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[Meus Renaissance]

"The fact that they can hover and accelerate away from the Earth’s gravity again and even revolve around a V-2 in America (as reported by their head scientist) shows they are far ahead of us. If they really come over in a big way that might settle the capitalist-communist war. If the human race wishes to survive they may have to band together."

Thus, in 1950, wrote Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia, during the Second World War, and later Chief of the Defence Staff.1 Mountbatten showed a keen interest in the subject, having had a sighting in the Pacific during the war, and as I learned from the Air Marshall Sir Peter Horsely. Moreover, as reported in Above Top Secret, an unknown flying machine complete with occupant is said to have landed at his estate near Romsey in Hampshire in February 1955, witnessed by one of his workmen. After investigating the landing site and interrogating the witness, Mountbatten wrote in a signed statement that the workman ‘did not give me the impression of being the sort of man who would be subject to hallucinations, or would in any way invent such a story.’2

Mountbatten is also believed to have disclosed some fascinating information to the respected American journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. ‘I can report today on a story which is positively spooky, not to mention chilling,’ she cabled from London in May 1955. ‘British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet’. Her syndicated report continues:

The source of my information is a British official of Cabinet rank who prefers to remain anonymous. ‘We believe, on the basis of our inquiry thus far, that the saucers were staffed by small men – probably less than four feet tall. It’s frightening, but there is no denying the flying saucers come from another planet’.

This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not possibly have been constructed on Earth. The British Government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the ‘flying saucer’ examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public…’3

The Flying Saucer Working Party

In June 1950 a report on what was described as ‘Britain’s first flying saucer’ appeared in national newspapers. During an exercise from the Royal Air Force (RAF) station at Tangmere, Sussex, the pilot of a Gloster Meteor twin-jet fighter had reported an encounter with a ‘shining, revolving disc-like’ object that shot past the jet at high altitude. Intelligence offers debriefed the pilot and a report was sent to Fighter Command.4

One paper asserted that the disc had been tracked on radar, but an Air Ministry spokesman said this could not be confirmed, adding that there was no evidence that was seen ‘was anything more than natural or meteorological phenomena.’ The paper claimed that a ‘curtain of secrecy’ had been drawn over the subject.5

That summer, 1950, a top-secret meeting was held at the Air Ministry’s Metropole Building in London to discuss the ‘flying saucers’. Chaired by the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Hugh Young, attendees included representatives of M110 (a military intelligence branch which had been involved in the ‘ghost rocket’ investigations four years earlier) and various scientific and technical intelligent specialists, such as Wing Commander Myles Formby. The chairman explained that Sir Henry Tizard, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Ministry of Defence, ‘felt that reports of flying saucers should not be dismissed without some investigation’ and he had agreed that a small Directorate of Scientific Intelligence/Joint Technical Intelligence Committee ‘working party’ should be set up to investigate future reports. It was agreed that the membership of the working party should compromise of representatives of various technical and scientific intelligence branches of the Air Ministry, the Admiralty (Royal Navy) and the War Office.

RAF Fighter Command was advised that all future reports of aerial phenomena were to be directed to the Flying Saucer Working Party (FSWP). 5 Over an eight-month period, the FSWP studied numerous reports and liaised with its counterparts in the US and other countries. The US Air Forces’ Project Grudge team, as well as the CIA, were consulted.5 Grudge’s negative conclusions undoubtedly contributed to the scepticism evinced by some FSWP members: the astronomer Dr J. Allen Hynek, a consultant to the CIA and the US Air Force, had concluded that 70 per cent of sightings could be explained, the remainder either lack sufficient evidence ‘or the evidence offered suggested no explanation, though some of these might conceivably be astronomical’.7

In my opinion, the FSWP team would not have been granted access to the US Government’s most sensitive secrets relating to the subject. Air Marshall Sir Peter Horsely, who had been given carte blanche to study any UFO reports and interview pilots when serving as equerry to HRH Prince Philip and HM the Queen in the 1950’s, learned from Air Marshall Sir Thomas Pike, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Fighter Command, that the Americans were ‘extremely sensitive’ about the subject. Sir Peter was also informed by Group Captain Bird-Wilson of the British Defence Staff in Washington that the American authorities were not prepared to ‘give information about any conclusions which they might have reached’.8

1: Ziegler, Philip, Mountbatten: The Official Biography
2: Good, Timothy, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover Up
3: Los Angeles Examiner
4: Daily Herald, London
5. The National Archives - DEFE 41/74
6: Clarke, David and Roberts, Andy, Out of the Shadows
7: Unidentified Flying Objects, Directorate of Scientific Intelligence and Joint Technical Intelligence Committee, Report No 7
8: Horsely, Peter, Sounds From Another Room

The evidence that there are objects which have been seen in our atmosphere, and even on terra firma, that cannot be accounted for either as man-made objects or as any physical force or effect known to our scientists, seems to me to be overwhelming... A very large number of sightings have been vouched for by persons whose credentials seem to me unimpeachable. It is striking that so many have been trained observers, such as police officers and airline or military pilots. Their observations have in many instances... been supported either by technical means such as radar or, even more convincingly, by... interference with electrical apparatus of one sort or another....

Lord Hill-Norton, Chief of Defense Staff, Ministry of Defense, Great Britain, 1973; Chairman, Military Committee of NATO, 1974-77

I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth.

Colonel L. Gordon Cooper, Mercury and Gemini Astronaut, in an address to the UN in 1985 after announcing that he had seen and chased UFOs over Germany in the 1950s.

It is time for the truth to be brought out... Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.... I urge immediate Congressional action to reduce the dangers from secrecy about unidentified flying objects.

Former CIA Director Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, signed statement to Congress, August 22, 1960.

We have contact with alien cultures.

Astronaut Dr. Brian O'leary

 

[Meus Renaissance]

Part One - the following is a segment from Leslie Kean's book.

During the early years when reports of unknown aerial phenomena increased to the point that the military became involved, a project was set up within the Air Materiel Command as a result, and given the code name “Sign.”[1] The new agency began its operations in early 1948 at Wright Field (now called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) with the mandate to collect information, evaluate it, and assess whether the phenomenon was a threat to national security. According to air force personnel and others involved with the study, among them Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Sign became more convinced that the objects were not Russian, and that divisions grew between those who thought they were “interplanetary”—the term used at the time, when much less was known about our solar system—and those who were determined to find a more conventional explanation. Later that year, he claims, some Project Sign staff wrote a top-secret report, an “Estimate of the Situation,” providing data on convincing cases and concluding that, based on the evidence, UFOs were most likely extraterrestrial. The document eventually landed on the desk of General Hoyt Vanderbeng, Air Force Chief of Staff, who rejected it as unacceptable because he wanted proof, and responded by returning it to its authors at Project Sign. From then on, the proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis lost ground, and because of the clear message from Vandenberg and others, the safer position that UFOs must have conventional explanations was adopted by the majority of the project’s investigators. It appears they were under pressure to shift their focus. The “Estimate of the Situation” was reportedly destroyed, and no copies have ever been found despite repeated attempts using the Freedom of Information Act. In response to this claim, the USAF denied the memo had ever existed. There has been no evidence to counter this other than the testimonies of those involved with Sign.[2]

Project Sign was later renamed Project Grudge, which then became the well-known Project Blue Book in 1951, lasting for nineteen years. As time passed, it continued to become increasingly clear that some of these objects did not belong to any foreign government, and we had to face the clear possibility that they did not originate here on Earth. U.S. government documents released through the FOIA show that, as a result, some officials from multiple branches of government continued to assert that they might be interplanetary – indeed they refused to rule out this possibility. As before, other factions stuck to their hope of finding a conventional explanation, regardless. In July 1952, the FBI was briefed through the office of Major General John Samford, the director of intelligence for the Air Force, and told that it was “not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars.” Air intelligence was “fairly certain” that they were not “ships or missiles from another nation in this world,” the FBI memo reports. Another FBI memo stated some months later that “some military officials are seriously considering the possibility of planetary ships.”[3] At the same time, national defence concerns were mounting about the preponderance of technologically advanced unidentified objects flying over the United States during the Cold War. One famous series of sightings over the nation’s capitol, in which Air Force planes were sent to intercept brilliant objects picked up by ground radar, made national headlines in July 1952, and necessitated a press conference, the biggest one since World War II, in which intelligence chief General Samford tried to calm the country. He said:

“Air Force interest in the problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze, to the best of our ability, anything in the air that has the possibility of [being] a threat or menace to the United States. In pursuit of this obligation, since 1947, we have received and analyzed between one and two thousand reports that have come to us from all kinds of sources. Of this great mass of reports, we have been able adequately to explain the great bulk of them—explain them to our own satisfaction. However, there are then a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. We have, as of date, come to only one firm conclusion with respect to this remaining percentage. And that is that it does not contain any pattern of purpose or of consistency that we can relate to any conceivable threat to the United States.”

He told reporters that the Washington, D.C., events were likely mere aberrations caused by temperature inversions—layers in the atmosphere in which rising temperatures affect radar performance—an interpretation contracted by the pilots and even radar operators involved. The increasing numbers of reports were becoming hard to manage along with growing public interest in the phenomenon. In late 1952, H. Marshall Chadwell, assistant director of scientific intelligence for the CIA, sent a memo about this problem to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). “Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles,” he stated.

In another 1952 memo, titled “Flying Saucers,” the CIA’s Chadwell said the DCI must be “empowered” to initiate the research necessary “to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects.” The CIA recognized the need for a “national policy” as to “what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic,” [5]according to government documents. It was therefore decided that the DCI would “enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence.[6]” As a result of this decision, the CIA arranged a critically important meeting that would forever change both the course of media coverage and the official attitude toward the UFO subject. The results of this meeting help explain the omnipresent disengagement of American officials during the decades to come, according to some investigators and proponents of the UFO subject.

The CIA began its work in January 1953, when it convened a hand-picked scientific advisory panel, chaired by H. P. Robertson, a specialist in physics and weapons systems from the California Institute of Technology, for a four-day closed-door session. Authorities were concerned that communication channels were being so saturated by hundreds of UFO reports that they were becoming dangerously clogged. Even though the UFOs had demonstrated no threat to national security, false alarms could be dangerous and defence agencies might have a problem discerning true hostile intent. Officials were concerned that the Soviets might take advantage of this situation by simulating or staging a UFO wave, and then attack. Ironically, the CIA would in future decades encourage the perpetuation of the UFO subject to the public to mask classified surveillance crafts such as the U2 plane.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

First paragraph quotes are extracted from the Robertson committee, also known as the Durant Report.

The Robertson Panel’s goal was to find ways to reduce public interest in order to prevent the filing of reports. Members of the distinguished panel were given a cursory review of selected UFO cases and exceptional film footage that had so far been kept secret. This was meant to represent an overview of the best UFO data on file, but the four days (12 hours in total) allotted was not nearly enough time for a proper assessment. Nonetheless, in its secret report written at the completion of its review, the Robertson Panel recommended that “the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.” To achieve this, the panel proposed the creation of a broad educational program integrating the efforts of all concerned agencies, with two major aims: training and debunking. Training meant more public education on how to identify known objects in the sky, so that they would not be misidentified as UFOs. Debunking was for use primarily by the media. “The ‘debunking’ aim would result in reduction in public interest in ‘flying saucers’ which today evokes a strong psychological reaction,” wrote the panel, “and would be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles.” In addition to the media, the panel recommended using psychologists, advertising experts, amateur astronomers, and even Disney cartoons to reduce enthusiasm and gullibility. “Business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the ‘mystery’ and then the ‘explanation’ would be forceful.” Lastly, civilian groups studying UFOs should be “watched” due to their “great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur.”

In short, a group of scientists selected by the CIA advised the United States government to encourage all agencies within the intelligence community to influence mass media and civilian research groups for the purpose of debunking UFOs. Media could then become a tool for covertly controlling public perception, a mouthpiece for government policy and propaganda, to “debunk,” or ridicule, UFOs. Public interest in UFO incidents was to be strongly discouraged and diminished through these tactics, and intelligence operatives could make sure that the facts were kept from leading researchers through disinformation. In the name of national security, the subject was fair game for the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus. All of these recommendations were written in black and white by the CIA panel and then classified, and the public did not have access to the full report until 1975, when the explosive Robertson Panel Report was finally released in its entirety. This report in many ways fundamentally explains why many within this subject of interest look at government sources with suspicion and doubt as they interpret to be evoking a policy of ridicule and dismissals.

​

When the CIA convened its selected group of scientists in 1953, astronomer J. Allen Hynek had been working for a number of years as consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book. Formerly director of Ohio State University’s McMillan Observatory and later chairman of the astronomy department and director of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center at Northwestern University, Dr. Hynek had been hired in 1948. He sat in on most of the Robertson Panel meetings and observed the predetermined agenda unfold, noting that the best UFO evidence was not given proper attention. “The implication in the Panel Report was that UFOs were a nonsense (non-science) matter, to be debunked at all costs,” Hynek revealed later. “It made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable.”[7]

Project Blue Book had been set up as a repository for UFO cases and a place for people to call and file reports of sightings, but in reality it was an understaffed, amateurish public relations operation focused on explaining away UFO sightings,; instead of being an objective study, it was plagued by controversy and accusations of bias. Throughout his career as popular public representative of Blue Book for the duration of its operation, Hynek was well aware of the integration of the “training and debunking” tactic within the Air Force program, but ironically, as one of the implementers of the Robertson Panel agenda, he was part of the problem himself.

Years later he admitted that “for nearly twenty years [of Project Blue Book, 1951–1970] not enough attention was paid to the subject to acquire the kind of data needed even to decide the nature of the UFO phenomenon.”[8] Hynek was the only consistent presence at Blue Book and the sole scientist. The office was staffed mainly by an ever-changing stream of low-ranking officers with no particular training to prepare them for this line of work, and often little interest in it. Hynek brought some respectability to the Air Force project, though it was never equipped to solve the problem and official prejudice kept it that way. Despite his eventual transformation after two decades of work with the Air Force (he then changed his opinion that some UFO's are likely extraterrestrial in origin), Hynek had earlier stretched logic to its limit in order to explain away as many UFO reports as possible. In his landmark 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, he acknowledged that debunking was what the Air Force expected of him. “The entire Blue Book operation was a foul-up based on the categorical premise that the incredible things reported could not possibly have any basis in fact,”[8] he wrote. The Air Force, at least publicly, had dutifully fulfilled the debunking role that the CIA panel had so highly recommended, and Blue Book records are rife with examples of solid cases being given ridiculous, often infuriating explanations, sometimes by Hynek himself. Even as he became more aware of the contradiction in later years, Hynek said he did not want to fight with the military and felt it was more important that he maintain access to the store of data at Blue Book, “as poor as they were.”

In this vein, perhaps most famous is his “swamp gas” statement, made in 1966. For two days, over a hundred witnesses in Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan, had seen glowing unidentified objects at relatively low altitudes, many of them near swampy areas. This quickly became a highly charged national news story, and great pressure was placed on the Air Force to solve the case as quickly as possible. Hynek was called to a packed press conference, one bordering on hysteria, as he described it, where he made the comment that the lights could have been the glow of something called marsh gas, a rare phenomenon that arises from the spontaneous ignition of decaying vegetation. The hostility he faced in the press and among the public for his “swamp gas” explanation was widespread, and the media ridicule he received is now legendary. This time, everyone seemed to recognize that the Air Force had gone too far and crossed an unacceptable line in its debunking.

American frustration with the Air Force’s inability to adequately investigate and address recurring UFO sightings had been building, and many now began to feel that the Air Force was not only incompetent but actually intent on covering up the truth about UFOs. Two well-known figures of this era—Major Donald Kehoe of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a leading civilian research group, and Dr. James E. McDonald, a senior atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona—played critical roles in bringing credibility and knowledge to the UFO subject while challenging the approach of Project Blue Book. Following the publication of best-selling books and magazine cover stories about UFOs that year, public interest in the phenomenon was at its peak.

It is impossible to determine to what extent what extent the recommendations of the Robertson Panel were directly implemented. However astrophysicist Thornton Page of Johns Hopkins University, one of the panellists of the report, wrote to Frederick Durant, head of the National Air and Space Museum’s aeronautics department—both men had been members of the Robertson Panel—claiming that he “helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions,” referring to the two-hour special “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?” hosted by the trusted Walter Cronkite.[9] The Cronkite show debunked UFOs from all angles with intense bias and false claims, such as statements that no radar or photographic evidence existed to support the physical reality of UFOs. Ironically, Thornton Page himself made an appearance on the CBS special, defending the objectivity of the Robertson Panel evaluation and telling viewers that “we tried to evaluate all the reports without saying they’re ridiculous in advance.” Cronkite reported that the CIA panel found “no evidence of UFOs” and ended the broadcast by encouraging viewers to remember that “while fantasy improves science fiction, science is more served by fact”.

But it wasn’t just the ordinary public or the media being frustrated. Due to the outrage of his constituents following a series of sightings in his state, including the ones labelled “swamp gas,” Representative Gerald Ford, House Republican minority leader at the time, “in the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than thus far given by the Air Force,” called for congressional hearings on the subject of UFOs.[10] Just before the Cronkite special, on April 5, 1966, the House Armed Services Committee heard from members of the Air Force, including consultant J. Allen Hynek, about the UFO problem, in which they considered recommendations for an independent scientific investigation outside of Project Blue. The Air Force took its first step away from the messy UFO business by agreeing to find a university willing to coordinate the study, one which would help the Air Force decide whether to continue its own program or disentangle itself from an unsatisfactory public relations campaign becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

​

Late in 1966 it was decided: The University of Colorado agreed to host a government-funded study of UFOs to be headed by Edward U. Condon, a well-known physicist and former head of the National Bureau of Standards. Although initial expectations were high for the project, and for a short time even added legitimacy to scientific scrutiny of UFOs, it gradually fell apart due to internal disputes among the study’s committee members. It soon became known that from the outset Condon had held strongly negative personal views about the subject and had never intended to proceed fairly or objectively. On top of that, conflict arose about whether the extraterrestrial hypothesis had any validity along with the many other theories under consideration. A crisis point was reached when two concerned project members unearthed a damaging August 9, 1966, memo by project coordinator Robert Low to two university deans. In it, Low had discussed the pros and cons of taking on the UFO research project, when it was still under discussion. If the project were to be undertaken, he laid out the problem:

“One has to approach it objectively. That is, one has to admit the possibility that such things as UFOs exist. It is not respectable to give serious consideration to such a possibility … one would have to go so far as to consider the possibility that saucers, if some of the observations are verified, behave according to a set of physical laws unknown to us. The simple act of admitting these possibilities just as possibilities puts us beyond the pale, and we would lose more in prestige in the scientific community than we could possibly gain by undertaking the investigation.”

So, Low offered a way out:

“Our study would be conducted almost exclusively by nonbelievers who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.”[11]

The specific language he used in his memo—particularly the word “trick”—added more damning evidence to suspect the pending study would lack objectivity. The term “flying saucer” was often used in conjunction with “believers” and “enthusiasts,” who assumed the objects were extraterrestrial and were (presumably) not using the scientific method to address the problem. Condon was infuriated that this was made public, and he fired the two staffers who had leaked the memo the day after he heard about it.

Although Low attempted to keep his own views secret, Condon had no problem making his negative attitudes toward his subject public. In a January 1967 lecture he remarked, “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there’s nothing to it.” He added, “But I’m not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year.”[12]

In response to public concern about all of this, and in reaction to continuing dramatic UFO sightings, a second congressional hearing was called by the House Science and Astronautics Committee in July 1968. A host of scientists from outside the Air Force presented compelling papers on their own studies of UFOs; many of them had grave reservations about the effectiveness of the Condon study and advocated the continued study of UFOs despite its outcome. The testimony of Dr. James E. McDonald, from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and a professor of meteorology at the University of Arizona, was the most extensive, providing a series of compelling UFO case reports. A respected authority and leader in the field of atmospheric physics, McDonald had written many highly technical papers for professional journals. Due to his personal interest, he spent two years examining formerly classified official file material and radar tracking data on UFOs, interviewing several hundred witnesses, and conducting in-depth case investigations on his own, details of which were provided to the committee.

McDonald testified that no other problem within their jurisdiction compared to this one. “The scientific community, not only in this country but throughout the world, has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance.” He indicated that he leaned toward the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation, due to “a process of elimination of other alternative hypotheses, not by arguments based on what I could call ‘irrefutable proof.’” [13]Dr. Hynek recommended that a congressional UFO scientific board of inquiry set up a mechanism for the proper study of UFOs, “using all methods available to modern science,” and that international cooperation be sought through the United Nations.

Extensive research has been done and books have been written on the tumultuous process which eventually produced the Condon committee report, “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,” released in 1968. The approximately 1,000-page tome begins with the conclusions and recommendations by Condon himself. He declared that further scientific study of UFOs was unwarranted and recommended that the Air Force shut down Project Blue Book. Nothing should be done with UFO reports submitted to the federal government from then on, he believed. He wrote that no UFO has posed a national security or defence problem, and that there was no official secrecy concerning UFO reports. Condon’s two-page summary of the report, released to the press and public, actually contradicted the findings contained within the body of the volume, which most people did not bother to read. In fact, Condon himself did not participate in the analysis of the carefully researched case studies that made up the bulk of the study, and it appears he also didn’t bother to read the finished product. The lengthy study did provide some excellent scientific analysis by other members of the committee, buried among many tedious case analyses of marginal importance which dragged on, page after page. Other key cases were left out altogether. Some reports actually verified the reality of still unsolved and highly perplexing UFO phenomena. For example, investigator William K. Hartman, astronomer from the University of Arizona, researched two extraordinary photographs from McMinnville, Oregon, and stated that “this is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical, appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within the sight of two witnesses.”

Regardless, Condon’s summary stated, “Nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past twenty years that has added to scientific knowledge.” And the National Academy of Sciences endorsed Condon’s recommendations. “A study of UFOs in general is not a promising way to expand scientific understanding of the phenomena,” it concluded seven weeks later. Condon added insult to injury by telling the New York Times that his investigation “was a bunch of damn nonsense,” and he was sorry he “got involved in such foolishness.”[14] The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) was among those registering objections after its panel spent over a year studying the actual 1,000-page text of the Condon report. The AIAA stated that Condon’s summary did not reflect the report’s conclusions but instead “discloses many of his [Condon’s] personal conclusions.” The AIAA scientists found no basis in the report for Condon’s determination that further studies had no scientific value, but declared instead that “a phenomenon with such a high ratio of unexplained cases (about 30% in the Report itself) should arouse sufficient curiosity to continue its study.”[15]

As Hynek pointed out at the time, Condon and his supporters mistakenly equated the notion of UFOs with something extraterrestrial, believing that if UFOs were acknowledged as a genuine phenomenon, an implicit acceptance of the extraterrestrial hypothesis would ensue. This was clearly unacceptable to them. As Low pointed out in his memo, the simple act of admitting such a possibility was “beyond the pale,” and any professional doing so risked losing prestige within a scientific community not open to such a radical concept. Even after twenty-two years of Air Force accumulation of data, along with independent studies made by various scientists such as McDonald, an overwhelming number of scientists and government officials still felt profound unease with entertaining even the remote possibility of such a hypothesis. That aversion was strong enough that its purveyors didn’t mind that it completely undermined the accuracy and effectiveness of an expensive, years-long scientific study on which so much depended, and which everyone knew would have a huge, historical impact.

Instead, the final nail was in the coffin. In December 1969, the Air Force announced the termination of Project Blue Book—the United States government’s only official investigation of UFOs—effective the following month. From then on, scientists could justify their dismissal of UFOs by citing the conclusions of the Condon report. The government could refer to the Air Force decision to end its investigation to justify its disinterest in UFO cases. The media could enjoy the ride while making fun of UFOs or relegating them to science fiction.

This is the Genesis of the UFOs, media and the military.

References

1. Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, the Condon Report. Section V Chapter 2.
2. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Doubleday & Company, 1956), pp. 62–63. Ruppelt was the first chief of Project Blue Book, from early 1951 until September 1953. David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 47. Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” Journal of UFO Studies, n.s. 7 (2000), pp. 27–64
3. W. P. Keay, FBI memorandum, “Flying Saucers,” July 29, 1952 (contained in Bruce Maccabee, UFO FBI Connection (Llewellyn Publications, 2000).
4. H. Marshall Chadwell, memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, December 2, 1952 and referenced in 'CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 by Gerald K. Haines
5. H. Marshall Chadwell, memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, December 2, 1952 - Section 'Recommendations'
6. The Durant Report, IAC
7. The Hynek UFO Report, p. 23.
8. Ibid., p. 186.
9. This letter, dated September 10, 1966, was found in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution by Dr. Michael Swords.
10. Letter to L. Mendel Rivers, Chairman, Science and Astronautics Committee of the Committee on Armed Services, March 28, 1966; David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 204.
11. Robert J. Low, memo to E. James Archer and Thurston E. Manning, “Some Thoughts on the UFO Project,” August 9, 1966, contained in David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong (Signet Books/New American Library, 1968), pp. 242–44.
12. John Fuller, “Flying Saucer Fiasco,” Look, May 14, 1968.
13. Hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, “Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects,” July 29, 1968 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 1968), p. 32.
14. “Air Force Closes Study of UFO’s,” New York Times, December 18, 1969.
15. UFO: An Appraisal of the Problem, a Statement by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA,” Astronautics and Aeronautics, 8, no. 11.

 

[Professor Renegade]

 

[GrizzNKev]

I saw a UFO once.

Then I identified it.

 

[Shawsie64]

Fantastic, Meus! I'll have a read on lunch break

 

[Mully]

I always respect your commitment to UFO's Jason. It's a very interesting topic that you surely know a ton about. What are the most interesting UFO incidents according to you?

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

That other thread must have pissed you off good =P

Edit: Woops, it was bumped hehe. But good thread Jason.

 

[Baconsaurus Rex]

Great stuff Meus. Will check back later when I'm on my PC

 

[Zaphod]

I want to believe

Give me one piece of rock solid physical evidence and I might be interested; and no, that pointy piece of slag found in a desert does not count.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

I always respect your commitment to UFO's Jason. It's a very interesting topic that you surely know a ton about. What are the most interesting UFO incidents according to you?

Thank you for the kind words.

I don't think there is a specific single incident that, unlike others, you can hold as the definitive example of an extraterrestrial presence. I find different incidents interesting for different reasons but often its whenever there is a first in something.

Roswell: the first time we hear about descriptive indicators/language on an alleged craft. In fact, I still remember the Pittsburgh incident because that craft was seen with what was described at the time as "hieroglyphics". The Rendlesham Forest example, beside recordings of increased radiation in the background that night, also alleged symbols on this object. Coincidentally, the symbols -- of which were drawn by the serviceman who saw it first hand -- were incredibly similar to another set of symbols illustrated in a Japanese drawing several hundred years old retelling of an encounter with a strange woman who emerged from the shores of Japan in an object very similar to a disc.

So similarities, sometimes identical ones, between incidents catch my interest more so than the actual incident itself. It's one of my ambitions to actually create a website dedicated to highlighting these similarities.

I enjoy talking about Betty and Barney Hill because, whilst I don't pay much attention to the abduction angle to this phenomena, sceptics often challenge testimony of abductions on the basis that, at least subconsciously, portrayals of the topic in mass media have likely influenced people into misinterpreting sleep paralysis or nightmares as actual alien encounters. The Hill case is interesting because it was the first publicly documented episode of an abduction, so immediately this explanation of external influence seemed not to apply to them.

Another first: the Aurora incident. I find that absolutely fascinating purely because it happened in 1897, where there were no planes or media to influence people. There are a couple of historic incidents that are the first recorded examples of X, Y and Z - interesting because the common explanations given to them in our present setting would not apply.

I'm also partial to accounts given by pilots (or black box audio recordings) due to the fact that they tend to be extremely close encounters. In fact the most spectacular incidents often come from these testimonies. And personally, I find the debunking of these incidents to be more absurd than the actual reports e.g. pilot, his crew and stewardess see a huge disc in front of them for almost a minute; they describe its physical appearance and then say it fades away in front of their eyes. Explanation? Hallucination. Or maybe weather phenomena. On this specific topic, the JAL 1628 incident comes to memory, partly due to the role of FAA Head of Accidents and Investigations, John Callahan who states government figures, whom he suspected to be CIA, took the flight data from his office.

And I will say this: there is a healthy amount of impartial scepticism when debating this subject; those who 'want to believe' are not the only ones with a prejudice.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Meus missed an opportunity to title the thread UFOT.

 

[Übermatik]

Awesome! I fucking love UFOs, especially when they're alternate explanations for paranormal events like Tunguska and Diatlov. Good OP dude.

Meus missed an opportunity to title the thread UFOT.

 

[daw840]

As someone who works closely in the Aviation field....UFOs are definitely real. Though that doesn't mean they are extra terrestrial or even flying objects. Pilots have reported UFO activity that ended up being one of the planets shining on multiple occasions.

I'd chalk it up to odd visual phenomena or military activity really...

Think about the B2 for a second. Before we knew what it was, that would have definitely been thought to be a UFO. That thing looks crazy. Think about what they have now that we DON'T know about. It's definitely some otherworldly looking shit that we'll find out about in 20 years or so.

 

[Übermatik]

As someone who works closely in the Aviation field....UFOs are definitely real. Though that doesn't mean they are extra terrestrial or even flying objects. Pilots have reported UFO activity that ended up being one of the planets shining on multiple occasions.

I'd chalk it up to odd visual phenomena or military activity really...

Think about the B2 for a second. Before we knew what it was, that would have definitely been thought to be a UFO. That thing looks crazy. Think about what they have now that we DON'T know about. It's definitely some otherworldly looking shit that we'll find out about in 20 years or so.

This si the kinda thing I like - UFOs tht are actaully government military technology/weapons testing etc.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

What I wanted to bring up amongst UFO enthusiasts was some of the more questionable elements of sightings.

Throughout the 50s and 60s, descriptions of aliens tended to be similar to Scandinavian humanoids. There were even books written about them, and individuals like Billy Meier increased their popularity. Since then, descriptions of small figures with large heads, often grey, have become the most common identified extraterrestrial but over the last decade, I've come to read more about reptilians. In the large scheme of reports, they are in the minority, but still they do show up consistently. I find that interesting because modern portrayals of aliens as reptilian is almost unheard of to me and yet people still claim to have experiences with them via abductions. It's kind of odd. Reminds me of Hollywood's attempts of creatures from Mars in the 50s.

What are your thoughts on the differing reports on the type of purported extraterrestrials they see? Does the variety add more credence to the topic or undermine it?

 

[Meus Renaissance]

As someone who works closely in the Aviation field....UFOs are definitely real. Though that doesn't mean they are extra terrestrial or even flying objects. Pilots have reported UFO activity that ended up being one of the planets shining on multiple occasions.

I'd chalk it up to odd visual phenomena or military activity really...

Think about the B2 for a second. Before we knew what it was, that would have definitely been thought to be a UFO. That thing looks crazy. Think about what they have now that we DON'T know about. It's definitely some otherworldly looking shit that we'll find out about in 20 years or so.

People frequently forget that UFOs pre-date military stealth aircraft, and even jets altogether. In fact, reports of the design and performance characteristics (saucer or cigar shaped, extreme acceleration in silence, impossible aerodynamics) go back to a time where the Air Force still had squadrons using propeller planes - decades before we began putting men on missiles to reach comparable speeds to these objects. It's physically impossible for the human body to cope with the G forces involved in making instant right angle turns as much as it is now as it was 60 years ago. The theory that UFOs are in reality covert military aircraft proposes the military had technology that defied current known physics, aerodynamics and propulsion systems that are the stuff of fantasy even today back in the 1940s just decades after the Wright Brothers flew the first plane.

That's not to say, however, that exotic aircraft cannot be confused for UFOs

 

[PigSpeakers]

Any dope looking videos that haven't been completely debunked already? That's like, my favorite things. Maybe some higher quality stuff, know what I'm saying man?

Mulder needs answers.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

Any dope looking videos that haven't been completely debunked already? That's like, my favorite things. Maybe some higher quality stuff, know what I'm saying man?

Mulder needs answers.

We almost had it a while back over the skies of Belgium. This is what the pilot's radar locked on to.

Over the next hour the two scrambled F-16s attempted nine separate interceptions of the targets. On three occasions they managed to obtain a radar lock for a few seconds but each time the targets changed position and speed so rapidly that the lock was broken. During the first radar lock, the target accelerated from 240 km/h to over 1,770 km/h while changing altitude from 2,700 m to 1,500 m, then up to 3,350 m before descending to almost ground level – the first descent of more than 900 m taking less than two seconds. Similar manoeuvres were observed during both subsequent radar locks​

I don't think its correct in saying both jets had locks on it. I remember that the data couldn't be verified because the other pilot's radar system wasn't working correctly, so the initial data cited above could not be proved; something which would need to have been done considering what it suggested. The Belgium Air Force had a press conference on the incident in which they (to my memory) explained the above; they could not be absolutely certain the equipment wasn't faulty. Unbelievable misfortune

 

[weekend_warrior]

Somewhere out there something is watching us. There are alien forces acting in ways we can't perceive. Are we alone in the universe? Impossible. When you consider the wonders that exist all around us... voodoo priests of Haiti, the Tibetan numerologists of Appalachia, the unsolved mysteries of Unsolved Mysteries... The truth is out there.

 

[Zaphod]

As someone who works closely in the Aviation field....UFOs are definitely real. Though that doesn't mean they are extra terrestrial or even flying objects. Pilots have reported UFO activity that ended up being one of the planets shining on multiple occasions.

I'd chalk it up to odd visual phenomena or military activity really...

Think about the B2 for a second. Before we knew what it was, that would have definitely been thought to be a UFO. That thing looks crazy. Think about what they have now that we DON'T know about. It's definitely some otherworldly looking shit that we'll find out about in 20 years or so.

Now that is the reason I am still interested in the stuff. I saw a B2 fly over base at night once and it was so quiet and strange looking with its lights on. It had to freak out the guys who first saw it fly over a decade earlier.

 

[PigSpeakers]

Somewhere out there something is watching us. There are alien forces acting in ways we can't perceive. Are we alone in the universe? Impossible. When you consider the wonders that exist all around us... voodoo priests of Haiti, the Tibetan numerologists of Appalachia, the unsolved mysteries of Unsolved Mysteries... The truth is out there.

Old school Unsolved Mysteries was awesome. Robert Stack had the best voice, and those recreations of ufo sightings they did blew my mind as a kid. They're garbage now though.

 

[Mully]

What I wanted to bring up amongst UFO enthusiasts was some of the more questionable elements of sightings.

Throughout the 50s and 60s, descriptions of aliens tended to be similar to Scandinavian humanoids. There were even books written about them, and individuals like Billy Meier increased their popularity. Since then, descriptions of small figures with large heads, often grey, have become the most common identified extraterrestrial but over the last decade, I've come to read more about reptilians. In the large scheme of reports, they are in the minority, but still they do show up consistently. I find that interesting because modern portrayals of aliens as reptilian is almost unheard of to me and yet people still claim to have experiences with them via abductions. It's kind of odd. Reminds me of Hollywood's attempts of creatures from Mars in the 50s.

What are your thoughts on the differing reports on the type of purported extraterrestrials they see? Does the variety add more credence to the topic or undermine it?

It could be people who are already well involved in the "evil" Reptillian angle that David Icke conceived in the early 90's.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

Is anyone familiar with the Siberian 'Cauldrons'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PnfIL6WmGM&feature

Amazing. They need to go back with some equipment, something to detect whether there are objects below the surface. I'm surprised they went there without it. Apparently these cauldrons do actually exist and there is a Nat Geo documentary which shows the early 20th century photographs taken of them. Whether or not they actually emerge from the ground, let alone shoot anything into the sky, is another matter of course.

MysteriousUniverse discussed it on one of their podcasts, but they referred to it as the 'Taiga' legend.

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/05/episode-720-mysterious-universe/

 

[jstripes]

This, pretty much.

I went through my UFO phase when I was much, much younger. I still think it's possible, but who knows, honestly. (Grown-up cynic.)

Old school Unsolved Mysteries was awesome. Robert Stack had the best voice, and those recreations of ufo sightings they did blew my mind as a kid. They're garbage now though.

That was the shit when I was a kid.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Don't know where to get started in this thread yet.

 

[jufonuk]

Well hello there, I expect Kharvey anytime soon

I've still got to finish a few books, You can't tell the people (sorry the way it is written is rather rambling) The Leslie Kean book and After Disclosure

also jsut wanted to post this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t3gj6DeybU&feature=player_embedded

 

[Darkmakaimura]

This was posted by George Knapp on Twitter.

Deathbed confession by former military man about saucers hidden in underground hangars so. of Area 51.

http://vimeo.com/64939351

 

[Darkmakaimura]

The following is an article written in Las Vegas CityLife by local investigative journalist George Knapp, a favorite among many including myself.

Edit: Not sure if I can copy and paste an entire article even if I provide the source (twice, in this case). If I cannot, lemme know and I will immediately edit.

Stop the Snark.

George Knapp: Stop the snark

if you’ve ever wondered why Congress has avoided the subject of UFOs for 45 years, you can get a pretty good idea by observing reactions to the unofficial Citizens Disclosure Hearing underway this week at Washington’s National Press Club.

After covering UFO-related stories for 25 years now, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard some UFO speaker or researcher demand that Congress hold formal hearings into the mystery, or that the president finally come clean about what the government really knows. As a disciple of the First Amendment and a believer in the right of the people to know what our government is up to, I am firmly behind the goals of the Disclosure Hearing — namely, the spilling of any and all UFO beans by our military and intelligence honchos.

But I am not holding my breath that the hearing, noble as its goal might be, will cause the flinty-hearted holders of our nation’s deepest, darkest secrets to suddenly spill their guts. Likewise, I am not waiting by the mailbox for my invitation to take a tour of Area 51 and maybe kick the tires on a couple of reverse-engineered spaceships.

Congress had the balls to hold not one, but two formal hearings into the UFO mystery back in the late ’60s, in part because of the considerable influence of a Michigan congressman named Gerald Ford (who went on to hold one or two higher offices in D.C.). But when the Air Force cancelled its pathetic excuse for a scientific study — Project Blue Book — back in 1969, it provided cover for every elected official, skeptical scientist and uninformed debunker who never really wanted to deal with the messy UFO mystery to begin with. On the surface, Washington has been ignoring UFOs ever since.

Yes, on the surface.

Only a handful of people know this, but in the late ’90’s there was a concerted effort to hold a limited-focus set of congressional hearings into UFO cases involving national-security matters. The impetus behind the proposed hearings originated right here in Las Vegas, the brainchild of some pretty smart and influential people. I am prevented by assurances of confidentiality from saying much, except that a formal set of hearings was essentially a done deal, ready to launch under carefully massaged parameters. That’s when some of the UFO diehards found out about it, learned that they would be excluded from such hearings and vowed to raise a major stink at every opportunity. The congressmen who had been involved in the discussions took one look at the wild-eyed zealots and quickly concluded they did not need the headache. The idea of congressional hearings died a quiet death.

It is a simple fact that the UFO topic attracts a broad spectrum of people, including hopelessly gullible saucer nuts, ridiculous profiteers who tell ever-wilder stories about evil reptilians and anal probings in order to sell a few books, and political conspiracy folks who use the UFO scenario to buttress their notions about the New World Order. There is no working journalist in America who has had more personal encounters with UFO wackos than yours truly. Yet I can say with no hesitation that it is simply unfair to paint all UFO researchers or authors with the same skanky brush. For journalists who might cover the subject, it’s worse than being merely unfair — it is flat out inaccurate.

The Citizen’s Disclosure Hearing is not an actual congressional hearing, but it is as close as we are likely to see in our lifetimes. A panel of six former members of Congress are listening to testimony from (and asking questions of) a group of 40 or so witnesses. If you were to read some of the media reports about the first two days, you might think everyone involved has fewer teeth than fingers, is wearing double-wide Depends and fake antennae, and spend most of their nights blowing saucer-shaped snot bubbles into the sky. Most of the coverage I have read so far is simply atrocious, condescending in the extreme and — worst of all — not very original.

I’ve read articles about pretty much every UFO conference I have ever attended, and there is a fairly predictable pattern. For some reason, every reporter who covers a UFO-type event feels it is necessary to ridicule the subject matter and the participants, as if to demonstrate their own journalistic chops. On any other assignment, this kind of cavalier and dismissive treatment of the subject matter would be way out of line, but somehow it’s OK if the subject is flying saucers. Why?

In the stories about the UFO hearing so far, I’ve seen references to folks in the audience who wore weird outfits. Cutting-edge journalism, eh? I saw a headline from Al Jazeera that referred to participants as “UFO believers” and a Michigan news outfit that labeled them as “alien conspiracy theorists.” I happen to think that gravity is real. Am I a gravity believer? Belief is a matter of faith. The UFO material under consideration is not faith-based stuff. Snarky — and, frankly, shitty — potshots taken at the former members of Congress by their hometown papers are pretty typical of the treatment the subject normally gets. Before the week is out, we will all get to read lines about Elvis sightings, Loch Ness, My Favorite Martian, ALF and ET’s inability to phone home. Cue the laugh track.

I became interested in UFOs for one main reason. It had nothing to do with movies or comic books, nothing to do with a need to believe in benevolent space brethren, or the kooky and phony photos of aliens in the Weekly World News. I was hooked because I read thousands of pages of previously classified government documents — prepared by and for our military, FBI, CIA and other black-world agencies — that were never meant to see the light of day, but which surfaced after the passage of the Freedom of Information Act. Those documents spelled things out pretty clearly. Our government has studied the UFO mystery for decades, takes the matter very seriously, but has gone out of its way to belittle the subject. These documents are not hard to find anymore. You can read them yourselves. The reporters who cranked out smarmy and dismissive stories about the D.C. hearing could do likewise, but didn’t.

Yes, there are a couple of wacky people in goofy outfits in the audience. But take a fair look at some of the witnesses. Dr. Edgar Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the moon. He says the UFO cover up is real. So does Paul Hellyer, former minister of defense in Canada. Ditto for Nick Pope of the British Ministry of Defense, or historian Richard Dolan, or nuclear physicist Stan Friedman. And what are we to make of the stories told by a half-dozen military men who were trusted to guard our nation’s most fearsome weapons and who say their bases were invaded by weird craft, that nuclear weapons were manipulated during these incursions? These stories aren’t funny. These people deserve better than a few wisecracks.

I am not at all hopeful that the D.C. hearing will prompt any official disclosure, but I hope it, at a minimum, makes it more acceptable to talk about these issues. And I hope that at least one or two of the reporters who are typing out wisecracks will consider doing some actual research. Disclosure is unlikely and might not even be possible anymore, for reasons I can’t even begin to explain. But a little more understanding is not out of the question, even for know-it-all journalists.

GEORGE KNAPP is a Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter for KLAS Channel 8. Reach him at gknapp@klastv.com

Source: http://lasvegascitylife.com/sections/opinion/knappster/george-knapp-stop-snark.html

 

[WorldStar]

Slightly off-topic (not really), but is anyone a fan of Coast to Coast AM?

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Slightly off-topic (not really), but is anyone a fan of Coast to Coast AM?

Listen to it almost every night.

Here is NeoGAF's official thread for Coast to Coast AM

 

[Cow Mengde]

I want to believe is the perfect way to describe UFO to me. I want to believe.

 

[WorldStar]

Listen to it almost every night.

Here is NeoGAF's official thread for Coast to Coast AM

Holy shit there really is a thread for everything here at neogaf.

Thanks!

 

[Meus Renaissance]

This was posted by George Knapp on Twitter.

Deathbed confession by former military man about saucers hidden in underground hangars so. of Area 51.

http://vimeo.com/64939351

There have been a few death bed confessions. One of the most infamous is alleged to have said "we can now take ET home"

http://www.ufo-blogger.com/2010/08/ufo-are-real-ben-rich-lockheed-skunk.html

I don't believe it personally, but Gary McKinnon did claim to find that list of 'extraterrestrial' officers and ships that weren't in the Navy.

 

[Thug Waffle]

With how unique our solar system is compared to those elsewhere in the galaxy, it does seem like a logical point of exploration for spacefaring civilizations from other planets.

 

[Various Artists]

Neat thread. Interesting information. I want to believe but all the "facts" ever presented have been totally irrefutable.

I want the CEO of Lockheed to come out and say something now on TV with evidence. Then I will start believing. I just think in todays day in age with a billion cameras on the streets and in everyones pocket wed have at least a little tangible evidence.

 

[Various Artists]

With how unique our solar system is compared to those elsewhere in the galaxy, it does seem like a logical point of exploration for spacefaring civilizations from other planets.

With the trillions upon trillions of possibilities it seems logical that they could have swung by when our planet was basically an active volcano, said "check this off, no life here" and never returned.

Sorry for the DP!

 

[Thug Waffle]

With the trillions upon trillions of possibilities it seems logical that they could have swung by when our planet was basically an active volcano, said "check this off, no life here" and never returned.

Sorry for the DP!

Sure, that might have happened.

But chances are good that if they had developed interstellar travel, they'd be able to identify a planet that is "basically an active volcano" as a potential site for life in the future. Basically any civilization that "swung by" would figure that out if they understood planet formation.

And if alien civilizations with interstellar capabilities traveled near Sol billions of years ago, it's certainly possible that similarly capable species exist to this day and are aware of an Earth that is no longer a strictly volcanic world.

 

[Baconsaurus Rex]

Is anyone familiar with the Siberian 'Cauldrons'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PnfIL6WmGM&feature

Amazing. They need to go back with some equipment, something to detect whether there are objects below the surface. I'm surprised they went there without it. Apparently these cauldrons do actually exist and there is a Nat Geo documentary which shows the early 20th century photographs taken of them. Whether or not they actually emerge from the ground, let alone shoot anything into the sky, is another matter of course.

MysteriousUniverse discussed it on one of their podcasts, but they referred to it as the 'Taiga' legend.

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/05/episode-720-mysterious-universe/

That was a great show. Having a prolongated stay inside of those cauldrons is apparently dangerous to your health, possibly due to radiation.

Edit: or yeah, like they mentioned in that documentary

 

[V_Arnold]

What I wanted to bring up amongst UFO enthusiasts was some of the more questionable elements of sightings.

Throughout the 50s and 60s, descriptions of aliens tended to be similar to Scandinavian humanoids. There were even books written about them, and individuals like Billy Meier increased their popularity. Since then, descriptions of small figures with large heads, often grey, have become the most common identified extraterrestrial but over the last decade, I've come to read more about reptilians. In the large scheme of reports, they are in the minority, but still they do show up consistently. I find that interesting because modern portrayals of aliens as reptilian is almost unheard of to me and yet people still claim to have experiences with them via abductions. It's kind of odd. Reminds me of Hollywood's attempts of creatures from Mars in the 50s.

What are your thoughts on the differing reports on the type of purported extraterrestrials they see? Does the variety add more credence to the topic or undermine it?

As far as I "know" (for example from various channeled materials, although it is hard to distinguish between good material and wishful thinking/nonsense, and it is not my place to judge it), there are various different civilizations, so it is not an or situation, but an "and" one. Reptilians, orion, annunaki, plaedeians... and needless to say, certain types that do not inhibit a physical vehicle but can be characterised as an almost blinding light (there were quite a few paranormal stories centered around these as well).

The problem with this that it is quite hard to distinguish between a well documented truth and a web of lies anymore. If I wanted to bring up some kind of false channeling now, or make up a fake encounter, I would surely choose one of the most known stuff, describe any kind of information through the lenses of the usual seekers, and bam. Then others after me could now reference me as well..and so on, and so on.

Still, great thread, will read the detailed first post tomorrow, when I have the time.

 

[bevel]

If you believe in UFO / extra terrestrial visitors... consider watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8lckZ36V2s

There very big problems (scientifically) be able to even travel to other stars/galaxies.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

There very big problems (scientifically) be able to even travel to other stars/galaxies.

If the theory of Einstein-Rosen Bridges (Wormholes) are correct, it wouldn't be. In fact, currently it would be the only plausible way to travel vast distances that we are currently aware of.

I do not think it is impossible to travel interstellar or even intergalactic distances.

This is course assuming the ships are even extraterrestrial and not from the Earth, from a different time or from another universe entirely.

 

[akira28]

If one can get here, then 7 can get here.

Here's one to noodle. What can the effects and details about the ufo sightings tell us about how they work? High frequency sounds, speeds that seemingly defy physics, levitation, not seeming to be bothered by inertia, ect. What are some things we can reasonably assume about how it all works?

 

[vikki]

Great thread, subscribed

I'm from the hometown of Betty and Barney Hill. I kick myself for not ever meeting Betty after having my own sightings.

I woke up in the middle of the night and had to use the bathroom, I was 12 at the time. So I use the bathroom and head back into my room. When I go to get back into bed, I had the top bunk and my older brother had the bottom, I can see through the ladder out the window. About 50 ft from my third floor window there is a shining ball of light. I am frozen from fear for a moment while floats out of view. I move to the center of the room and try to bend down to see where it is, but it is gone. In that moment UFOs and the idea that ET existed was concrete.

That shining ball of light could best be described as ball lightning, though it wasn't moving when I first spotted it.

The problem is, the probability of ball lightning happening twice, in the same fashion, traveling the same pattern, disappearing the same way, is probably as astronomical as life from another planet traversing space.

Two nights from the first incident it happened again. I get up and use the bathroom, this time I catch a glimpse of my parents alarm clock, 3:35, on my way back into my room. As I climb I see it outside again and as soon as it is spotted it takes off again. This time I rush to the window, but it's gone again. I turn the lights and tv on and curl up on the floor as close to my brother as possible.

Please note that I lived in an apartment complex with 13 buildings and 12 apts per building and the only other mention I have heard came from my neighbor9 months after the initial sighting. She said she saw the angel in the tree, she had a huge tree in front of her window.

I understand for tt he skeptics it is hard to believe much of this stuff, or believe that it can be explained, but for me UFOs and ET are very real. And no, I saw no little men, just hard to believe what I saw was anything but extraterrestrial.


tl;dr I saw a UFO as a kid and saw it again two nights later.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

If one can get here, then 7 can get here.

Here's one to noodle. What can the effects and details about the ufo sightings tell us about how they work? High frequency sounds, speeds that seemingly defy physics, levitation, not seeming to be bothered by inertia, ect. What are some things we can reasonably assume about how it all works?

The most consistent characteristic of UFOs seem to be that they generate some kind of electromagnetic field. Bob Lazar, whether or not you accept his claims, was one of the first to give an in-depth presentation on their propulsion system. You can find several videos on YouTube which attempt to demonstrate the potential of electromagnetic fields on i.e. levitation.

The curious thing is, however, there have been examples (e.g. from the 50s) where disc shaped UFOs both lifted off using some kind of combustion mechanism (the earth was scorched and flora burned as retold by Officer Lonnie Zamora), and left plumes of black smoke in their wake. In fact, one of the most famous (and arguably legitimate) photographs taken by Rex Heflin illustrates this in the form of a smoke ring.

I don't think I've heard of a modern sighting which involved flames or smoke, and if that is the case, then it begs serious questions as to why the only reports of that would originate from the 50s.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

This is perhaps the most fantastic UFO incident I've ever come across. Also included in this is the phone call made to the police by the witness.

Unidentified submerged objects are infinitely more interesting than the ones seen in the sky. I try to read as much about them as possible.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

This was posted by George Knapp on Twitter.

Deathbed confession by former military man about saucers hidden in underground hangars so. of Area 51.

http://vimeo.com/64939351

He refers to Majic by name.

I've read both sides of the debate in regards to the MJ-12 documents. Both Friedman and sceptics have made strong arguments presenting their case and whilst reasonable doubt surrounding their authenticity has been established, I was never convinced either way.

Now my gut feeling is that they are, at least partly, legit. What's changed my mind? One of the stronger elements that support their validity is the role of Harvard professor Dr. Menzel as part of MJ-12. It is interesting that a hoaxer would include a vehement sceptic and debunker like Menzel as part of a group that oversaw the retrieval of flying saucers and their occupants. But Friedman later discovers, in part after reading Menzel's unpublished biography - after getting permission from Mrs Menzel, that the professor actually led a covert life; he not only proved that he had an above Top Secret clearance, he also found a direct relationship between him and Vannevar Bush.

Menzel's relation with the intelligence community wasn't public knowledge. Question is, assuming the hoaxer did his research, why choose a wildcard like Menzel to be on the list? If you want to fool someone, you list credible names to advance this.

When looked at from a conceptual perspective, the documents didn't contain any extraordinary piece of information that wasn't theorised or suspected beforehand. In fact, they were treated as evidence confirming what was suspected more so than. But ultimately they were just photographs of documents, so they would never be treated as 'evidence' beyond a limited demographic within the UFO community. Why go to such lengths to produce, arguably, the most sophisticated hoax to involve UFOs that ultimately offers nothing new? The idea that it was done to generate book sales, whilst plausible, doesn't resonate with me too well.

It also touches on another point: why does it represent the only example in 60 years of an alleged leak of evidence of a government conspiracy? Or better yet, why would they keep it a secret for so long? If a disc landed on the proverbial White House lawn tomorrow, then we'd realise the government has indeed by lying all this time about the most important discovery mankind had made. What better way to completely destroy your sense of credibility and even authority?

If this is indeed all true then there is no way they can keep it a secret forever. Logically speaking, I don't see them having any choice but to disclose. But they haven't. I don't think this conundrum gets enough discourse within UFO communities.

 

[bevel]

If the theory of Einstein-Rosen Bridges (Wormholes) are correct, it wouldn't be. In fact, currently it would be the only plausible way to travel vast distances that we are currently aware of.

I do not think it is impossible to travel interstellar or even intergalactic distances.

This is course assuming the ships are even extraterrestrial and not from the Earth, from a different time or from another universe entirely.

Watch the rest of the vid. The speed and maneuvers these objects are supposed to make is also very problematic, yet there are no sonic booms whenever they are sighted and apparently they and the ships are not affected by g-forces.

Watch this also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4KRZQQ_eICo#t=4932s

 

[Meus Renaissance]

Anyone familiar with the 'Friendship' case from Italy?

 

[Kenai]

I always like reading about this stuff and the science behind it (or lack thereof).

Here's my UFO story, although there's not much to tell.

It was about 15 years ago, a cold January morning, and I was waiting outside to catch the school bus. The other kids who waited at that stop with me lived much closer to it than me, and I turned to wave as they were walking up. I started looking up at the sky and saw a shooting star. I was like "oh! how cool".

Then, instead of continuing to fall and/or disappear/burn out, it started going back up! It made a quick outline that was similar to a "checkmark" or a slanted V. It was only for a few seconds so by the time I had pointed it was gone. Not exactly a life changing moment, or even one I think about very often, but I would still like to know sometime what the heck caused it.