo’s strategy has resulted in the US government admitting they take UAP seriously, reversing their decades-long denials of the fact, and the Senate Intelligence committee taking notice asking for more information.

“It’s a tremendous step forward,” said Mellon. “Regardless of what the phenomenon turns out to be in the end. At least now we can have some faith that a serious effort is going to be made to hold and analyze the data, probably implement a new collection strategy… So it has a lot of potential ramifications, all of them positive.”

The news has been ablaze with UFO headlines, and behind all of this was the hidden hands of TTSA’s Mellon and Elizondo.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that that report requirement would not be in there, wouldn’t exist if we had not been engaged in bringing witnesses forward and advocating this and writing about it and so forth,” explains Mellon. “Also, this is my old committee. I worked on that community for over a decade. I still know people on the hill, so there are some people there who are still there from when I served. And, because we worked together and are friends and I don’t abuse the privilege, they were willing to take my calls and listen to what we had to say. And so, I think it wouldn’t have happened without us.”

It’s hard to argue with that point of view. But Mellon also claims that all he did was get the information into the SSCI’s hands. They took it upon themselves to determine whether the data they were presented with warranted further action.

“It was largely just because the senators and staffers have been kept in the dark,” says Mellon. “Once they got the information, I think that sort of naturally led them to a place where they recognize that they need to get more information. There’s some important unanswered questions here.”

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{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

02-11-2020 om 01:24 geschreven door peter  

Alleged UFO photos over China Lake analyzed

Posted by: Philip Mantle

In October 2017 a curious post appeared on the facebook page of ‘Art Bell’s Midnight In The Desert Feat Heather Wade’. It showed an apparent daylight scene of a ‘UFO’ in the desert with a helicopter hovering overhead. The text to accompany the photo read: “I’ve been holding on to these pictures for 10 years and it’s time I showed someone. I took pictures of this thing in July 2007 on out radar test range in the Mojave Desert. I’ve always been nervous to show anyone but here you go.”

My curiosity peeked I dropped the post of this message whom I shall call Keith Bradshaw (real name on file) a note in a private message asking for more details. Checking the next day the post had been removed but Keith did reply to my private message. Keith made it clear from the beginning that he was worried about releasing these photos as they had been taken illegally and he regretted posting one of them on facebook. It did however tell me that there were taken at China Lake in California at about 11.30 am.

Over the next several days Keith and I exchanged numerous private messages on facebook and he eventually told be the back story behind the taking of the photos in question. He also sent me five photographs in total. Here is what Keith had to say:

KEITH’S STORY

I grew up in a town called Ridgecrest which is a U.S. Naval base in the Mojave Desert. As a kid it was very easy to get onto the base and everyone in town had passes that would allow you through the gates to get to school, swimming pools, the movie theatre etc. Everyone knew someone who worked on the base so you would get to know where the different parts of the base were. They had the bombing range and the radar range. I grew up with a kid who after High School joined the Navy. After he retired he moved back to town and got a job working in the civil service on the base monitoring radar. He said it was the world’s most boring job but he did tell me about interesting things that went on out there. Things like them having jeeps and tanks scattered all over the desert and then flipping a switch and they all would disappear. Turns out that’s what fiber optic camouflage does. People would talk about unbelievable things that turned out to be true. Planes would come from all over the world to use the radar test range out there. I have pictures of that too. Planes with markings from other countries. While I was in between jobs in 2007 I went back to town to visit some of my old friends.

While I was in town I stopped by this friend’s house and after a few drinks he started telling me how that week he had been monitoring a flying saucer. When I asked him how he knew that’s what it was he told me- first of all, in all the years he had been doing that job he never had two generals and three other men with top security clearance recording and watching everything he did. He explained how it was very simple. There were two signals on the radar screen. One would appear very low in altitude, go up to a certain higher altitude and then click off. There would be a countdown for a certain amount of time- five; four, three, two, one and then it would click back on. When this happened the first time the people in the room got very excited. The object on his screen would lower in altitude until it was no longer on the radar, move to a different position and repeat the same thing over and over at different altitudes. All the while the other signal on the radar screen would remain constant.

Curious as to what it was he was monitoring he asked around. People that he knew who physically worked on the radar range and would see what was out there told him that believe it or not it was a flying saucer. They described it as being shiny like a mirror and smooth like glass all over inside and out. It had no doors or windows only a hole cut in the top (I got the idea that the hole had jagged edges like it was cut with something) they described the inside as only having three small seats surrounded by a bird nest of fiber optic cable. The seats were molded out of the floor rather than attached to the floor. This thing was one piece with no seams anywhere.

Keep in mind that description is just a rumour as to what it was like. He didn’t actually see it himself he was just told that’s what it was. Being in between jobs and having nothing to do the next day I made my way out there. ( I’m not telling you how I was able to get there but I will say I walked a very long distance) as I got closer I could hear a helicopter so I peeked up over a hill and down in the small valley below sure enough I could see this silver disc out there. There were a few tan-colored trailers and other military vehicles on the North End of the valley. This thing would wobble along close to the ground very unstable. I don’t believe anyone could have been riding on the inside but got the idea that helicopter was remotely controlling it.

It was very wobbly as it moved along close to the ground and then it would freeze in position, go up to a certain height and sit there for a few minutes perfectly still. It made no noise that I could hear over the helicopter. It would go back down and wobble to the next position. It looked like whoever was controlling it was having fun with it sometimes because they would do little tricks with it.

Like one edge would be pointing towards the sky and then it would do a U-shaped flip to where the other edge was pointing towards the sky then back down and wobble along the valley floor close to the ground to its next position.

At first I was too afraid to take any pictures but then it got really close to me so I started snapping some photos figuring that if I was going to be caught I might as well have some pictures. I also took a short video but then to save space on my camera I started deleting the blurry pictures. I spent maybe 10 minutes total watching this thing. I then turned around and got out of there as quickly as I could. I took my shirt off thinking the color of my skin would blend in with my surroundings better than the color of my white shirt. About halfway back I got scared and hid the camera in the desert.

That night I went back over to my friend’s house and when I told him what I had done he laughed in disbelief until I told him the path this thing followed from the North-West side of the valley to the South-East. When he realized I was telling the truth he got very angry and threw a plastic cup at me. He basically chased me out of the house telling me never to go get those pictures. I let them sit there for two days and then went back and got the camera. When I looked at the pictures there was no video and I realized that what I thought was a blurry picture was actually a blurry video that I deleted. I still kick myself for that one every time I think about it. A few years later I went back to town and ran into him at Walmart and he pretended he didn’t even know me. This is someone that I have known my whole life. We went to school together and played on the same Little League baseball teams.

I’ve been holding on to these pictures ever since. That is all there is. Sorry it’s not more exciting. I really don’t know how you would write an article about it. “

KEITH’S ALLEGED UFO PHOTOGRAPHS

Well, an interesting story and interesting set of alleged UFO photographs. Of course you cannot just take the photographers word for it that the photographs are what he says they are. With this in mind I sought out a number of people who could undertake analysis of these photographs. The first was Jason Gleaves in the UK and this is his full and unedited report with comes complete with five computer photographs highlighting the points in his report.

ANALYSIS IMAGE REPORT BY JASON GLEAVES

Metallic Disk Shaped Object Captured Near the U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake, California, U.S.

I was asked by Philip Mantle if I could conduct my own analysis on five interesting UFO images captured of a Disk Shaped Object (metallic in appearance) which appeared to be stationary appropriately 50-60 feet above a desert environment (location unknown at this point). Also in another image a helicopter (HH-1K Iroquois, helicopter (“Huey”) is also captured in flight above the right side of the object and appears to be passing slightly behind (speed unknown).

First appearance the images looked authentic but with technology of today and software (photoshop etc) you really can’t rely on image authenticity, no matter how good it looks.

More detailed enlarged and enhanced images of the metallic object appear to show sunlight and consistent reflections on the body of the object, plus in one of the images a dark oval shadow is clearly seen directly below the object again consistent where a shadow would be (without actually seeing where the Sun location/position is in relation to the object, it’s always difficult to give a more accurate Sun-object-Shadow location). I also produced a twin layer image overlay of two separate images (taken from approximately the same position/location) to see if the object had moved from its original position, I aligned the two images, to the best of my ability with similar reference points (background mountain range and cloud formation, horizon). Upon viewing the final enhancement of the overlay the Disk Shaped Object is clearly seen in two different positions, both at slightly different altitudes and one further away in relation to the other regarding their relevant positions within the two separate photographs.

A few days passed and a more detailed report and witness statement emerged giving the sighting location as (U.S. Marine Corps Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, U.S.) this is also consistent as to the type of military helicopters reported and documented being operational in that region, and similar to the Helicopter captured in the images.

Analysis by Jason Gleaves @Ufonly (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Ufonly YouTube) I am Ex-Royal Air Force, BAE Airbus division, I contribute on numerous UFO pages and have carried out Photo/image/video footage analysis on UFO’s and anomalies for many ufologists within our community worldwide.

ANALYSIS BY DR BRUCE MACCABEE

Another and perhaps more well known expert in the analysis of alleged UFO photographs is Dr Bruce Maccabee in the USA. Bruce is well known for his work on analyzing alleged UFO photographs. Dr Maccabee received a B.S. in physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., and then at American University, Washington, DC, (M.S. and Ph.D. in physics). In 1972 he began his career at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White Oak, Silver Spring, Maryland; which later became the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. Dr. Maccabee retired from government service in 2008. He has worked on optical data processing, generation of underwater sound with lasers and various aspects of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) and Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) using high power lasers.

ANALYSIS/DISCUSSION

My immediate impression was that the orientations of the main rotor and tail rotor blades were very much the same. What would the chance of getting the same orientation in two pictures probably many seconds to minutes apart? See the pictures A and B below. Using the position change of distant land features I estimate that the camera pointing direction has rotated to the right by about 9 degrees (based on an assumed angular picture width of 35 degrees). The UFO has also moved to the right about 7 degrees and the helicopter moved about 11 degrees to the right. The helicopter image in B is nearly the same as in B, but the pictures are not identical.

PICTURE A

PICTURE B

The helicopter is about 10% farther from the camera in B and there is a helicopter body rotation to the left of some (10 or so?) degrees.

The lack of blur of the main rotor blades plus the nearly identical rotor blade orientation suggests a hoax with a model helicopter. The nearly identical position of the tail rotor blades also suggests a hoax but the blur of the tail rotor blades argues against a hoax unless one used a model with a rotating tail rotor. Note that the blur width of the edges of the tail rotor increases in going from the center (axle) outward to the end. This is exactly what one would expect of a rotating blade and is exactly what appears to be missing from the images of the main rotor blades.

PICTURE C

A “fast shutter” (very short exposure time) can “stop” a moving object so that it moves very little during the exposure time. Therefore, if one could establish that the exposure time was short enough to effectively “stop” the motion of the main rotor while not being fast enough to “stop” a much faster tail rotor, one could explain this situation. How fast would the shutter have to be? That depends upon the rotor rate and radius (distance of the end from the axle). Consider, for example, a rotor rate of 360 revolutions per minute or 6/sec, The outer end of the rotor travels at 6 x 2 pi radians per second = 37.7 radians/sec. Assume a radius of 15 ft. The outer end of a blade is traveling at 37.7 x 15 = 565 ft/second = 6,786 inches/sec. Assume the blade is 1 ft wide at the outer end. To avoid noticeable motion blur the blade should move less than 1/10 its width or less than about 1 inch during the shutter time. So, what is this shutter time needed to register the image of the blade without noticeable blur? The answer is (1/6786 sec/inch) x 1 inch = 0.000147 seconds, much faster than any typical video camera shutter.

This analysis raises questions: (1) the near identically of the image of the helicopter in two separated-in-time frames suggests a “set up” (hoax)’; (2) the lack of blade image smear suggests very fast shutter or hoax; (3) the tail rotor blur suggests real event because difficult to hoax the blur that increases with distance from the center; There appears to be a faint slightly dark shadow under the UFO in Picture A which is not in Picture B (consistent with real) and there is only the barest hint of a shadow under the UFO in Picture B that is not there in Picture A (consistent with real.

Need to know camera type, settings etc. This might be a real event, but have to explain helicopter imagery

After spending some time analyzing the available testimonial and pictoral evidence and considering the actions or activities of the object in question I conclude that there is not enough evidence to prove that the object was not simply an unusually shaped drone operating under control of the person(s) flying the helicopter.

ANALYSIS FROM TOBIAS LINDGREN

Tobias Lindgren

FIRST ANALYSIS

Now I have analyzed the pictures.

First I want to say that I have doubts if the object is really physical. It can be computer generated. As well as lack of basic data such as picture metadata, observation site, time, date, cardinal direction, and duration. If the unidentified object is physical, the following applies:

Roughly calculated distances in the picture. The references there are is the helicopter and the shrubs in the foreground. The helicopter is a Bell UH-1Y Venom, which is 17.8 meters long. The shrubs in the desert are about one meter high.

With these measures I can find out that the helicopter is about 20 times farther away from the photographer than the shrub. If the object is at the same distance as the helicopter, it has a diameter of about 6 meters and 12 meters if it is twice as far as the helicopter, but to me it is not likely. Accordingly I estimate the object was very close to the camera at the time the picture was taken.

If the object is at the same distance as the first bush, it is about 20 cm, but my assumption is that it is closer than that, less than half the distance from the camera to the shrubs, and then it will be less than 10 cm in diameter. The object’s reflected color on the underside shows only sand and ground colours, which is only to be seen between the bushes and the camera, no green from the vegetation. Same effect in the first picture without the helicopter. The dark spot on the ground, which my brain interprets as a shadow from the object, and the object itself is merely an unfortunate coincidence and has no relation, but creates the illusion of a long distance. The real shadows are aimed at the sun, and hard to spot.

However, the most crucial fact for the object to be placed close to the camera is the big sunflower / highlight that is on the object. The size of such is proportional to the distance.

Conclusion: High hoax factor. No obvious connection with the China Lake Naval Base, except for a similar environment. ”Photoshop” or physical object less than 10 cm. Such a small object could be a toy.

SECOND ANALYSIS

Hi.

The reason for the late answer is that we have just had our annual field investigation course in UFO-Sweden. It takes all of our time in October. Strange and interesting story, I have to say. Here we also see the risk of not having all the information.

It may be easy to believe that the previous analysis was poor and insufficient, but with the information available, the result will of course will come afterwards. What makes a person get so scared that you hide the pictures for ten years? No, I do not think the military is so stupid that they fly in an open space with a “flying saucer” if they want to keep it secret. It may be the total opposite instead which is to draw attention. But it may be to be all very conspiratory. Visually, I still think it does not feel right. The object (UFO) is blurry in a way that the rest of the pictures are not, and that tells me that something is not what it seems. It can still be, as I said before, that the object is so close to the camera that it is out of focus. Had the object been out of focus because of the distance, it should get something like a bit transparent due to atmospheric depth haze in the atmosphere.

I still have no idea what the object could be. Perhaps it might be a radio-controlled “toy” that the military testing, just as written in the witnesses story. The military obviously knows what it is because it’s no coincidence that it looks like it does, if it is not computer-generated images. I draw parallels with a Swedish hoax that went viral on YouTube a few years ago: 

• http://www.ufo.se/index.php/news/home/1563-avsloejad-ufofilmen-som-skulle-lura-vaerlden

If this had happened in Sweden, UFO Sweden would have taken us to the location at “Ridgecrest” and knocked on all doors to look for more witnesses. In recent projects where we did this, it was found that 10 percent of all people had a story they did not mention before.

Regards

Tobias Lindgren

UFO-Sweden

Tobias Lindgren, UFO Sweden and AFU Board Member, born 1972, he lives in Norrköping, Sweden. His interest in UFO study began in the late 1970’s, but only became really active as an ufologist 10 years later. Had been the head of the UFO-Sweden Report Center from 2005 to 2015. In this position, he coordinated Swedish UFO investigations, distributing incoming cases among field investigators. He is now responsible for the UFO-Sweden website. He writes regularly for the “UFO-Aktuellt” Newspaper. He is UFO-Sweden’s image analyst. Tobias is also a skilled computer artist and combines his interests in illustration and computer engineering to illustrate the most recent cases very effectively. He has also studied computer science. mathematics and physics at Linköping University and more recently, visualization and geographic information systems. He is now employed as a GIS engineer at the Swedish Aviation Authority in Norrköping and works with flight information, airplanes and visualization.

As if that wasn’t enough yet more analysis was conducted in Brazil with the help of my colleague Thiago Luiz Ticchetti. The analysis was brief and to the point…

ANALYSIS FROM BRAZIL

We have already analyzed the photos. According to our specialists, unfortunately, they are fakes:

• The reflection of the sun in the object does not correspond with the position of the sun observed in the shade of the vegetation.
• The shadow of the object itself does not match the position of the sun
• The helicopter is real.
• All the images are without EXIF

Ricardo Varela: Researcher at the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), electronic engineer at the Federal University of Brasília, master and doctor in applied computing

Inajar Kurowski: Veterinary doctor, university professor, police officer and criminal expert of the Institute of Criminalistics of Paraná, with specialization in vehicular identification and forensic ballistics. He is also a postgraduate in science methodology and a master’s degree in environmental management. Administrator of specific courses in the area, he became a specialist in examining photos and films of flying saucers

SO WHAT ARE THESE PHOTOGRAPHS?

In an attempt to get to the bottom on these alleged UFO photographs the have been analysed by five different people from around the world. Jason Gleaves from the UK is of the opinion that they are the genuine article. Dr Bruce Maccabee from the USA is not sure whether they are fake or real and the same goes for Tobias Lingren in Sweden. And last but not least Ricardo Varela and Inajar Kurowski in Brazil left us in no doubt that they believe the photographs in question to be fake.

It is therefore my hope and intention that by releasing these photographs here that we may learn more about them. Perhaps other specialists will add their comments to those above or maybe someone will come forward who can offer testimony to either support the authenticity of the photographs or the opposite, show us that they are indeed fakes.

As yet the photographer does not want his identity revealing which is something I have honoured here but I do have his name on file. Perhaps the photographer will offer more information which will allow us to determine one way or the other the authenticity of the photographs. Until then I think it is only fair to say that the jury is still out. Are these photographs fake or genuine? We shall see.

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12-10-2020 om 20:40 geschreven door peter  

The Carter Administration’s Attempt to Create a NASA UFO Commission

Posted by: Antonio Huneeus

Forty-three years ago was the last time the U.S. government considered creating an official commission to investigate and report on UFOs. Despite Washington’s efforts to dissuade the public from any interest in UFOs through the 1969 issuance of the University of Colorado’s Condon Report, UFOs continued to appear. Eight years later, with President Jimmy Carter in office, his administration thought the time was right to officially request that NASA look into the phenomenon.

As put by a NASA scientist in a memo issued around the same time, however, “undertaking a formal [UFO] study at this time appears fraught with perils.” Needless to say, the commission was never finalized, and the 1977 deliberations between NASA, the White House, and other governmental agencies are an almost-forgotten episode in the official history of American ufology.

Jimmy Carter, UFO Witness

The inauguration of Jimmy Carter as the thirty-ninth President of the United States ushered a new round of expectations in the UFO community. After all, it could be said he was a member of that community. President Carter, who was a former Georgia governor, peanut farmer, and U.S. Navy nuclear engineer, not only claimed to have seen a UFO but officially reported it. In terms of UFO data, President Carter’s sighting is not an impressive incident, falling into the category of nocturnal light. The sighting would surely be forgotten if Carter had not become the president.

Steven Spielberg mentions Jimmy Carter potentially releasing UFO information in this video.

The first account of Carter’s sighting appeared in October 1973—during that year’s big UFO flap—when dispatches from Georgia quoted the governor’s first statement on UFOs: “I’ve seen one myself.” The story was picked up in the press, prompting the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in Maryland to send UFO questionnaires to the Georgia State Capitol. Carter personally filled out both questionnaires and gave permission to use his name as a witness. According to the questionnaires, the sighting occurred “shortly after dark” in October 1969 when Carter and ten other “members of Leary Georgia Lions Club” were “outdoors waiting for a meeting to begin at 7:30 p.m.” The sighting lasted between ten to twelve minutes and the object, located at “about 30 degrees above the horizon,” was described as “about the same size as the moon, maybe a little smaller, varied from brighter/larger than planet to apparent size of the moon.”

President Carter’s UFO story reemerged as he gained prominence during the 1976 presidential campaign. On June 8, the National Enquirer published a short interview with Carter in which he said, “I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one,” adding that “I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky.” In that interview, Carter also made an important promise to the American public: “If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.”

Ironically, the only ufologist to really investigate Carter’s sighting was skeptic Robert Sheaffer. The main clue was that Carter claimed to have seen the object while visiting the town of Leary to lecture at the local Lions Club. In his book, The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence, Sheaffer recounts that his effort to locate additional witnesses was difficult, but he was finally able to find one who remembered seeing, “like a blue light or something or other in the sky that night.”

However, Sheaffer soon discovered that there was a problem with the date given by Carter as the date of the sighting. Carter always said that in the sighting occurred in October 1969, but the Lions Club in Leary had disbanded in February of that year. Sheaffer eventually located the official records of the meeting at the Lions Club International Headquarters. The exact date of Carter’s speech in Leary was January 6, 1969, “nine months earlier than Mr. Carter’s recollection had placed it.” Furthermore, after computing the position of the planets for that date, Sheaffer discovered that “Venus was a conspicuous evening star, nearing its maximum brilliance. Venus was . . . at 7:15 PM, at about 25º elevation, in virtually the exact position where Carter had placed his UFO.”

The result of Sheaffer’s investigation was mostly ignored because it robbed the public of identifying the president as a witness to a genuine UFO. Yet, there is a high probability that what Carter saw could have been explained. The visual tricks that Venus can play in the eyes of the beholder have been known for decades by competent UFO investigators like Allan Hendry, who has characterized Venus as “the real champion” of the stars and planets that tend to cause UFO sightings.

The sighting, however, was only one aspect of President Carter’s link to ufology. The other was his campaign promise to release all the UFO data held by the government. Stanley Schneider, assistant to President Carter’s White House Science advisor Frank Press, later admitted to the New York Times that “public interest in this has been brewing for several months, slowly building up . . . It was getting to be more than we could handle.” In fact, so many letter about UFOs were sent to President Carter that Virginia ufologist Larry Bryant eventually published a book on the letters entitled, UFO Politics at the White House: Citizens Rally ‘Round Jimmy Carter’s Promise. One indicator of the campaign’s impact was revealed by U.S. News & World Report in its April 18, 1977 edition. Under the heading of “Official Word Coming on UFOs,” the magazine stated that “before the year is out, the Government—perhaps the President—is expected to make what is described as ‘unsettling disclosures’ about UFOs . . . based on information from the CIA.”

NASA’s UFO Past

In an attempt to achieve UFO disclosure, the White House had difficulty in developing a coherent policy, and thus, NASA became the logical candidate. Unlike the U.S. Air Force, NASA had never been officially involved in the UFO controversy, although a link between the two surfaced occasionally. Popular UFO articles, books, and movies often displayed UFO photos taken by NASA astronauts, but the great majority of these images were explained by prosaic phenomena such as lens flares, booster rockets, or items ejected from space capsules.

While NASA never officially investigated UFOs, it did produce a few UFO-related documents such as the Kennedy Space Center’s “NASA Management Instruction (KMI 8610.4)” of June 28, 1967, regarding “Processing Reports of Sightings of Space Vehicles Fragments.” The four-page-document signed by the space center’s director, Kurt H. Debus, contained procedures dealing primarily with manmade space vehicles, but KMI 8610.4 added that “reports of sightings of objects not related to space vehicles” were also included: “It is KSC policy to respond to reported sightings of space vehicles fragments and unidentified flying objects as promptly as possible.” The document provided definitions of “Space Vehicle Fragment” and “Unidentified Flying Objects,” and KSC personnel were instructed to “call in unidentified flying object reports to the Patrick Air Force Base Command Post.”

Additionally, NASA’s name appears often in connection with mysterious space crashes such as the one in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965, which later led to a lengthy Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against NASA by journalist Leslie Kean. The space agency also appeared as a “forwarding” office in several declassified documents from other government branches.

NASA’s Response to the White House

It was against this background that NASA found itself tasked with official UFO responsibility early on in the Carter administration. That segment of the population that believed Earth was being visited by aliens had not forgotten Jimmy Carter’s campaign promise. The president’s science and technology advisor, Frank Press, became the White House official in charge of the UFO problem, but outside help was sought when the White House became overwhelmed with UFO mail. Press stated in his July 21, 1977 letter to NASA administrator Robert Frosch “that the focal point for the UFO question ought to be NASA.”

“There appears to be a national revival of interest in the matter with a younger generation becoming involved,” wrote Press, adding that “this is a public relations problem as much as anything else.” Press’s problems were twofold: First, the most immediate issue was how to deal with the growing number of correspondence regarding UFOs being received by the White House. Second, Press has to face the substantive issue of whether there was any truth to the UFO phenomenon and he believed that a new “panel of inquiry could be formed by NASA” to review the UFO evidence and “see if there are any new significant findings.”

Subsequent FOIA requests revealed that even before Frosch responded to Press on September 6, 1977 the U.S. Air Force was already meddling in the affair. One of the most significant and prophetic pieces of paper to come out of this period is a four-line letter written on September 1, 1977 by Colonel Charles H. Senn, the chief of the air force’s community relations division. The addressee was another former air force man, Lieutenant General Duward L. Crow, who was, at that time, the assistant deputy administrator of NASA. Along with an enclosed “UFO Fact Sheet and standard response to UFO public inquiries” that Crow had requested, Senn wrote, “I sincerely hope you are successful in preventing a reopening of UFO investigations.” Considering what took place in the ensuing months, when NASA literally turned down an official request from the White House, one does not need to be particularly conspiratorial to see that the air force was not a neutral party in this drama. Before Frosch’s response to Press was sent on September 6, the letter was rewritten twice by Crow.

Bob Frosch’s letter was courteous, but not encouraging. The strategy for responding to UFO inquiries from the public through “form letters” and “information sheets” was discussed, as both NASA and the air force had discovered long ago that it was the most economical method. It obviously had its problems, continued Frosch, such as the lack of a “focal point for technical appraisal of sightings.” No quick action was to be taken regarding the proposed UFO panel or commission, wrote Frosch, “before . . . we should assure ourselves that an inquiry is justified.” His suggestion, therefore, was to name “a NASA project officer to review reports of the last ten years” and “provide a specific recommendation” by the end of the year.

Press’s response to Frosch a week later stated he was “pleased . . . that NASA can handle the public inquiries” so as to “relieve my staff of a responsibility we are not equipped to handle.” Frosch never said in his letter that NASA would handle the mail for the White House; instead, he had only referred to the air force and NASA’s experience in using form letters. Press agreed fully with Frosch that the NASA commission was something that should be weighed carefully and wrote, “I can understand your reluctance to commit the agency to a formal program.” He conceded that it was up to the space agency to review the UFO situation as it best saw fit.

NASA’s review of the UFO question was not a formal study, but an in-house analysis of the options available. The key document is a four-page memo, “UFO Study Considerations,” dated November 8, 1977 written by Dr. Noel Hinners, NASA’s associate administrator for space science. Dr. Hinners considered “the question of what NASA could reasonably do in both the short and the long term,” he wrote in his memo to NASA’s assistant administrator. The scientist went about his task in a straightforward manner, outlining succinctly the current UFO scene which included

• “Widespread interest” with about half of the American population believing “something” exists;
• Interest in forming a “specialized agency” in the United Nations;
• A formal study group being set up by the CNES, NASA’s counterpart in France;
• Several solid private UFO organizations in the USA “with responsible membership”;
• An increase in reports of what Hinners referred to as “the near encounter type”; and
• A wider acceptance within the UFO community of a government cover-up, meaning not only that the Government “knows far more than it has released,” but that it “may even have pieces of UFO hardware in hand.”

Dr. Hinners analyzed the problems facing a NASA UFO review: the “apparent lack of any tangible or physical evidence for laboratory analysis,” and the “absence of any sound scientific protocol for investigating the phenomenon firsthand.” The word “apparent” in the first line is to be noted while the word “absence” in the second line is questionable. After three decades of amateur investigations, by 1977, civilian UFO organizations had achieved a degree of this so-called “scientific protocol.” Other problems outlined by Dr. Hinners were the abundance of “secondary source materials” or “hearsay”; the prejudices on the part of investigators; hoaxes; “the delicate interface,” as Hinners put it, between the government and UFO witnesses; and “the danger of projecting an inaccurate NASA or Administration image.” Dr. Hinners’s conclusion was that, “all in all, undertaking a formal study at this time appears fraught with perils.”

Dr. Hinners presented two choices to NASA. The first option was to reject the White House’s idea for “the Federal government and specifically NASA, to investigate the UFO phenomenon.” As Dr. Hinners opined, this option would give added fuel to the “charges of cover-up” by the UFO community, but it would also avoid “controversy . . . within the science community NASA deals with.” There were budgetary advantages too in keeping the current policy of form letters and not spending extra resources, but Hinners had the intelligence of pointing out that choosing this option “would also be begging the question.”

The second option was for NASA to consider creating a commission to investigate the topic. This option seemed almost identical to the early, positive days of the Condon Committee. Basically, Hinners’s thought was that the commission could request major UFO organizations “to submit their ‘best’ cases,” put “this material into a usable format,” update and revise it, and finally “ask for a peer review.” On the basis of this preliminary study, NASA would decide whether some form of permanent UFO investigative branch should be established. Hinners also recommended something that was later used by Bob Frosch in his final and formal rejection of the commission that, “as a minimum, having gone so far and this publicly, NASA should stand ready to investigate new hard evidence that might come in.”

In late November 1977, the White House decided to go ahead publicly with formally requesting a NASA UFO commission. The wire services carried the story and quoted David Williamson, NASA’s assistant for special projects, saying the agency was “not anxious” to study UFOs. Like Dr. Condon, Williamson appeared to disqualify any existence of UFOs before any official conclusion had been reached. “There is no measurable UFO evidence such as a piece of metal, flesh or cloth,” he said.

When Bob Frosch finally responded to Frank Press on December 21, 1977, nobody in Washington was surprised. The main theme was “the absence of tangible physical evidence available for thorough laboratory analysis” coupled with the willingness to analyze “any bona fide physical evidence from credible sources” submitted to NASA. Frosch also mentioned the lack of “a sound scientific procedure for investigating these phenomena” as a reason that a study “would be wasteful and probably unproductive.” The shadow of Dr. Condon, deceased since 1974, seemed to pervade this letter. Condon had concluded eight years earlier that science could not be expected to gain anything by studying UFOs. Frosch reached the same conclusion without even embroiling himself in a thousand-page report at a cost of over half a million dollars. After turning down the White House’s request, Frosch left a way out, just in case, writing, “I wish in no way to indicate that NASA has come to any conclusion about these phenomena as such; institutionally, we retain an open mind, a keen sense of scientific curiosity, and a willingness to analyze problems within our competence.”

In 1978, NASA released its revamped “Information Sheet No. 78-1” on UFOs. It stated that other than answering UFO-related mail sent to the White House, “NASA is not engaged in a research program involving these phenomena, nor is any other government agency.” The six-page document was an updated version of the old air force form letter, yet NASA added an interesting paragraph not to be found in the Pentagon’s counterpart: “Reports of unidentified flying objects entering United States air space are of interest to the military as a regular part of defense surveillance. Beyond that, the US Air Force no longer investigates reports of UFO sightings.” In other words, NASA provided an admission that NORAD and the U.S. military still keep an eye on UFOs with possible national security implications. The NASA document quoted extensively from the administrator’s letter about the “bona fide physical evidence” and lack thereof.

It is interesting to see how quickly and effectively the government muzzled this revival of UFO interest. Although numerous FOIA lawsuits were being pursued by researchers, many months and even years would pass before some of these documents were obtained, processed, and publicized. But, the interaction between the White House, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force during this little known episode in President Carter’s administration offers a window into how the federal government deals publicly with ufology. The failed NASA UFO commission attempt by the Carter administration in 1977 is the last time the U.S. government even considered launching a new formal study. Given the current state of affairs in Washington, it’s extremely unlikely that a new effort will be attempted anytime soon, but the phenomenon itself is certainly not likely to go away.

• A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #23 (December/January 2014) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.

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12-10-2020 om 20:09 geschreven door peter  

The Carter Administration’s Attempt to Create a NASA UFO Commission

Posted by: Antonio Huneeus  

Steven Spielberg mentions Jimmy Carter potentially releasing UFO information in this video.

The first account of Carter’s sighting appeared in October 1973—during that year’s big UFO flap—when dispatches from Georgia quoted the governor’s first statement on UFOs: “I’ve seen one myself.” The story was picked up in the press, prompting the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in Maryland to send UFO questionnaires to the Georgia State Capitol. Carter personally filled out both questionnaires and gave permission to use his name as a witness. According to the questionnaires, the sighting occurred “shortly after dark” in October 1969 when Carter and ten other “members of Leary Georgia Lions Club” were “outdoors waiting for a meeting to begin at 7:30 p.m.” The sighting lasted between ten to twelve minutes and the object, located at “about 30 degrees above the horizon,” was described as “about the same size as the moon, maybe a little smaller, varied from brighter/larger than planet to apparent size of the moon.”

President Carter’s UFO story reemerged as he gained prominence during the 1976 presidential campaign. On June 8, the National Enquirer published a short interview with Carter in which he said, “I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one,” adding that “I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky.” In that interview, Carter also made an important promise to the American public: “If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.”

Ironically, the only ufologist to really investigate Carter’s sighting was skeptic Robert Sheaffer. The main clue was that Carter claimed to have seen the object while visiting the town of Leary to lecture at the local Lions Club. In his book, The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence, Sheaffer recounts that his effort to locate additional witnesses was difficult, but he was finally able to find one who remembered seeing, “like a blue light or something or other in the sky that night.”

However, Sheaffer soon discovered that there was a problem with the date given by Carter as the date of the sighting. Carter always said that in the sighting occurred in October 1969, but the Lions Club in Leary had disbanded in February of that year. Sheaffer eventually located the official records of the meeting at the Lions Club International Headquarters. The exact date of Carter’s speech in Leary was January 6, 1969, “nine months earlier than Mr. Carter’s recollection had placed it.” Furthermore, after computing the position of the planets for that date, Sheaffer discovered that “Venus was a conspicuous evening star, nearing its maximum brilliance. Venus was . . . at 7:15 PM, at about 25º elevation, in virtually the exact position where Carter had placed his UFO.”

The result of Sheaffer’s investigation was mostly ignored because it robbed the public of identifying the president as a witness to a genuine UFO. Yet, there is a high probability that what Carter saw could have been explained. The visual tricks that Venus can play in the eyes of the beholder have been known for decades by competent UFO investigators like Allan Hendry, who has characterized Venus as “the real champion” of the stars and planets that tend to cause UFO sightings.

The sighting, however, was only one aspect of President Carter’s link to ufology. The other was his campaign promise to release all the UFO data held by the government. Stanley Schneider, assistant to President Carter’s White House Science advisor Frank Press, later admitted to the New York Times that “public interest in this has been brewing for several months, slowly building up . . . It was getting to be more than we could handle.” In fact, so many letter about UFOs were sent to President Carter that Virginia ufologist Larry Bryant eventually published a book on the letters entitled, UFO Politics at the White House: Citizens Rally ‘Round Jimmy Carter’s Promise. One indicator of the campaign’s impact was revealed by U.S. News & World Report in its April 18, 1977 edition. Under the heading of “Official Word Coming on UFOs,” the magazine stated that “before the year is out, the Government—perhaps the President—is expected to make what is described as ‘unsettling disclosures’ about UFOs . . . based on information from the CIA.”

NASA’s UFO Past

In an attempt to achieve UFO disclosure, the White House had difficulty in developing a coherent policy, and thus, NASA became the logical candidate. Unlike the U.S. Air Force, NASA had never been officially involved in the UFO controversy, although a link between the two surfaced occasionally. Popular UFO articles, books, and movies often displayed UFO photos taken by NASA astronauts, but the great majority of these images were explained by prosaic phenomena such as lens flares, booster rockets, or items ejected from space capsules.

While NASA never officially investigated UFOs, it did produce a few UFO-related documents such as the Kennedy Space Center’s “NASA Management Instruction (KMI 8610.4)” of June 28, 1967, regarding “Processing Reports of Sightings of Space Vehicles Fragments.” The four-page-document signed by the space center’s director, Kurt H. Debus, contained procedures dealing primarily with manmade space vehicles, but KMI 8610.4 added that “reports of sightings of objects not related to space vehicles” were also included: “It is KSC policy to respond to reported sightings of space vehicles fragments and unidentified flying objects as promptly as possible.” The document provided definitions of “Space Vehicle Fragment” and “Unidentified Flying Objects,” and KSC personnel were instructed to “call in unidentified flying object reports to the Patrick Air Force Base Command Post.”

Additionally, NASA’s name appears often in connection with mysterious space crashes such as the one in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965, which later led to a lengthy Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against NASA by journalist Leslie Kean. The space agency also appeared as a “forwarding” office in several declassified documents from other government branches.

NASA’s Response to the White House

It was against this background that NASA found itself tasked with official UFO responsibility early on in the Carter administration. That segment of the population that believed Earth was being visited by aliens had not forgotten Jimmy Carter’s campaign promise. The president’s science and technology advisor, Frank Press, became the White House official in charge of the UFO problem, but outside help was sought when the White House became overwhelmed with UFO mail. Press stated in his July 21, 1977 letter to NASA administrator Robert Frosch “that the focal point for the UFO question ought to be NASA.”

“There appears to be a national revival of interest in the matter with a younger generation becoming involved,” wrote Press, adding that “this is a public relations problem as much as anything else.” Press’s problems were twofold: First, the most immediate issue was how to deal with the growing number of correspondence regarding UFOs being received by the White House. Second, Press has to face the substantive issue of whether there was any truth to the UFO phenomenon and he believed that a new “panel of inquiry could be formed by NASA” to review the UFO evidence and “see if there are any new significant findings.”

Subsequent FOIA requests revealed that even before Frosch responded to Press on September 6, 1977 the U.S. Air Force was already meddling in the affair. One of the most significant and prophetic pieces of paper to come out of this period is a four-line letter written on September 1, 1977 by Colonel Charles H. Senn, the chief of the air force’s community relations division. The addressee was another former air force man, Lieutenant General Duward L. Crow, who was, at that time, the assistant deputy administrator of NASA. Along with an enclosed “UFO Fact Sheet and standard response to UFO public inquiries” that Crow had requested, Senn wrote, “I sincerely hope you are successful in preventing a reopening of UFO investigations.” Considering what took place in the ensuing months, when NASA literally turned down an official request from the White House, one does not need to be particularly conspiratorial to see that the air force was not a neutral party in this drama. Before Frosch’s response to Press was sent on September 6, the letter was rewritten twice by Crow.

Bob Frosch’s letter was courteous, but not encouraging. The strategy for responding to UFO inquiries from the public through “form letters” and “information sheets” was discussed, as both NASA and the air force had discovered long ago that it was the most economical method. It obviously had its problems, continued Frosch, such as the lack of a “focal point for technical appraisal of sightings.” No quick action was to be taken regarding the proposed UFO panel or commission, wrote Frosch, “before . . . we should assure ourselves that an inquiry is justified.” His suggestion, therefore, was to name “a NASA project officer to review reports of the last ten years” and “provide a specific recommendation” by the end of the year.

Press’s response to Frosch a week later stated he was “pleased . . . that NASA can handle the public inquiries” so as to “relieve my staff of a responsibility we are not equipped to handle.” Frosch never said in his letter that NASA would handle the mail for the White House; instead, he had only referred to the air force and NASA’s experience in using form letters. Press agreed fully with Frosch that the NASA commission was something that should be weighed carefully and wrote, “I can understand your reluctance to commit the agency to a formal program.” He conceded that it was up to the space agency to review the UFO situation as it best saw fit.

NASA’s review of the UFO question was not a formal study, but an in-house analysis of the options available. The key document is a four-page memo, “UFO Study Considerations,” dated November 8, 1977 written by Dr. Noel Hinners, NASA’s associate administrator for space science. Dr. Hinners considered “the question of what NASA could reasonably do in both the short and the long term,” he wrote in his memo to NASA’s assistant administrator. The scientist went about his task in a straightforward manner, outlining succinctly the current UFO scene which included

• “Widespread interest” with about half of the American population believing “something” exists;
• Interest in forming a “specialized agency” in the United Nations;
• A formal study group being set up by the CNES, NASA’s counterpart in France;
• Several solid private UFO organizations in the USA “with responsible membership”;
• An increase in reports of what Hinners referred to as “the near encounter type”; and
• A wider acceptance within the UFO community of a government cover-up, meaning not only that the Government “knows far more than it has released,” but that it “may even have pieces of UFO hardware in hand.”

Dr. Hinners analyzed the problems facing a NASA UFO review: the “apparent lack of any tangible or physical evidence for laboratory analysis,” and the “absence of any sound scientific protocol for investigating the phenomenon firsthand.” The word “apparent” in the first line is to be noted while the word “absence” in the second line is questionable. After three decades of amateur investigations, by 1977, civilian UFO organizations had achieved a degree of this so-called “scientific protocol.” Other problems outlined by Dr. Hinners were the abundance of “secondary source materials” or “hearsay”; the prejudices on the part of investigators; hoaxes; “the delicate interface,” as Hinners put it, between the government and UFO witnesses; and “the danger of projecting an inaccurate NASA or Administration image.” Dr. Hinners’s conclusion was that, “all in all, undertaking a formal study at this time appears fraught with perils.”

Dr. Hinners presented two choices to NASA. The first option was to reject the White House’s idea for “the Federal government and specifically NASA, to investigate the UFO phenomenon.” As Dr. Hinners opined, this option would give added fuel to the “charges of cover-up” by the UFO community, but it would also avoid “controversy . . . within the science community NASA deals with.” There were budgetary advantages too in keeping the current policy of form letters and not spending extra resources, but Hinners had the intelligence of pointing out that choosing this option “would also be begging the question.”

The second option was for NASA to consider creating a commission to investigate the topic. This option seemed almost identical to the early, positive days of the Condon Committee. Basically, Hinners’s thought was that the commission could request major UFO organizations “to submit their ‘best’ cases,” put “this material into a usable format,” update and revise it, and finally “ask for a peer review.” On the basis of this preliminary study, NASA would decide whether some form of permanent UFO investigative branch should be established. Hinners also recommended something that was later used by Bob Frosch in his final and formal rejection of the commission that, “as a minimum, having gone so far and this publicly, NASA should stand ready to investigate new hard evidence that might come in.”

In late November 1977, the White House decided to go ahead publicly with formally requesting a NASA UFO commission. The wire services carried the story and quoted David Williamson, NASA’s assistant for special projects, saying the agency was “not anxious” to study UFOs. Like Dr. Condon, Williamson appeared to disqualify any existence of UFOs before any official conclusion had been reached. “There is no measurable UFO evidence such as a piece of metal, flesh or cloth,” he said.

When Bob Frosch finally responded to Frank Press on December 21, 1977, nobody in Washington was surprised. The main theme was “the absence of tangible physical evidence available for thorough laboratory analysis” coupled with the willingness to analyze “any bona fide physical evidence from credible sources” submitted to NASA. Frosch also mentioned the lack of “a sound scientific procedure for investigating these phenomena” as a reason that a study “would be wasteful and probably unproductive.” The shadow of Dr. Condon, deceased since 1974, seemed to pervade this letter. Condon had concluded eight years earlier that science could not be expected to gain anything by studying UFOs. Frosch reached the same conclusion without even embroiling himself in a thousand-page report at a cost of over half a million dollars. After turning down the White House’s request, Frosch left a way out, just in case, writing, “I wish in no way to indicate that NASA has come to any conclusion about these phenomena as such; institutionally, we retain an open mind, a keen sense of scientific curiosity, and a willingness to analyze problems within our competence.”

In 1978, NASA released its revamped “Information Sheet No. 78-1” on UFOs. It stated that other than answering UFO-related mail sent to the White House, “NASA is not engaged in a research program involving these phenomena, nor is any other government agency.” The six-page document was an updated version of the old air force form letter, yet NASA added an interesting paragraph not to be found in the Pentagon’s counterpart: “Reports of unidentified flying objects entering United States air space are of interest to the military as a regular part of defense surveillance. Beyond that, the US Air Force no longer investigates reports of UFO sightings.” In other words, NASA provided an admission that NORAD and the U.S. military still keep an eye on UFOs with possible national security implications. The NASA document quoted extensively from the administrator’s letter about the “bona fide physical evidence” and lack thereof.

It is interesting to see how quickly and effectively the government muzzled this revival of UFO interest. Although numerous FOIA lawsuits were being pursued by researchers, many months and even years would pass before some of these documents were obtained, processed, and publicized. But, the interaction between the White House, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force during this little known episode in President Carter’s administration offers a window into how the federal government deals publicly with ufology. The failed NASA UFO commission attempt by the Carter administration in 1977 is the last time the U.S. government even considered launching a new formal study. Given the current state of affairs in Washington, it’s extremely unlikely that a new effort will be attempted anytime soon, but the phenomenon itself is certainly not likely to go away.

• A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #23 (December/January 2014) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.

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06-10-2020 om 01:46 geschreven door peter  

Somewhere in the Skies: A Young Voice of Truth

Posted by: Diana Pasulka

The second edition of Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to the UFO Phenomenon, by Ryan Sprague, has been released. This is great news because Sprague’s voice is one of truth and integrity within a field of misinformation and confusion. 

With contemporary culture’s embracing of the reality of UFO events, such as To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) and the Pentagon’s secretive Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), regular features in The New York Times, Sprague keeps the news local and personal. His narrative of UFO events, encounters, and reports are authentic. He interviews regular people who never wanted to see UFOs in the first place and academics and scientists who didn’t want to cover the phenomena. That is what sets Sprague’s work apart from interested parties. He is not selling newspapers. He covers the stories and experiences of people who haven’t been chosen, those who did not want to be pilots or aerospace scientists, but nevertheless have confronted the ineffable and are coming to terms with what that means for them, and for us.

This expanded edition includes updates from almost all witnesses and experiencers from the 2016 edition of the book, digging deeper and seeing how their thoughts or beliefs have changed or evolved. For some, the experiences even continued. Sprague also contributes brand new chapters of UFO cases that have never been made public before.

Sprague’s work is based on the reality of the phenomena and not on the media narratives that circulate about it. This is why I read everything Sprague publishes because I know he embodies the strategy of one of the best researchers of the phenomena: Dr. Jacques Vallee. 

Vallee cautioned researchers to stay away from the media frenzy around UFO events, and instead focus on the local, the personal, and those cases that were not the focus of media, Hollywood, or Netflix. Sprague’s work is authentic. He interviews people who never sought out these experiences but were changed by them in ways that can be compared to religious conversions. They became aware of a universe more varied with life and possibilities than they had known before. Sprague’s work opens this world to us, in accessible and non-politicized language. As stated above, Sprague’s work is a breath of fresh air, and it’s clear that as the phenomenon evolves, so will our understanding of it, through the lens and voices of those who experience it. And Sprague will be there to dissect and try to make sense of these stories, one experience at a time.

• Purchase on Amazon in paperback or E-book and learn more at: www.somewhereintheskies.com.

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05-09-2020 om 21:15 geschreven door peter  

The disappearance of the UK’s “most spectacular” UFO photo

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas  

“I first came across this story in 1991, when I joined the UFO project,” writes Pope on his website. “A poster-sized enlargement of the best  photo was prominently displayed on the office wall.”

“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick continues. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”

The photo showed a picture of a large diamond shaped craft with a jet in the background. When he asked about the photo, Pope was told that they had officially determined the image was real. They estimated the craft to have been 25 meters (over 80 feet) in diameter.

However, if asked, they were instructed to answer, “no definite conclusion had been reached regarding the large diamond-shaped object.”

Pope learned that the object had been photographed on August 4, 1990. Two people had been walking near the town of Calvine in Scotland when they spotted the large diamond-shaped object. They described the object as looking metallic. It sat in one position, hovering silently for several minutes before taking off vertically at, as Pope writes, “a massive speed.”

During the sighting, the witnesses also saw a military aircraft that they thought might be a harrier jet, but they were unsure whether the jet was escorting the craft, chasing it, or whether the jet pilot was even aware of the diamond-shaped UFO.

The witnesses had taken several photographs and sent them to the Scottish Daily Record newspaper. The paper contacted the MoD, and the MoD was somehow able to convince the paper to hand over the photographs along with the negatives.

” The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Pope explains.

“We implied and sometimes stated that we didn’t ‘investigate’ UFOs, but merely ‘examined sightings to see if anything reported was of any defence interest’ – as if the two were somehow different!”

Pope say the MoD was actually very interested in these cases, but often less interested in where the craft came from than what they could learn from it. They had hoped to identify some sort of technology they would be able to appropriate.

Nick Pope, former MOD UFO investigator, at the International UFO Congress.

(Credit: Peter Beste/Open Minds)

Either way, the Calvine UFO photos impressed the UFO desk investigators enough that they hung the poster in the office.

“At one particularly surreal briefing on the UFO phenomenon my DIS opposite number indicated the photo and pointed his finger to the right: ‘It’s not the Americans’, he said, before pointing to the left and saying ‘and it’s not the Russians.’ There was a pause, before he concluded ‘and that only leaves …’ – his voice trailed off and he didn’t complete the sentence, but his finger was pointing directly upwards,” recalls Pope.

The office where the UFO desk was located also housed other non-UFO related projects.

Pope says the reaction of some colleagues who came to visit unaware of the UFO program had amusing reactions to the poster.

Pope writes, “You’d have this surreal moment when they’d stop mid-sentence, stare at it, point and say ‘what the hell’s that?’ – this wasn’t the archetypal distant, blurred UFO photo. This was up close and personal, reach out and you can touch it stuff. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s not one of ours’ was our stock answer to the inevitable question.”

Eventually, around 1994, Pope says his superior determined the craft was a secret American aircraft or drone. Pope says they had already asked the U.S. if the craft or something similar of theirs was being tested over the UK, and were told they were not. Pope believes his boss had decided to support a potential cover-up by the Americans and the MoD and removed the poster. It was never to be seen again.

Although Pope has discussed these photographs in the media and has posted an article on his website, no one has come forward to claim they took the photos. Nor has anyone at the Scottish Daily Record come forth to discuss any involvement. The case remains a mystery.

• You can read more about this sighting and Pope’s work at www.NickPope.net. He can also be heard on several episode of Open Minds UFO Radio.

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30-08-2020 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

Belgium’s Flying Triangle Wave

Posted by: Antonio Huneeus 

There were many reasons for the interest generated by the Belgian wave. One was the quality of the reports themselves, the bulk of which were registered in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. There were no landings or humanoid sightings but lots of detailed multiple-witness sightings of flying platforms moving slowly and silently above rooftops. Shapes varied, but the predominant form was triangular or delta-shaped crafts. Some of the descriptions were so precise that traditional explanations of misidentified natural phenomena or conventional aircraft were ruled out. Instead, stealth fighters and other U.S. secret military aircraft became the favorite explanations suggested by skeptics, but these were quickly ruled out by the Royal Belgian Air Force (RBAF). Another reason for the wave’s importance was that it was carefully investigated and documented by a local UFO organization called SOBEPS (Belgian society for the study of space phenomena).

SOBEPS was formed in 1971 by Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard, and others, and built a small but highly dedicated cadre of field investigators. By the end of the wave in 1993, SOBEPS had collected over two thousand eyewitness reports comprising twenty thousand pages, four hundred hours of audio tapes, and six hundred full inquiries. Five hundred and forty cases remained unexplained. SOBEPS also had the assistance of top-notch scientists, including Léon Brenig, a nonlinear dynamics theorist at the Free University in Brussels, and Professor Auguste Meessen, a physicist from Catholic University at Louvain. Regarding his work with SOBEPS, Dr. Brenig has said, “here is an opportunity where we can apply the scientific method.” Brenig himself became a witness of the so-called Belgian triangle while driving in the Ardennes on March 18, 1990. The whole dossier was eventually published by SOPEPS in two massive volumes, five hundred pages each, entitled Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique (UFO Wave ver Belgium), published in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Due to financial difficulties, SOBEPS dissolved on December 31, 2007, but some of its members formed a new, smaller organization called COBEPS (Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena) to preserve the archives and work done for thirty-six years.

A final and key element in the credibility of the Belgian UFO wave was the participation and validation by the RBAF, which showed an unusual degree of openness. As the Belgian wave gained steam, the Belgian Ministry of Defence was deluged with queries from the public and the media. The task fell upon the chief of operations of the air force, Col. Wilfried De Brouwer, who was later promoted to major general and deputy chief of the RBAF. Now retired from the service, Gen. De Brouwer has continued to speak about the wave. He was one of the many international officials who spoke at the famous event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, in November 2007, organized by filmmaker James Fox and journalist Leslie Kean. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the air force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” said De Brouwer at the NPC. He also gave a detailed presentation on the wave at the MUFON International UFO Symposium in San Jose, California, in July 2008, and was one of five generals to write an essay in Leslie Kean’s new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.

Although the RBAF scrambled jets on three occasions during the wave, Gen. De Brouwer has explained on various occasions that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount a full-fledged investigation of their own, so instead they took the unusual route of cooperating fully with SOBEPS. The radar data was turned to Prof. Meessen for analysis, and Gen. De Brouwer agreed to write the postface for SOBEPS’s first volume when he was still in the service. “I must acknowledge that I somewhat hesitated when SOBEPS asked me to contribute my share to this book,” he wrote. “Indeed, I am not a UFO specialist and, moreover, it is quite delicate for somebody who occupies an official function to put on paper his personal ideas on such a disputed issue. However, I estimate that I would not have been honest towards the SOBEPS if I had refused. The air force always played a fair game on this subject and I regard this postface as a complementary element to the exceptional file written by the people of SOBEPS.”

THE EUPEN INCIDENT

Although some sightings were reported in October 1989, the first important incident of the Belgian wave took place a month later on November 29 around the small town of Eupen, which is in a region of Belgium near the German border. This initial case put the so-called “Belgian triangle” on the map and led to the start of the RBAF’s involvement. There were both daytime and nighttime sightings, although the latter were lengthier and more detailed. Gen. De Brouwer explained in his essay for Leslie Kean’s book, “a total of seventy reported sightings made on November 29 were fully investigated and none of these sightings could be explained by conventional technology. The team of investigators and I estimate that approximately fifteen hundred people must have seen the phenomenon at more than seventy different locations from different angles during this afternoon and evening.” There were a total of thirteen gendarmes (policemen) who saw the UFO from eight different locations around Eupen. Prof. Meessen summarized the case in SOBEPS’s book:

On November 29, 1989, a large craft with triangular shape flew over the town of Eupen. The gendarmes von Montigny and Nicol found it near the road linking Aix-la-Chapelle and Eupen. It was stationary in the air, above a field which it illuminated with three powerful beams. The beams emanated from large circular surfaces near the triangle’s corners. In the center of the dark and flat understructure there was some kind of “red gyrating beacon.” The object did not make any noise. When it began to move, the gendarmes headed towards a small road in the area over which they expected the object to fly. Instead, it made a half-turn and continued slowly in the direction of Eupen, following the road at low altitude. It was seen by different witnesses as it flew above houses and near City Hall.

In his 2008 MUFON lecture, Gen. De Brouwer provided additional details on this sighting: “The UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon] emitted repeatedly and simultaneously two red light beams with a red light ball at the spearhead of the beam. Subsequently, the red balls returned to the craft.” There was also apparently a second triangular craft, which made “a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage,” continued De Brouwer. “They [gendarmes] saw a dome with rectangular windows, lighted up at the inside. It then disappeared to the North.” Two more gendarmes saw one of the craft from a monastery nearby; “one is currently the head of the police in that area, he was scared like hell,” added De Brouwer.

The Eupen incident was followed by many other UFO sightings, including several reported on December 11, 1989. One of the witnesses that evening was a personal acquaintance of Gen. De Brouwer, Col. André Amond, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army. Col. Armond worked next door to Gen. De Brouwer and wrote a detailed report for the Ministry of Defence. Col. Armond was driving with his wife around 6:45 p.m., when they noticed a strange object with flashing red lights. They stopped the car and got out to see it better. “Suddenly, they saw a giant spotlight, about twice the size of the full moon, which approached them to an estimated distance of 100 meters,” wrote De Brouwer, adding that “the colonel’s wife was frightened and asked to leave.” In his report to the Ministry, Armond “ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized Ultra Light, or any other known aerial vehicle.”

Various shapes were reported throughout the wave, including round, rectangular, and cigar-shaped, but the majority were triangular objects. Gen. De Brouwer notes that the differences may also be due to the eyewitnesses’ viewing angles. Researcher Marc Valckenaers listed some of the characteristics of the UFOs in SOBEPS’s second volume about the wave, including: irregular displacement (zig-zag, instantaneous change of trajectory, etc.), displacement following the contours of the terrain; varying speeds of displacement (including very slow motion), stationary flight (hovering), overflight of urban and industrial centers, and sound effects (faint humming to total silence).

One of the strangest reports came from two factory workers from the town of Basècles, southwest of Brussels, who saw a huge trapezoid flying platform (330 x 200 feet) just before midnight on April 22, 1990. The object moved slowly and silently, covering the entire factory courtyard. In the SOBEPS report, the factory workers described the UFO as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.” Despite the science-fiction quality of this sighting, an almost identical report was filed nearly a year later, on March 15, 1991, by an electronic engineer in Auderghem, near Brussels, who woke up in the middle of the night when he “heard a barely audible, high-frequency whistling tone. He looked out the window and saw a large rectangular craft at very low altitude with irregular structures on the bottom,” wrote Gen. De Brouwer.

One characteristic of the Belgian wave was how close the objects were flying above the rooftops, as shown with this flying rectangular platform.

Credit: SOBEPS

THE F-16 SCRAMBLE EPISODE

If the Eupen multiple-witness sightings of November 1989 triggered the Belgian wave, the jet fighter scramble incident during the night of March 30, 1990 marked the peak of public interest and global media coverage. The Belgian Air Force had scrambled jets on two prior occasions without positive results. The December 5, 1989 scramble was unsuccessful; when the jet reached the sky, the UFO was gone. Additionally, the December 16, 1989 case turned out to be a false alarm; the authorities quickly determined that it was a laser projection reflected by a cloud layer. Following these two fiascos, the RBAF implemented a new policy that jets would be scrambled only when a sighting was detected on radar and was visually confirmed on the ground by the police.

As put in a preliminary report prepared by Major P. Lambrechts of the RBAF, entitled “Report Concerning the Observation of UFOs During the Night of March 30 to 31, 1990,” the incident began at 10:50 p.m. on March 30 when the gendarmerie telephoned the radar “master controller at Glons” to report “three unusual lights forming an equilateral triangle.” More gendarmes confirmed the lights. When the NATO facility at Semmerzake detected an unknown target at 11:49 p.m., a decision to scramble two F-16 fighters was made. The jets took off at 12:05 a.m. from Beauvechain, the nearest air base, and flew for just over an hour. According to Major Lambrechts’s report:

The aircraft had brief radar contacts on several occasions, [but the pilots]…at no time established visual contact with the UFOs…each time the pilots were able to secure a lock on one of the targets for a few seconds, there resulted a drastic change in the behavior of the detected targets…[During the first lock-on at 12:13 a.m.] their speed changed in a minimum of time from 150 to 970 knots [170 to 1,100 mph] and from 9,000 to 5,000 feet, returning then to 11,000 feet in order to change again to close to ground level.

When Col. De Brouwer showed the computerized radar images of the UFO tracked by the F-16 onboard radar system in a heavily attended press conference at the Ministry of Defence on July 11, 1990, the international media went into a frenzy. Transcripts of the radio communications between ace fighter pilots, Capt. Yves Meelbergs, Lt. Rudy Verrijt, and the Glons Control Reporting Center near Liege, were also released and provide some dramatic moments. The transcripts paint a picture of the jets chasing ghost radar echoes that appear and disappear and then reappear again, but at no time are the pilots able to establish visual contact with the supposed objects. Belgium’s Electronic War Center (EWC) eventually undertook a detailed technical analysis of the F-16 computerized radar tapes, completed by Col. Salmon and physicist M. Gilmard in 1992, and later reviewed by Prof. Meessen.

Although some aspects of this case still remain unexplained, Meessen and SOBEPS accepted the Gilmard-Salmon hypothesis that most of the radar contacts were really echoes caused by a rare meteorological phenomenon. This became evident in four lock-ons, explained Meessen, “where the object descended to the ground with calculations showing negative altitude…. It was evidently impossible that an object could penetrate the ground, but it was possible that the ground could act as a mirror.” Meessen explained how the high velocities measured by the Doppler radar of the F-16 fighters might result from interference effects. He pointed out, however, that there was another radar trace for which there is no explanation to date. As for the visual sightings of this event by the gendarmes and others, Meessen suggested that they could possibly have been caused by stars seen under conditions of “exceptional atmospheric refraction.”

In a 1995 telephone interview, Gen. De Brouwer summarized his reflections on this complex case: “We always look for possibilities which can cause errors in the radar systems. We can not exclude that there was electromagnetic interference, but of course we can not exclude the possibility that there were objects in the air. On at least one occasion there was a correlation between the radar contacts of one ground radar and one F-16 fighter. This weakens the theory that all radar contacts were caused by electromagnetic interference. If we add all the possibilities, the question is still open, so there is no final answer.” De Brouwer took a more detached view of the F-16 scramble episode, however, in his 2008 MUFON lecture and his 2010 essay included in Kean’s book: “The conclusion of the Air Force, therefore, was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion.”

THE PETIT-RECHAIN PHOTO

Seldom has the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words become more true than in the case of the extraordinary photograph of a flying triangle taken in the small town of Petit-Rechain in April 1990. This color slide became the emblematic symbol of the Belgian UFO wave. It has been published and broadcast in television programs all over the world, and it appears on the cover of the two SOBEPS volumes on the Belgian wave. It’s also one of the most analyzed UFO photos in the history of ufology. During my trip to Brussels in 1995, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Patrick Ferryn, the investigator who researched the case initially and wrote the chapter about it in the SOBEPS book. Ferryn gave me copies of the photo and samples of computer enhancements made by Marc Acheroy, professor of electricity at the Royal Military School, where the image was analyzed by the Signal Treatment Center. The details of how the photo was taken are fairly simple and straightforward.

The photographer, P.M. (who wants privacy, but has fully cooperated with SOBEPS), was a twenty-year-old factory worker, who lived in the small community of Petit-Rechain, near Verviers. He was at home with his girlfriend on the night of either April 4 or 7, 1990 (he can’t pin down the exact date), when his girlfriend first noticed the object between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. as she took the dog to the courtyard. According to P.M.’s statement to Ferryn, he was alerted by his girlfriend, went outside, and “saw the object practically stationary towards the southwest, at about a forty-five-degree elevation. It consisted of three white round lights on a barely perceptible triangular surface. In the center there was a blinking spot of the same color, or maybe a bit more reddish than the other lights.” P.M. grabbed his camera, a Praktica model BX20 with a 55-200 mm zoom and a “Cokin” 1A 52 mm skylight filter. He shot the last two frames of a roll of 36-200 ASA Kodak color slide film. The UFO then moved slowly towards Petit-Rechain, until it was hidden by the roofs in the village. The entire episode took about five minutes.

The roll of film was sent by mail to a development house offering a special discount, and when P.M. received the slides, he noticed only frame #35 had captured the UFO; frame #36 was entirely black. Ferryn estimated that “the photo was probably taken with a focal distance between 55 and 200 mm, and with exposition time ranging from 1 to 2 seconds.” P.M. showed the photo to his factory coworkers (all of whom were later interviewed by Ferryn), but otherwise didn’t do anything to analyze or commercialize the picture. One of his coworkers knew a local photo-journalist from Verviers, Guy Mossay, who immediately saw the image’s potential value. P.M. sold the photo rights to Mossay for a small fee. Mossay then proceeded to copyright it with SOFAM (Belgium’s multimedia society for visual arts authors).

Skeptics have naturally pointed to the possibility of a hoax with profit motive. However, if that is the case, why did P.M. sell the rights to Mossay for a minor fee? Moreover, hoaxers never supply original slides or negatives for scientific analysis, as was done by P.M. Having checked his background, interviewed acquaintances, and so on, Ferryn noted that “the account of the main witnesses was coherent.” Gen. De Brouwer spent quite a bit of time explaining the details of this case during his MUFON lecture, saying of the witness that, “this guy is genuine, he is a guy who would not fake at all, I can assure you of that.” More importantly, the Petit-Rechain photo has been subjected to more scientific analysis than practically any other UFO photo in history.

The list of experts and institutions that have analyzed this photo include Prof. Acheroy of Belgium’s Royal Military Academy; Prof. François Louange, an expert in photo interpretation of satellite images for the French space agency, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior NASA scientist and respected UFO researcher; Belgium’s Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony; and André Marion, a nuclear physicist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who conducted an analysis in 2002 with improved technology. The technical details of these analyses are too numerous for this article, but suffice it to say that evidence of photographic trickery has never been found. Furthermore, of several efforts to duplicate the photo using a dark cardboard triangular model with holes and light bulbs, only one made by members of the Astrophysics Institute at Liege University somewhat resembled the Petit-Rechain photo. But the luminosity of the spots in the replica was uniform, while those in the original exhibited different shapes and spectral effects. The most recent CNRS study by Dr. Marion confirmed the previous analysis and found, as put by Gen. De Brouwer, a “halo around the craft with patterned structure,” which could have been caused by the object’s “propulsion system” of “magnetoplasma dynamic.” Marion also stated that “it would be extremely difficult to fake such a photograph.”

In the end, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the authenticity of a UFO image. There will always be a difference of opinions, but the verdict in the Petit-Rechain case appears highly favorable. Triangular UFOs were seen throughout Belgium during the early 1990s. Dozens of fuzzy videos and grainy photos were taken, but they were generally not impressive. Petit-Rechain was the great exception.

• Note: Since the writing of this article, the photo turned out to be an admitted hoax.

NO EVIDENCE OF SECRET AIRCRAFT

Due to the high credibility of most witnesses in the Belgian wave and their descriptions of a silent, triangular craft being so precise, trying to explain the wave in terms of hoaxes, misidentified natural phenomena, or conventional aircraft seemed fruitless. Therefore, a number of skeptics and aviation journalists focused on trying to prove the hypothesis of secret U.S. aircraft flying over Belgium. A series of candidates were proposed, from the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to secret airships, from the F-117A stealth fighter to some other revolutionary U.S. secret military aircraft such as the alleged TR-3A Black Manta. First, you have to ponder why the U.S. would conduct tests of their most-secret aircraft in such a highly populated area like Wallonia, which is not only a U.S. ally, but also headquarters of the NATO alliance. Gen. De Brouwer put it bluntly in a 1991 interview with the French magazine, OVNI Présence: “Why would the Americans conduct tests here in Europe, without permission and with the risk of having an accident that could create a diplomatic incident on a global scale? This doesn’t involve only Belgium, but NATO, where its concept itself could be put in question. I don’t believe that the Americans could take such a risk, it’s evident.”

Guy Coeme and Leo Delcroix, the two Belgian Ministers of Defence during the wave, denied emphatically the theory that the UFOs were actually U.S. aircraft and based their denial on official inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels. In a 1993 letter to French researcher Renaud Marhic, Minister Delcroix wrote: “Unfortunately, no explanation has been found to date. The nature and origin of the phenomenon remain unknown. One theory can, however, be definitely dismissed since the Belgian Armed Forces have been positively assured by American authorities that there has never been any sort of American aerial test flight.” A declassified 1990 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) entitled, “Belgium and the UFO Issue,” supports Delcroix’s position. After describing the basic events of the wave that had transpired up to that point, the unnamed U.S. official wrote at the very end of this memo: “The [U.S. Air Force (USAF)] did confirm to the [Belgian Air Force] and Belgian [Ministry of Defence] that no USAF stealth aircraft were operating in the Ardennes area during the periods in question. This was released to the Belgian press and received wide dissemination.”

Thirty years have now passed since the Belgian UFO wave, and no new significant evidence has been produced to prove that the sightings were caused by secret military aircraft. The reported cases remain unexplained. It seems certain that something massive and technologically advanced flew over Belgian territory during the 1989-93 period. Why and who was behind it are questions that remain to be answered. A suitable conclusion, for now, is to repeat what Gen. De Brouwer wrote at the end of his famous postface to the SOBEPS’s first volume: “The day will come undoubtedly when the phenomenon will be observed with technological means of detection and collection that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin. This should lift a part of the veil that has covered the mystery for a long time. A mystery that continues thus present. But it exists, it is real, and that in itself is an important conclusion.”

• A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #5 (December/January 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.

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29-08-2020 om 01:54 geschreven door peter  

23-08-2020 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

A Survivor at Roswell: The Truth About the One that Walked Away

Posted by: Don Schmitt 

George Wilcox

The Roswell incident left an impact on all those involved, especially then-Roswell sheriff, George Wilcox. Just before Wilcox’s widow Inez passed away, she related a story to her granddaughter Barbara, who since passed on the story: “The event shocked [George]. He never wanted to be sheriff again after that. My grandmother said, ‘Don’t tell anybody. When the incident happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told George and I that if we ever told anything about the incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family would be killed!”’ Barbara adds, “They called my grandfather, and someone came and told him about the crash. He went out there to the site; there was a big burned area, and he saw debris. There were four space beings. Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk. One of the ‘little men’ was alive.” Inez Wilcox reiterated to Barbara that her and George took the threats very seriously and kept the information from the family.

Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette

Sergeant Homer Rowlette in 1947. Gave a death bed confession of being part of the clean-up crew.

Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt

Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette, Jr., was a member of the 603rd Air Engineering Squadron at the RAAF in 1947. He was a career military man and retired as an NCO after twenty-six years of dedicated service to his country. Before passing away in March 1988, he finally conveyed to his son, Larry the following startling information about his involvement with the “crash of the flying saucer.” Rowlette was part of a cleanup detail sent to the crash site north of Roswell. Larry was told that his father had seen everything. He handled the “memory material,” which according to Homer, was “thin foil that kept its shape.” If that wasn’t enough, he described the actual ship, which was “somewhat circular.” He also caught his son completely by surprise when he announced, “I saw three little people. They had large heads and at least one was alive!”

Master Sergeant Harry Telesco

Corroboration of Rowlette’s story has come from another member of the same squadron also stationed at Roswell at that time. Master Sergeant Harry Telesco had already passed away, when I located and contacted his family in 2007. According to his daughter, her late father had spoken many years ago of being at the crash site north of town and seeing the strange wreckage and little bodies there. He also testified that he had seen one that was still alive.

Richard Loveridge

In 1947, Richard Loveridge worked as a mechanical engineer for the Boeing Aircraft Company and was part of their crash-investigation team. When information came in about the crash of an aircraft outside of Roswell, Loveridge drove to the area believing it was one of their planes. It would not be until the last year of his life in 1993 that he would finally confess to his family about the true nature of the alleged “plane” crash. The Boeing crash investigator admitted that he “saw everything.” He saw the wreckage, which was not from a conventional aircraft, as well as three small, deceased “entities” and one that was still alive. Loveridge described them as “child-size” and “grayish” in color. He refused to elaborate any further to his family: “Don’t ask me any more about this. They can hurt you.”

Ervin Boyd

Ervin Boyd worked as a B-29 mechanic at the Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF) in 1947; he worked specifically in Hangar P3, which would later be known as Building 84. On the particular day in question, Boyd was taking a cigarette break on what he called a “hot summer day,” and the doors of the hangar were open on both ends of the building. As soon as he stepped outside the hangar doors, he observed a number of men and vehicles swarming towards the building. Startled by the situation, he quickly noticed that some of the men were carrying what he first thought was the body of a child. “Why didn’t they take it to the hospital?” he asked himself. As they passed by him, he was shocked to see that it was something else.

“It was child-size, four feet, maybe a little more, and a head that was larger than one on a normal body. The eyes were walnut-shaped and also larger than normal. From my angle, it didn’t look like it had much of a nose. The arms were a bit longer too, and the skin was ashy, gray and kind of scaly. I believe it was still alive.”

Suddenly, a number of officers grabbed Boyd and rushed him away from the area and started to get physically rough with him. One of them sternly stated, “Mr. Boyd, you didn’t see anything.” But, the civilian persisted. Finally, he was warned that if he ever said one more word, not only would he lose his job, but the lives of his wife and children would be at stake. It would not be until he suffered a stroke twenty-four years later that he would finally break his silence with his family.

Joseph Montoya

That same afternoon, Monday, July 7, 1947, New Mexico’s newly elected thirty-two-year-old lieutenant governor, Joseph Montoya, was in Roswell. It is not entirely clear how the politician came to be on the base at the RAAF on the exact day as some of the bodies, including the possible survivor from the crash. One possible scenario is that he was there on Independence Day weekend for the dedication of a new plane, and after the ceremony he was escorted over to the B-29 hangar just as the first military vehicles were bearing down with their “out-of-this-world” cargo.

Montoya would confide to close associates that he had seen “four little men.” He described how small they were, along with the stunning fact that “one was alive!” Montoya painted the beings as, “short, only coming up to my chest. [They were] skinny with big eyes shaped like tear-drops. [The] mouth was real small, like a knife-cut across a piece of wood, and they had large heads.”

Next, he described the scene inside the hangar. Each of the little men, including the one that was alive, was stretched out on a table brought over from the mess hall and set up for that purpose. “I knew that one was alive because I could hear it moaning.” Montoya said that it was moving, with its knee bent and rocking back and forth

After a frantic exit from the hangar, Montoya was picked up and driven from the base by associates. Montoya would always warn that “It’s too dangerous to talk about.” Even years later, he would continue to caution that “the government will get you.”     

“Eli” Benjamin   

Another man who himself admits to having seen bodies was Elias “Eli” Benjamin (a pseudonym).  His wife told me much about the incident, but it would be several years before Eli would tell me himself. As a retired career U.S. Air Force man, Benjamin feared for his pension—and still does—if he ever talked about Roswell. Benjamin and his wife had come to the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell in 2002 to see the exhibits. Against her husband’s wishes, Mrs. Benjamin stopped into the museum director’s office to tell someone about her husband. After hearing Mrs. Benjamin’s story, especially the part about bodies and the hospital, Julie Shuster, the museum director, felt that a private interview with Mr. Benjamin was warranted. It was soon apparent, however, that there was a major problem: Mr. Benjamin was nowhere to be found. He had left the building, when he observed his wife and the director looking around for him—he was a reluctant witness, to put it mildly.

Private first class Eli Benjamin in 1947. He escorted the bodies from hanger P-3 to the RAAF base hospital.

Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt

Since that day, I have managed to track down the former member of the 390th Air Service Squadron and meet with him half a dozen times to try to gain his confidence. In the process, I learned that Benjamin’s main fear, similar to so many others who were and are reluctant Roswell witnesses, was his belief that he, as a retired air force veteran, might lose his pension if he said anything about those long-ago events. I assured Benjamin that I knew of no instances whatsoever of someone losing his pension for talking about Roswell. Besides, the secretary of the air force issued a proclamation in 1994 that absolved anyone with knowledge about the Roswell incident who believed that they were still subject to security or secrecy oaths regarding the matter. The other thing I noticed was that Benjamin was still deeply moved, if not troubled, by what he witnessed back in 1947, and he broke down in tears on several occasions when talking to me about it. His wife also revealed that her husband still has trouble sleeping comfortably and continued to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, shaking. In 2005, the eighty-year-old Eli Benjamin agreed to tell his story.

In July 1947, Eli Benjamin was a private first class with the 390th Air Service Squadron at the Roswell Army Air Field. Possessing a top secret clearance, Private First Class Benjamin was authorized to provide security support for the most highly classified operations of the 509th Bomb Group—the first atomic-bomb wing in the world. In addition to his primary job of guarding the B-29 Bombers, one of his secondary duties was that of a recovery specialist, which involved the grim activities associated with the aftermath of plane crashes.

On the morning of Monday, July 7, 1947, Benjamin walked back to his barracks after a night of guard duty on the flight line followed by breakfast at mess hall.   “Something’s going on” he thought to himself, as he stood at attention and saluted the playing of the national anthem and morning flag-raising ritual at the base headquarters on the south end of the esplanade. He knew that the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, normally held his weekly staff meetings on Tuesday mornings, but on this day, Benjamin thought there were too many staff cars and other vehicles parked in the headquarters parking lot for a regular staff meeting. When Benjamin finally arrived back at his barracks, “Word was given to my squadron to be on the alert for special duty,” he said. Such was life in the 509th and the Strategic Air Command and sleep after his long shift would have to remain a secondary consideration. The word finally found Benjamin: “Benjamin! Get your gun and report to hangar P-3 for guard duty.”

Upon arriving at the B-29 hangar to report to the officer in charge, Benjamin walked into a commotion at the main entrance of the building. A number of military police were trying to restrain the very officer from whom Benjamin was supposed to get his duty instructions. The lieutenant colonel was clearly experiencing an emotional reaction to the situation at hand, which seemed to be the transfer of a number of gurneys over to the base hospital. Another officer quickly pointed to Benjamin and ordered him to complete the assignment.

While in the process, something under one of the sheets covering each litter appeared to be moving. Then, as each of the stretchers was loaded into the back of a waiting ambulance truck, a sheet fell away revealing the grayish face and swollen, hairless head that clearly was not human.

The military police orders were to deliver the cargo to the base hospital emergency room (Building 317) and remain there until relieved. Once at the medical facility, a half-dozen hospital personnel and men in suits took control of one specific gurney. All eyes were on the covered arrival as they removed the sheet from a being with an over-sized head, which had large, slanted eyes, two holes in place of a nose, and a slit for a mouth. For a number of moments all surrounding the patient just stood staring with mouths agape. It was alive. As the last of the gurneys was wheeled in, Benjamin and the other military police were immediately dismissed, sent back to their squadrons, and sworn to secrecy. They were told the incident never happened.

Sixty-three years after the event, the fog of time prevents Eli Benjamin from recalling the names or faces of the other men assigned to “escort duty” that day. They may well have been from other squadrons on the base or even from other bases brought in from outside (known as augmentation troops) to prevent the comparing of notes later on.

For her part, Mrs. Benjamin confirms her husband’s account of his involvement in the Roswell events of July 1947. She further states that he confided the story to her with the promise that she would never tell anyone else. Eli’s memories of that night—seeing the swollen face and slanted eyes of the “species”—remain with, and haunt, him to this day.

Roy Musser

Roy Musser happened to be at the base that afternoon. He was a civilian contractor painting part of the hospital. Working in the rear, where the loading dock area was located, he claimed to have seen the arrival of the small bodies and the “creature.” Apparently uninjured, he observed it walking and said it looked like a “very slender child.”

The military warned Musser that he was never to mention what he had seen to anyone or he and his family would be in jeopardy. Musser kept quiet for a number of years before relating the experience to fireman Dan Dwyer.

Miriam “Andrea” Bush

All military hospital administrators had their own secretary. In the case of Lieutenant Colonel Harold M. Warne, his was a twenty-seven-year-old civilian woman named Miriam “Andrea” Bush. Miriam was a graduate of New Mexico State College at Las Cruces, where she had majored in business administration. She also had a top security job at the base hospital. But none of her prior experiences prepared her for what she was about to see.

As she was performing routine duties at the hospital, Dr. Warne took her by the arm and quietly mentioned that she should accompany him to the examination room. Upon entering, she was immediately surprised to observe a number of bodies on gurneys in the middle of the room. At first she thought they were children based on their size. Their skin was grayish to brown in tone, and white linens covered most of each body. But the heads were too large to be children and had large staring eyes. All at once, one of them moved. Miriam would never forget what she had seen that day in Roswell.

What Became of the Surviving Alien?

To date there remains no eyewitness testimony as to what ultimately became of the survivor and how it was transported from Roswell. There is reliable information, however, that the being did spend some time at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and was still there up to nine months later in 1948.

While on his deathbed in 1997, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Magruder, a highly decorated World War II flying ace, swore to his five sons that, while with the War College, he was assigned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in April 1948 and allowed to briefly see the “live alien” at that time. He and the others in his company were instructed that the being was recovered from the crash in Roswell just the year before. His description was similar to all the other eye-witnesses. He emphasized that there was no question that it “came from another planet.”

As one of the personnel at the RAAF once remarked, “They sure weren’t from Texas.” And in the same vein, they weren’t from Japan, Germany, or anywhere else on Earth. That is one issue all of the witnesses remain unanimous on.

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11-08-2020 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Philly UFO Conference 2020

Marketing by Lang Publication   www.LangPublication.com     Check out the speakers and  register at http://www.mufonpa.com

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08-08-2020 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Original newspaper article describing the incident, by S. E. Haydon, “A Windmill Demolishes It,” The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5.

Nearly seventy-six years later, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), decided to take a closer look at this UFO legend. By then, rumors had circulated that Haydon had fabricated the entire story. When Haydon wrote the story, the town of Aurora was reeling from a string of bad luck. Several residents had died from typhoid that winter, cotton crops had failed, and a railroad planned for the city had gone broke. It was believed that Haydon, a local cotton buyer, created the story to try and breathe some new life into the town. MUFON investigators found surprising evidence; however, that supported the idea that something extraordinary may have taken place.

According to MUFON’s report, Texas state director, Bill Case, found two individuals who testified that their parents had witnessed the events described by Haydon in his article. The first was Mrs. Mary Evans, who says that she was fifteen-years-old when her parents went to the crash site and when they returned home, described to Mary the explosion and the small man who was killed in the crash. She recalled they had informed her the townsfolk buried what was left of the pilot in the local cemetery. The other witness was Charlie Stephens, whose father said he had seen the crash, which caused a massive fire that could be seen for three miles.

Using the witness testimony, MUFON investigators found what they believed to be the site of the crash. Radiation levels were checked and were typical for the area. The investigators found metal fragments with metal detectors that indicated something had crashed and spread debris over a two-or-three-acre area east of where the windmill was located. One-piece, in particular, caught their attention.

The mysterious piece of metal was found beneath four inches of soil and appeared to have been in a molten state when it penetrated the Earth and smashed against a limestone rock where it was found. Under analysis, the metal was determined to be a very pure form of aluminum alloy, oddly devoid of traces of copper, which is typically seen with this sort of manufactured aluminum. It had also gone through a heating-and-cooling stage consistent with that of an explosion.

The next part of MUFON’s investigation was to find the remains of the UFO pilot. They located a headstone with a triangle and some circles carved into it, possibly an etching of the craft. The metal detectors also alerted to metal below the surface at this location. Paperwork was submitted to exhume the body, but townsfolk vehemently denied the request and asked that researchers not enter the cemetery. Soon after MUFON’s investigation, the headstone disappeared altogether, leaving the location of the grave unknown.

In an article published in the Houston Chronicle in 2007, Aurora business owner Karen Tedrow said she understood the townspeople’s reluctance: “My parents are buried there, and I don’t want them digging around. Earthly body or not, they ought to let it rest in peace.”

In the end, MUFON investigators determined that there was more to the story than previously believed and that they had found “sufficient evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the hoax theory.”

Aztec, New Mexico, 1948

Another famous alleged UFO crash case occurred in March 1948 in the remote town of Aztec, New Mexico, in the northwest corner of the state. This story began with the publishing one of the first UFO books, Behind the Flying Saucers, written by Frank Scully in 1950.

Scully was a writer for the entertainment magazine Variety. He says some of his Hollywood friends recommended that he get in touch with Silas Newton, a successful oilman, who had some interesting UFO crash stories. Newton shared his stories with Scully and explained the electromagnetic nature of the propulsion of crashed UFOs. Newton, along with an anonymous scientist referred to as Dr. Gee, became the primary source for Scully’s book.

According to Newton and Dr. Gee, advanced radar stations in New Mexico caused the crash of a disc-shaped UFO near Aztec. The craft was mostly intact with just a puncture near one of the windows. Scientists, including Dr. Gee, who were first to arrive on the scene, saw bodies inside the craft. Without visible doors on the object, the scientists were eventually able to get into the craft by sticking a pole inside and pressing a button on a wall that opened a hidden door.

Inside, the scientists found sixteen charred bodies of beings that were humanoid in form but only three-to-four-feet tall. They appeared to have been killed by a fire inside the craft. The craft was made of a solid material that looked similar to aluminum and was very lightweight. Eventually, the aircraft was disassembled and taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which is often rumored to be the home base for recovered extraterrestrial objects.

Once Scully’s book was published, it quickly became a bestseller. However, doubts about the credibility of the main witnesses began to surface. J.P. Cahn, a freelance reporter, wrote an investigative piece for True magazine, claiming that the whole book was based on lies. Cahn claimed that he could prove that the metals Newton was purporting to be from an alien spacecraft were just a standard grade of aluminum used in pots and pans. He also said that he discovered the true identity of Dr. Gee.

According to Scully, Dr. Gee was a very accomplished scientist, with “more degrees than a thermometer.” However, Cahn discovered that Dr. Gee was a business associate of Newton’s by the name of Leo GeBauer. GeBauer owned a radio-and-television-parts company in Phoenix, Arizona. Although technologically inclined, GeBauer did not have the myriad of degrees claimed in Scully’s book. Scully’s response to this accusation was that GeBrauer was only one of many scientists represented by Dr. Gee in the book.

Cahn also uncovered that, although never formally charged, Newton had been accused of making false claims regarding stocks and oil prospects. Cahn believed that Newton and GeBrauer conned Scully into accepting their story to convince investors that they had access to secret alien technology capable of finding oil fields.

All of this has tarnished Scully’s book; however, there are UFO investigators who believe they have found evidence that supports the Aztec crash happened, including FBI documents. One such report can be found in Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret. In the book’s appendix, there is an FBI document from March 1950 that includes the report of an air force investigator on rumors of a crashed “flying saucer” discovered in New Mexico with three small bodies inside. It says the crash was the result of nearby “very high-powered radar.” Skeptics believe that Newton and GeBrauer had been peddling this story everywhere, and it eventually got back to the air force and the FBI.

Researchers Nick Redfern and Scott Ramsey obtained additional FBI documents regarding the Aztec crash. Ramsey says that these documents describe Newton as a very successful businessman and philanthropist. Although Newton told some tall tales to his investors, Ramsey says the investors seemed to be mostly happy with Newton’s results.

Ramsey has also been able to unearth alleged witnesses to the actual crash. Ken Farley claims he was driving from Durango, Colorado, to San Diego, California, on March 25, 1948, when he stopped outside Aztec to visit a friend. Having heard recent talk of emergency vehicles headed into the desert, Farley and his friend decided to check out what was going on. They arrived at a mesa with a large disc sitting next to it. There were several oilfield workers and a couple of police officers at the scene. They described an object much like the one Scully had written about, which appeared to be undamaged. Police eventually asked them to leave.

Another witness was nineteen-year-old Doug Noland, a gas company employee. He says that on that day, he had picked up his boss, Bill Ferguson, and drove to the desert to put out a brush fire. When Noland and Ferguson arrived at the scene, oilfield workers that were already on the scene told them that the fire was under control and showed them a mysterious large disc-shaped object.

Ramsey says he started as a skeptic, but twenty years later is still finding evidence that convinces him there may be something more to the crash at Aztec, New Mexico.

Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, 1965

On December 10, 1965, newspapers across the country reported events that took place the prior evening. Witnesses from Pennsylvania to Illinois, and even as far north as Canada, reported seeing a fireball race across the sky. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, debris was reported falling from the fiery object. Outside of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, witnesses reported a flash of light and a fire in the nearby woods.

On the evening of December 9, Robert Gatty, writer for the Tribune-Review out of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was asked to report on an alleged UFO crash site in a forest outside Kecksburg. When he arrived, Gatty found the area was roped off by police expecting the arrival of “Army engineers and, possibly, civilian scientists.” Gatty claims that police threatened to arrest him if he proceeded into the forest. He reported that the roads were jammed with curious spectators and news reporters.

One of the other newsmen on location was John Murphy, the news director for one of the local radio stations, WHJB. According to his wife, Murphy arrived before the authorities, took pictures, and recorded some witnesses’ audio interviews. He would later put this all together in a radio documentary called Object in the Woods. Murphy later told listeners that he left out some conversations because the witnesses feared reprisal by the police or the army. Murphy’s wife and a coworker both have since said Murphy was visited by men claiming to be with the government. They confiscated some of his recordings and photographs.

To this day, the military maintains that it did not find anything in the forest that night. Nonetheless, Stan Gordon, a local UFO researcher, has gathered several witnesses who attest to the event and the object. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing an acorn-shaped object in the forest that was the size of a “Volkswagen.” Some witnesses later reported seeing the army hauling the tarp-covered object away, revealing only the lower lip of the object. Others reported a band of strange hieroglyphs around the base of the object.

Some scientists have speculated that the object was just a meteorite seen in Lake Erie’s vicinity that night. Russia’s Cosmos 96 space probe re-entered the atmosphere over Canada that day, and some have speculated that this is what landed in the woods. Witnesses claimed that the object changed direction several times before slowly falling in a downward trajectory towards the forest. Neither a Russian space probe nor a meteorite would change directions.

In 2002, inspired by Gordon’s work, the Syfy channel decided to investigate the Kecksburg case and, to do so, enlisted the help of journalist Leslie Kean. Together, they formed the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI). According to Kean’s report on the CFI website, the team set out to obtain official documents from NASA using the procedures allowed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In doing so, the CFI team was determined to “not accept the usual ‘no records’ responses” that are usually given for such requests.

Their initiative caught the attention and support of President Bill Clinton’s then Chief of Staff, John Podesta. He joined a press conference held by the Syfy channel on October 22, 2002, in which the CFI announced the efforts to obtain NASA files on the Kecksburg incident. Podesta stated before the press,

I think it’s time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark on the question of government investigations of UFOs… It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it because it’s right; we ought to do it because the American people quite frankly can handle the truth; and we ought to do it because it’s the law.

The CFI focused on obtaining records from NASA instead of the air force or army because Gordon had previously received files from NASA, indicating that there were more files yet to be uncovered. In particular, CFI pursued the “Fragology Files,” which were described as “reports of space objects’ recovery, [and] analysis of fragments to determine national ownership and vehicle origin.” NASA responded that the files were destroyed, and, in a separate letter, NASA claimed that the records had been missing since 1987.

NASA continued to stall and claim that it had no relevant files, even files that had already been retrieved by Gordon. The CFI appealed the NASA responses and won, but NASA continued to stall. The CFI was then forced to sue and announced its intentions at a press conference on October 21, 2003. NASA finally agreed to send specific files, but only sent unhelpful pieces of information. CFI continued to pursue the lawsuit.

During this time, the chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Nicholas Johnson, reviewed whether the Kecksburg incident could have been a human-made object that simply re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. In an interview on October 10, 2003, he told Kean, “I can tell you categorically, that there is no way that any debris from Cosmos 96 could have landed in Pennsylvania anywhere around 4:45 p.m.” Kean’s report demonstrates that “Johnson’s data shows that no man-made object from any country entered our atmosphere and landed in Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 9.”

Although Johnson made strong statements to the contrary, in 2005, NASA spokesman David Steitz told the Associated Press that “the ‘UFO’ [Kecksburg object] was a Russian satellite, but government records documenting it have been lost.” This response was particularly strange in part because NASA had said that it did not even investigate the Kecksburg case. So, where did Steitz get this information? Kean tried to follow up with Steitz to clear up these discrepancies but could not obtain any particularly useful explanation.

Finally, after being tied up in court for two years, the final hearing on the CFI’s case against NASA occurred on March 20, 2007. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, clearly dissatisfied with NASA’s conduct in the case, reprimanded NASA’s attorney and, at one point, stated, “heads should roll” at NASA, and “I can sense the plaintiff’s frustration because I’m frustrated. It’s totally frustrating.” Judge Sullivan ruled in favor of the CFI and required NASA to pay for all legal fees for the case, to reexamine the files, and declassify relevant documents if necessary, explaining any redactions.

NASA sent more files to Kean, but none of them pertained to the Kecksburg incident. NASA searched hundreds of boxes. Kean feels that NASA made a genuine effort in the end, but that the filing systems were so weak that it was difficult to find anything. She concluded, “In summary, we’ll never know whether any documents in the missing or destroyed boxes might have shed light on the Kecksburg incident, even if only by providing a small lead that could open doors for researchers. It only takes one page to change everything.”

• A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #8 (June/July 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.

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04-08-2020 om 01:14 geschreven door peter  

Presentation: Steven Spielberg, Ufologist

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas 

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03-08-2020 om 01:29 geschreven door peter  

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03-08-2020 om 01:04 geschreven door peter  

Documentary on alien implants convinces filmmaker topic not so crazy

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas  

Of all of the fringe ideas in the UFO field, the idea that people are being snatched up by aliens and then returned without their knowledge is pretty hard for many to swallow. Added on top of that the claims some of these people have had implants placed inside of them by the aliens, well, for many, that is bat-poop crazy.

When first asked to document a surgery to remove an alleged alien implant, Cobell responded it was “way outside of my scope of knowledge or interest.”

“It seemed too wild for me to put my mind around,” explained Corbell.

However, since he was asked by friends, and has an interest in extraordinary beliefs, Corbell decided to do it. His experience ultimately resulted in his newly released documentary, Patient Seventeen.

One of the main characters, who Corbell grew very fond of, is a podiatrist and alien implant specialist, Dr. Roger Leir.

Incidentally, Leir was also skeptical when he was approached years ago with the request to remove a suspected alien implant. He thought it was ridiculous. But when he removed the object, begrudgingly, he said it was unlike anything he had seen before, and became very interested in the topic. He then removed, or aided in the removal, of dozens of the objects before passing away in 2014.

Corbell says Leir passed away while he was putting his documentary together, but it was not so much Leir that convinced him the alien abduction and implant phenomenon may be real.

“It was the patient that transformed my opinion,” says Corbell.

Corbell describes the man he refers to as patient 17, the namesake for his film, as an “average guy of above average height.”

He is six foot nine.

He is referred to as patient 17 because he wishes to remain anonymous, and because he was Leir’s 17th patient to undergo an “alien implant” removal. Corbell says patient 17 is a very down to earth person.

In fact, Corbell says, “He was, and remains, the biggest skeptic that this object removed from his leg — that is hands down extraordinary — has anything to do with his abduction experiences.”

So what is so extraordinary about the object? Well, for the full story you will have to watch the film, but, according to Corbell, some experts have interpreted the data from test results conducted thus far as being made off-world.

Corbell admits more testing has to be done, but he is convinced this thing is really weird.

A short version of Patient Seventeen was entered into the EBE Film Festival at the International UFO Congress several years ago. Although I knew Leir personally, the film exposed me to aspects of his life I was not familiar with, such as a beautiful scene of Leir playing a gigantic organ. The scene was very intimate and moving.

As for patient 17, the man. He did come across as credible, and certainly does not fit the mold of what many think of as an “alien abductee.” He came across as an independent professional who did not seem interested in seeking attention.

I admit, alien abduction is a weird topic that can be uncomfortable. The awkwardness of the phenomenon is portrayed well in the comedy television show People of Earth on TBS. However, if there was ever a documentary that would convince those interested in hard evidence, this may be the one. Not only that, I have to admit, I am partial to Corbell’s shooting style, which is intimate, beautiful and up close and personal.

As of today, Patient Seventeen is available on iTunes, and will be available on other streaming outlets soon.

• For more on Patient Seventeen, visit the website at: ExtraordinaryBeleifs.com. You can also hear Corbell and I discuss his film and other current projects on Open Minds UFO Radio.

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21-07-2020 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

Mutual UFO Network Director Arrested for Solicitation of Minor

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas 

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21-07-2020 om 23:01 geschreven door peter  

Decades of Government UFO Gaslighting Exposed

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas

The United States Air Force claims it stopped investigating UFOs in 1969. It is a point they love to repeat when inquiries have been made for the last few decades, even when researchers present government documents to demonstrate otherwise. Often in the past couple of decades, instead of answering my inquiries about UFO documents, I am sent the USAF UFO Fact sheet. However, given recent revelations, the USAF fact sheet was wrong, and, as many have demonstrated, the government has been taking UFOs seriously for a very long time.

According to the USAF UFO Fact Sheet, the USAF program to investigate UFOs, Project Blue Book, was closed because “No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security.”

In a memo dated October 20, 1969, by Brigadier General Carroll H. Bolender, the reasons for closing Project Blue Book were outlined. In the memo, Bolender noted that “reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book system.”

His note indicates that the most critical cases were not going to Project Blue Book, which begs the question, “what good is it to investigate UFOs without the best cases?” It also implies there were cases, “which could affect national security.”

JANAP 146 detailed “Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings [aka CIRVIS].” “Unidentified flying objects” were one of the items listed as something to report.

CIRVIS reporting poster from 1950s

Eventually, the military replaced CIRVIS with Operational Reporting (OPREP). A document distributed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993 says, “OPREP–3 reports containing information relating to unknown objects near U.S. military installations are considered extremely sensitive, and thus not releasable.”

Sure enough, UFO researchers have found several of these documents. They typically address UFOs incursions over weapons storage areas, including those that house nuclear weapons.

Despite having receipts, UFO researchers are often grouped in with the tin-foil hat crowd. Nick Pope ran the Ministry of Defense (MoD) “UFO desk.” He dealt with these issues from the government side. Pope told the Huffington Post, “We were telling the public we’re not interested, this is all nonsense, but in reality, we were desperately chasing our tails and following this up in great detail."

“To really achieve our policy of downplaying the UFO phenomenon, we would use a combination of ‘spin and dirty tricks,'” claims Pope. “We used terms like UFO buffs and UFO spotters — terms that mean these people are nut jobs. In other words, we were implying that this is just a very somewhat quaint hobby that people have as opposed to a serious research interest.”

As in many things, it seems the U.S. and U.K. had UFO public relations strategy in common.

I remember the first time I got a good case. It was a security officer who had recently returned from the war in Iraq. He was hypersensitive to his environment and spotted an odd object hovering over a mountain near commercial airliners’ path. He says he tried calling the local airport and the police. No one cared. He finally found the number to a local group collecting UFO reports and got to me. When I called the airport and hounded the FAA on the matter, they didn’t care. They referred me to civilian UFO groups, like the one of which I was a part.

I was shocked and very concerned. It appeared the UFO taboo was causing government agencies to lend a blind-eye to potentially dangerous situations that put the public in harm’s way. What my witness reported may have been someone flying a remote-controlled aircraft near commercial airliners. But the FAA could not be bothered once the word “UFO” was invoked.

It was refreshing to hear Senator Marco Rubio recently express a similar concern.

“The bottom line is if there are things flying over your military bases and you don’t know what they are because they are not yours, and they exhibit, potentially, technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal, that to me is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into,” Rubio told CBS Miami.

Rubio is the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). In the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act for 2021 (see verbiage below from exploratory committee report: pages 11 and 12), the SSCI is asking that the Director of National Intelligence “in conjunction” with the Secretary of Defense put together a report on “unidentified aerial phenomenon [UAP].” The report is to include information from the “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.”

Why would he assume they have this sort of information? Well, the reasons made public stem from the revelations of Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence officer who claims to have headed up a project at the Pentagon investigating UAP. His involvement in the program was featured in an article in The New York Times in late 2017. Elizondo claimed that the program continued even after he had left a few months before the article was published.

Although the Department of Defense (DoD) balked at the claims at first, they have admitted that the program existed and still exists. A DoD spokesperson recently told Swedish UFO researcher Roger Glassel it is an “interagency team.”

One agency included in the SSICI UAP report request is the FBI.

Further, just last night, Elizondo told investigative journalist George Knapp on Coast to Coast AM that he recently discovered an earlier program similar to his. A transcript of the conversation can be read on SilvaRecord.com. Elizondo says that he was recently at a meeting having a classified discussion when one of the men present told him he had done Elizondo’s UAP job in the 80s.

“I wasn’t there to ask him questions,” says Elizondo. “I was there for them to ask me questions, but it was very clear to me that AATIP was not the first of its kind ever. There was an organized effort back in the ’80s to do exactly this as well.”

The question is, how will the various agencies the SSCI is asking to provide information respond? Will they gaslight the SSCI, like they have done with the public at large since 1969?

Chris Mellon, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former Staff Director of the SSCI worked with Elizondo to get credible information regarding Elizondo’s UAP research out to the public. U.S. Navy cases, along with firsthand witnesses, led to the Navy admitting they took UAPs seriously and investigated UAP incidents.

Elizondo and Mellon are co-leads in the History Channel series Unidentified. In the first season of the show, we saw the two take some of the Navy witnesses to Washington D.C. to brief lawmakers. Politico covered some of these briefings. All of this lead to the SSCI UAP report requests.

In a recent interview shared on the Rojas Report, Mellon says they have several never before seen military cases that should help frame the forthcoming reports.

“I think they’re going to add to the impetus and the need for Congress to be asking questions,” says Mellon. “And also begin to underscore the kinds of things or provide more reason to believe that a report of that nature should be able to produce some very interesting findings.”

One such case is from NORAD, says Mellon.

“For example, in season two, we have a NORAD watch officer who tells a story of an event he participated in firsthand, in which NORAD was trying to intercept a UFO,” says Mellon. “This [went] all the way up to the four-star level, and they were scrambling every jet they could get in the air.”

This one should make it into the reports. Although in the OPREP article I referenced above, researcher John Greenewald says NORAD had told him “in the spirit of the FOIA, they looked for UFO information but found no records.”

Now the public knows the trials and tribulations of legitimate UFO researchers. There is a lot of wild speculation on the internet regarding UFOs, including thousands claiming to already be in contact with aliens. Hopefully, mainstream science, media, and academia are beginning to realize some of those concerned that the government has been lying to us about what it knows about UFOs have the receipts to prove it.

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21-07-2020 om 21:55 geschreven door peter  

Philly UFO Conference 2019

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22-05-2019 om 22:04 geschreven door peter  

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13-05-2019 om 16:37 geschreven door peter