I've offered Nick the opportunity to respond to any of my posts re: Body Snatchers in the Desert. Here is his response to Part II, which I have edited only for spelling. Any comments I make will be added in the comments section, as I told Nick I'd let his response stand alone, which only seems fair - so here it is (my original comments are in italics)...
"Hi Paul
Just read your Body Snatchers Review Part 2 and have posted my replies to the various points below.
Best,
Nick
The family of Meyers Wahnee, a pilot and aircrew commander of the 714th Bomb Squadron, 448th Bomb Group, who, according to Nick, told Roswell researchers Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, that the Roswell incident was true, that he was involved, and that there were “decomposing body parts.” What Nick doesn’t mention – and what calls the story into serious question – is that Wahnee (an old man by the time he supposedly related his story) also said that there were three separate crash sites, which does not square with either the traditional "Roswell as an ET crash theory," or Nick’s.
I don’t agree here. As I point out in the book, there were three locations: (1) The crash site of the aircraft and crew; (2) the location of the balloon debris that Brazel found; and (3) the location of the single body, which the Colonel stated that Brazel found “a half mile from the debris field.” Arguably, that is 3 sites.
Paul Helmick and Albert Collins. What these men supposedly said is irrelevant, because they allegedly said it to Timothy Cooper, the purveyor of literally hundreds of phoney MJ-12 documents. According to Nick, they provided “important data that may corroborate… aspects of the Colonel’s account.” However, any corroborative evidence that comes from Cooper is, at best, suspect, and, in fact, is most likely as worthless as his MJ-12 documents (see. pp. 120 – 122).
The Cooper angle inevitably creates controversy – much of it indeed valid re the MJ12 documents. What I would say is this: that Cooper was doing his Roswell/crashed UFO/White Sands research many years before his MJ12 documents started surfacing. I have delved very deeply into the early work of Cooper (most people just concentrate on his later MJ12 document era – a mistake) and there is a clear distinction between his earlier involvement in the UFO subject and his later involvement in the UFO subject. The later involvement was almost exclusively with the highly controversial MJ12 documents that surfaced from him. But his very early work (late 80s onwards) was heavily interview-based with sources. As you know, Cooper claimed to interview a nurse who knew aspects of this story (page 122 of Body Snatchers). As you also know, I have spoken with that nurse (and provided you her name and location) and she was quoted accurately by Cooper. There are other examples of Cooper’s earlier interview-based investigations that check-out too, regardless of later, major concerns re the MJ12 documents that people have.
(d) Vicki Ecker, editor of UFO Magazine, is cited as corroboration by Nick (pp. 123 – 124). Why? Because, a decade ago, she wrote, “What if the Roswell crash was a failed nuclear experiment – either ours or somebody else’s… [What if] it wasn’t nuclear; but if it was, that aspect has been kept secret. Maybe it was still a test of some kind, using shaved monkeys – or even worse, captured Japanese prisoners, for instance – as experimental passengers on an ill-fated flight. Ergo, ‘alien bodies.’” This is not corroboration – this is speculation. The fact that Nick considered it to be worthy of inclusion in the “corroboration” section of his book is indicative of just how little real independent corroboration there is for the stories told by the "Big Four." Even more interesting is the fact that Ecker speculated about “shades of those hideous Nazi experiments” and “Japanese prisoners.” One must legitimately wonder if any of Nick’s four main “whistleblowers” ever read UFO Magazine – or other sources that made similar unfounded speculations?
Speculation maybe, and perhaps I could have come up with a better title for that chapter than “Corroboration” but I included it because it was so very similar to the statements of the interviewees.
(e) Dr. Jacques Vallee, Martin Cannon, and Karl Pflock are all cited as “corroboration” in chapter 11 (pp. 124 – 125). Why? Because each posited that the Roswell case may have been related to a secret government experiment of some sort. Again – a theory by one person does not qualify as corroboration of a theory by another person.
Again, Corroboration was probably not the best title for that chapter, with hindsight. But Vallee’s comments in particular are relevant to the story, which is why I included them.
(f) There is William Moore, upon whom Nick relies for various pieces of information. As with Cooper, Moore – he of MJ-12 / Paul Bennewtiz / AFOSI infamy - is hardly a pillar of credibility. At one point even Frank Kaufmann is cited as a reliable witness (p. 15)! This, needless to say, is not a good sign – as Stan Friedman has pointed out in his review of Body Snatchers in the Desert, even Kevin Randle, long the staunchest supporter of Kaufmann as a reliable witness, now admits that Kaufmann was a fraud.
Actually, I don’t support the Kaufmann story (he claimed that Roswell was an alien event, so how could I?). What I did was to write a chapter stating what had been said about Roswell, who had said what, what the researchers had been saying, etc. You’ll note that I also include the Glenn Dennis story, which I don’t support. But Dennis said what he said and – whether people support it or not – his story is part of the Roswell history. That’s all I was trying to do with that chapter: summarize the history of who had said what, when, etc., so people would have a background to the story, the players, the claims, etc., and then go on from there. In a similar fashion to Kaufmann, I included a chapter on the Air Force’s Mogul and crash-test dummy claims. As with Kaufmann, I don’t support the dummy and Mogul claims, but I included them because – like it or not - they are part of the Roswell history/story.
Silas Newton's diary – I believe Karl Pflock when he says he saw something that might have been Newton’s diary, but it has not been authenticated, nor has it been seen by anyone else. There is no way to tell if it is Newton’s diary, or a forgery. Some would argue, correctly, that there is, other than Karl’s word, no evidence that the document even exists. And yet Nick makes no mention of these facts. Instead, he accepts the “diary” as real, a “fascinating piece of documentary evidence… that may ultimately shed more light on the psychological warfare angle of the crashed UFO mystery.” The use of such an alleged document for this purpose is a-historical, to say the least. As Karl told me, in an e-mail last October, “With the Newton journal, I'm NOT relying on an anonymous source. I'm saying: This is what the source showed me. Can anyone help me with independent confirmation / refutation? BIG difference.” A big difference indeed; unfortunately, it is one that Nick, does not take into account, or note for his readers.
But Paul, you neglect to make mention of an important piece of data that confirms the diary. Turn to page 13 of Karl Pflock’s self-published report titled “The Day After Aztec” and you will see in the 7th paragraph down, the following: “In November 1998, I obtained from William L. Moore a copy of Newton’s holographic will, which I took with me to what turned out to be my last meeting with my source. The will unquestionably is in Newton’s hand, and while I’m certainly not a handwriting expert, the comparison left no doubt in my mind that he wrote the journal, too.” It is this very specific “no doubt in my mind” comment that led me to use the data. Knowing that Karl wrote that he is in “no doubt” that the diary was written by Newton based upon a comparison with the will, is good enough for me, even if right now we are not in a position to analyze the diary.
(b) Otis Benson memos - Benson, who at the time of the Roswell incident was chief of the Medical Research Division in the Office of the Air Surgeon stationed in Washington, D.C. (see Benson's full biography at www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=4669 - Benson was a pioneer in space and aviation medicine, and rose to the rank of Major General), wrote a number of memos that Nick quotes from, and claims as corroboration. In fact, they corroborate nothing. They talk about various experiments the military was conducting, none of which fit the description of the types of experiments Nick's "whistleblowers" discuss, and all of which, at least in terms of subject matter, are now public knowledge. Further, one memo which Nick quotes from at length, dated 1 July, 1947, specifically contradicts Al Barker, who stated that there was a rush on to get the experiments done before the judgment was handed down at the SS doctor's trials in Nuremberg (which came in August 1947). The memo states that experiments dealing with the ability of the human body to withstand G forces would be "greatly extended in the next three months at higher speed utlizing a greater variety of aircraft" - meaning the experiments being referenced in this memo were actually being increased, and were projected to continue well past the "hush hush" date described by Barker. In fact, the memo makes clear that all of the work it described was proceeding apace, and was to continue (it states, for example, that "work is continuing on studies of cockpit cooling and the cooling of pilots employing airflow suits."). (p. 127 -128) Nick calls this document "intriguing;" in fact, it is wholly irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the experiments described by the "whistleblowers," and in fact describes the kind of cutting edge work - all of it perfectly legal - that was undoubtedly going on at the time, and was to continue going on for many years to come.
Yes, this research, of the type that Benson described, was continuing. But as the sources told me, it was the really controversial research involving the Japanese that was stopped. However, no one disputes that similar research continued – just not at such a controversial and illegal level. As an example, officially declassified documents from NEPA reveal that in 1948, NEPA was trying to get official permission to use “life prisoners” in “the experiment” (see page 157 of Body Snatchers). That was the point of using the document: to show that research was continuing, but not at such a controversial level. We know this because NEPA tried to get permission to use “life prisoners” rather than just “snatching” people.
(c) After the red herring of the Benson materials, Nick references a memo that he states is "a true smoking gun." This memo, titled "Analysis of Factors Contributing to 'Pilot Error' Experiences in Operating Experimental Aircraft Controls," unlike the aformentioned Benson memo, does indeed seem to be, at least on the surface, relevant. Written on 22 September, 1947, it talks of "recent air accidents at White Sands Proving Ground" and a report "dealing with mutant experiments of extreme altitude flight, capsule ejection, and decompression effects." The document also talks of "radio-biological hazard studies incident to the work of this project," and a crash on 4 July, 1947 of a "loaned S-Aircraft (PF). (pp. 128 - 130) The problems with this "smoking gun" should be readily apparent, however. For example, what about the "crash" of 4 July, 1947 that is described? The scenario as described by the Colonel et al deals with a Horten Wing type aircraft which was carried aloft by fugo balloons, and then crashed as a result of a catostrophic lightning strike. Certainly the military would have known, by the time this document was written, what the cause of the crash had been if it was a "catostrophic lightning strike." Instead, the document talks of "engine failure," and states that the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, could not fully agree as to the exact cause of the "engine failure," and were specifically looking into pilot error, and how to rectify the problem. Hardly a catostrophic lighting strike, which would have been, to put it mildly, "obvious."Of course, this is pretty much moot, because the document is almost certainly a fake.The source of the document (which can be seen at http://www.majesticdocuments.com/documents/pre1948.php - scroll down to "Lt. Col. Tucker to Office of Air Surgeon, 22 September 1947") is the "mysterious" Cantwheel, of MJ-12 infamy. This "retyped copy" of an alleged original was provided to Timothy Cooper by Cantwheel, who allegedly worked in "Army Counterintelligence."The Cooper - Cantwheel documents are bogus, as any number of researchers have shown. Even Stan Friedman, who believes that the original MJ-12 documents are authentic, labels the Cooper - Cantwheel documents as frauds. At best (and I'm being extremely charitable here), any information provided by Cooper is as highly controversial as the information provided by the Colonel et al. Nick should have known better than to rely on a document provided by this "source" (and I'll note again that the document doesn't even corroborate the Colonel's story anyway). At the very least, he should have noted this fact in the book, but he did not.
Actually, this isn’t correct. If you go the link cited above by Paul at http://www.majesticdocuments.com/ , you will see that the documents in question have spelling errors and are just typed documents, nothing more. There is a lot of background data that is not included in the book, one piece being that in the same way that Karl Pflock got to see Newton’s diary and could take notes, I was in a similar situation with my sources. On one occasion at a Denny’s restaurant in Beaumont, Texas, the documents cited above were shown to me by the Colonel and I took word-for-word notes from the documents. However, while the text is the same as the Cooper-originated material, the documents I was shown were very different – the spacing was different, the typeface was different, they were on official, headed paper that identified the office they came from, they displayed no spelling errors, and they had a signature of an identifiable source whose family I am in touch with. I am in no doubt that they were actual bona fide, aged documents in photo-copied form. I am still looking into this and indeed much of the story is still on-going. It seems likely to me that Cooper’s “versions” were provided to him by someone else, who quickly typed them from the originals to look like the real thing and sloppily made spelling errors along the way (similarities here with the origin of the so-called “Aquarius” document provided to Bill Moore). But the important thing I want to stress is that Cooper’s document is just a “version” of an original that I was shown. Cooper’s is not “the” original. And it was from the copy I was shown that I made the notes, not from Cooper’s version. I still believe that the “smoking gun” document that details the crashes has relevance because there is a reference to “recent air accidents at White Sands Proving Ground;” the involvement of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project; and the involvement of the Atomic Energy Commission. I conclude that the reference to the March 25 event is likely one of the earlier experiments – that all of the sources told me occurred, even if they couldn’t remember the exact date(s). As for the 4 July event, and the reference to “engine failure,” my best estimate is that this was not the Roswell event but was one of the other tests that – again – all of the sources stated occurred in the vicinity of White Sands in summer 1947. As you’ll note on page 129, half way down the page, I was careful to note that the document was connected with “two crashes of experimental vehicles that occurred at White Sands and in the near vicinity.” I did not explicitly link it with the event at the Foster Ranch. What I did do was to specifically use this document to provide evidence that crashes of experimental aircraft were occurring in summer 1947 at and near White Sands. The crash cited in the document is referenced as having occurred on 4 July 1947. But the Colonel told me with respect to the Foster Ranch crash that: “…no one to this day really knows if this happened on July 1, or 2 or 3 or 4, or even sometime before, maybe.” This is the important point: the reference to the device that crashed on the 4th in the document re the “engine failure” comment was obviously not the one at the Foster Ranch. So it is not intended to be a “smoking gun” supportive of that crash, nor was it ever intended to be supportive of the Foster Ranch crash. But it is intended as a “smoking gun” in support of the testimony that a whole range of tests were being undertaken in that area in a clearly delineated period from early 1947 to late summer that failed with crashes. Again, this particular document was shown to me with official heading, signed, no spelling errors. Not the version that was provided to Cooper – even the typewriter was different.
(d) Lincoln LaPaz documents (pp. 134 - 136) - these documents cited by Nick as corroboration are, in fact, simply press releases from the University of New Mexico, where LaPaz was head of the department of Mathematics and the university's Institute of Meteoritics, which confirm that LaPaz had worked on wartime studies about Fugo balloons. Nick then links this to Lewis Rickett's statement that LaPaz was one of those people with whom Rickett worked in an investigation of the Roswell incident, and then asks, "If, as the Colonel has asserted, the key event that led to the legend of the UFO crash at Roswell involved 'a next generation of Fugo' balloon that was responsible for launching an experimental aircraft that catastrophically crashed, then who better to enlist into the study of how and why the Roswell experiment failed than an expert on those very same balloons?" (This sounds an awful lot like the Donald Menzel line of reasoning with respect to MJ-12, i.e. well, Menzel was involved in crytopgraphy during the war, so he was a natural to be on MJ-12 to decipher the "alien" symbols).Even if you believe Rickett's statement, however, there is nothing there to provide any corroboration to the Colonel's story. It is well known (and a quick search of LaPaz's name at http://www.bluebookarchive.com/ will confirm this, if confirmation is necessary) that LaPaz, while he may have worked on the fugo balloon problem in the Second World War, had moved on, and that his primary interest and expertise in the late 1940s was with meteors, green fireballs and other unidentified aerial phenomena. Studying these phenomena was the task for which he had been engaged by the military.Also, if you accept Rickett's account, you have to accept it all, including this part: "Before [LaPaz] went back to Albuquerque, he told me that he was certain this thing had gotten into trouble, that it had touched down for repairs, taken off again, and then exploded. He also felt certain there were more than one of these devices, and that the others had been looking for it. He was positive the thing had malfunctioned." This bears no resemblance to the Colonel's description of the incident.You also have to accept Rickett's explanation of why La Paz would have been involved, which had nothing to do with his wartime work on fugos, but rather his postwar work on meteors: "It was La Paz's job to try to find out what the speed and trajectory of the thing was. La Paz was a world-renowned expert on trajectories of objects in the sky, especially meteors, and I was told to give him all the help I could." (quoted in Friedman and Berliner, Crash at Corona, pp. 102 - 103)There is nothing here that is even remotely corroborative. It is another red herring.
I don’t agree that it is a red-herring. It is a fact that La Paz worked on the Fugo Balloon angle during the War. We don’t know for certain how many of Rickett’s recollections were directly related to the event at the Foster Ranch and how many were related to – potentially – other crashes of these prototype devices that La Paz might have been involved in analyzing. For example, the Colonel stated (quoted on page 113): “There is a reference in the file that was never really confirmed from an interview with a White Sands guy about a similar accident on the Range in May 1947 in which another of these aircraft flown by balloon crash-lands but with a surviving crew.” So this is the problem: there was not just one definitive event that has led to the legend of Roswell. A lot of people want it straight forward and one event, one location, etc. But that isn’t what happened. In reality, there were a number of experiments, a number of crashes, a number of body recoveries, some events with balloons, some not, etc., etc., all in pretty much the same general locations (in aviation terms) and same time frame. Therefore, it is not impossible that some recollections – such as those of Rickett – that appear related to one event, might have been related to another. On this point: La Paz was deeply involved in the Fugo situation in the War. If there was more than one Fugo-related test at White Sands in summer 47 (as seems to be the case), then arguably La Paz would have been involved in all of them and not just the Foster Ranch event. So again, we cannot definitely say which memory relates to which event. It’s just not that clear cut and black and white, much as people want it to be."
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Body Snatchers in the Desert - Part II
Perhaps the most important "witness" in Nick Redfern's new book, Body Snatchers in the Desert, is the man he calls the Colonel. A quick glance at the index makes it clear that, of the four major "whistleblowers" that Redfern uses for sources, the Colonel gets the most play. Like the other four, the Colonel claimed unequivocally that "there has never been the crash and recovery of an alien spacecraft." He maintained that "the Roswell and other 1947 events were given a 'crashed UFO cover' to hide research that was linked with classified high-altitude balloon experiments and the Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft project." (pp. 98 - 99)
The big question is whether or nor there is independent corroboration for the Colonel's story. As Nick himself notes, "if the Colonel's testimony stood alone, then one could rightly question its veracity." (p. 119) However, Nick claims that there is independent corroboration for The Colonel's "controversial" story, which he sets out in Chapter 11 (titled "Corroboration"). This independent corroboration, according to Nick, can be found in “documents and accounts by others,” and led him to conclude that the Colonel's account "does not stand alone."(p. 119).
With corroboration, however, one must consider both the source and the report. In Body Snatchers in the Desert, here is what Nick presents as "independent corroboration" for the Colonel's account, as found in Chapter 11:
1. People
(a) The family of Meyers Wahnee, a pilot and aircrew commander of the 714th Bomb Squadron, 448th Bomb Group, who, according to Nick, told Roswell researchers Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, that the Roswell incident was true, that he was involved, and that there were “decomposing body parts.” What Nick doesn’t mention – and what calls the story into serious question – is that Wahnee (an old man by the time he supposedly related his story) also said that there were three separate crash sites, which does not square with either the traditional "Roswell as an ET crash theory," or Nick’s.
(d) Dee and Loretta Proctor, who allegedly told Schmitt and Carey that, in 1994, with the 81-year-old Loretta Proctor extremely ill with a life-threatening blood clot in her neck, her reclusive son Dee felt compelled to drive her to a remote location on the former Foster ranch where he told her that Mack Brazel had found "something else." Assuming that this is true, neither Dee not Loretta would tell Schmitt and Carey what the “something else” was, and yet Nick (as did Schmitt and Carey in their original article, which Nick quotes from), assume it to be corroborative evidence that Brazel found bodies. This is, needless to say, pretty thin evidentiary gruel. It is hardly corroboration.
(c) Paul Helmick and Albert Collins. What these men supposedly said is irrelevant, because they allegedly said it to Timothy Cooper, the purveyor of literally hundreds of phoney MJ-12 documents. According to Nick, they provided “important data that may corroborate… aspects of the Colonel’s account.” However, any corroborative evidence that comes from Cooper is, at best, suspect, and, in fact, is most likely as worthless as his MJ-12 documents (see. pp. 120 – 122).
(d) Vicki Ecker, editor of UFO Magazine, is cited as corroboration by Nick (pp. 123 – 124). Why? Because, a decade ago, she wrote, “What if the Roswell crash was a failed nuclear experiment – either ours or somebody else’s… [What if] it wasn’t nuclear; but if it was, that aspect has been kept secret. Maybe it was still a test of some kind, using shaved monkeys – or even worse, captured Japanese prisoners, for instance – as experimental passengers on an ill-fated flight. Ergo, ‘alien bodies.’” This is not corroboration – this is speculation. The fact that Nick considered it to be worthy of inclusion in the “corroboration” section of his book is indicative of just how little real independent corroboration there is for the stories told by the "Big Four." Even more interesting is the fact that Ecker speculated about “shades of those hideous Nazi experiments” and “Japanese prisoners.” One must legitimately wonder if any of Nick’s four main “whistleblowers” ever read UFO Magazine – or other sources that made similar unfounded speculations?
(e) Dr. Jacques Vallee, Martin Cannon, and Karl Pflock are all cited as “corroboration” in chapter 11 (pp. 124 – 125). Why? Because each posited that the Roswell case may have been related to a secret government experiment of some sort. Again – a theory by one person does not qualify as corroboration of a theory by another person.
(f) There is William Moore, upon whom Nick relies for various pieces of information. As with Cooper, Moore – he of MJ-12 / Paul Bennewtiz / AFOSI infamy - is hardly a pillar of credibility.
At one point even Frank Kaufmann is cited as a reliable witness (p. 15)! This, needless to say, is not a good sign – as Stan Friedman has pointed out in his review of Body Snatchers in the Desert, even Kevin Randle, long the staunchest supporter of Kaufmann as a reliable witness, now admits that Kaufmann was a fraud.
2. Documents
(a) Silas Newton's diary – I believe Karl Pflock when he says he saw something that might have been Newton’s diary, but it has not been authenticated, nor has it been seen by anyone else. There is no way to tell if it is Newton’s diary, or a forgery. Some would argue, correctly, that there is, other than Karl’s word, no evidence that the document even exists. And yet Nick makes no mention of these facts. Instead, he accepts the “diary” as real, a “fascinating piece of documentary evidence… that may ultimately shed more light on the psychological warfare angle of the crashed UFO mystery.” The use of such an alleged document for this purpose is a-historical, to say the least. As Karl told me, in an e-mail last October, “With the Newton journal, I'm NOT relying on an anonymous source. I'm saying: This is what the source showed me. Can anyone help me with independent confirmation / refutation? BIG difference.” A big difference indeed; unfortunately, it is one that Nick, does not take into account, or note for his readers.
(b) Otis Benson memos - Benson, who at the time of the Roswell incident was chief of the Medical Research Division in the Office of the Air Surgeon stationed in Washington, D.C. (see Benson's full biography at www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=4669 - Benson was a pioneer in space and aviation medicine, and rose to the rank of Major General), wrote a number of memos that Nick quotes from, and claims as corroboration. In fact, they corroborate nothing. They talk about various experiments the military was conducting, none of which fit the description of the types of experiments Nick's "whistleblowers" discuss, and all of which, at least in terms of subject matter, are now public knowledge. Further, one memo which Nick quotes from at length, dated 1 July, 1947, specifically contradicts Al Barker, who stated that there was a rush on to get the experiments done before the judgment was handed down at the SS doctor's trials in Nuremberg (which came in August 1947). The memo states that experiments dealing with the ability of the human body to withstand G forces would be "greatly extended in the next three months at higher speed utlizing a greater variety of aircraft" - meaning the experiments being referenced in this memo were actually being increased, and were projected to continue well past the "hush hush" date described by Barker. In fact, the memo makes clear that all of the work it described was proceeding apace, and was to continue (it states, for example, that "work is continuing on studies of cockpit cooling and the cooling of pilots employing airflow suits."). (p. 127 -128) Nick calls this document "intriguing;" in fact, it is wholly irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the experiments described by the "whistleblowers," and in fact describes the kind of cutting edge work - all of it perfectly legal - that was undoubtedly going on at the time, and was to continue going on for many years to come.
(c) After the red herring of the Benson materials, Nick references a memo that he states is "a true smoking gun." This memo, titled "Analysis of Factors Contributing to 'Pilot Error' Experiences in Operating Experimental Aircraft Controls," unlike the aformentioned Benson memo, does indeed seem to be, at least on the surface, relevant. Written on 22 September, 1947, it talks of "recent air accidents at White Sands Proving Ground" and a report "dealing with mutant experiments of extreme altitude flight, capsule ejection, and decompression effects." The document also talks of "radio-biological hazard studies incident to the work of this project," and a crash on 4 July, 1947 of a "loaned S-Aircraft (PF). (pp. 128 - 130)
The problems with this "smoking gun" should be readily apparent, however. For example, what about the "crash" of 4 July, 1947 that is described? The scenario as described by the Colonel et al deals with a Horten Wing type aircraft which was carried aloft by fugo balloons, and then crashed as a result of a catostrophic lightning strike. Certainly the military would have known, by the time this document was written, what the cause of the crash had been if it was a "catostrophic lightning strike." Instead, the document talks of "engine failure," and states that the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, could not fully agree as to the exact cause of the "engine failure," and were specifically looking into pilot error, and how to rectify the problem. Hardly a catostrophic lighting strike, which would have been, to put it mildly, "obvious."
Of course, this is pretty much moot, because the document is almost certainly a fake.
The source of the document (which can be seen at http://www.majesticdocuments.com/documents/pre1948.php - scroll down to "Lt. Col. Tucker to Office of Air Surgeon, 22 September 1947") is the "mysterious" Cantwheel, of MJ-12 infamy. This "retyped copy" of an alleged original was provided to Timothy Cooper by Cantwheel, who allegedly worked in "Army Counterintelligence."
The Cooper - Cantwheel documents are bogus, as any number of researchers have shown. Even Stan Friedman, who believes that the original MJ-12 documents are authentic, labels the Cooper - Cantwheel documents as frauds. At best (and I'm being extremely charitable here), any information provided by Cooper is as highly controversial as the information provided by the Colonel et al. Nick should have known better than to rely on a document provided by this "source" (and I'll note again that the document doesn't even corroborate the Colonel's story anyway). At the very least, he should have noted this fact in the book, but he did not.
(d) Lincoln LaPaz documents (pp. 134 - 136) - these documents cited by Nick as corroboration are, in fact, simply press releases from the University of New Mexico, where LaPaz was head of the department of Mathematics and the university's Institute of Meteoritics, which confirm that LaPaz had worked on wartime studies about Fugo balloons. Nick then links this to Lewis Rickett's statement that LaPaz was one of those people with whom Rickett worked in an investigation of the Roswell incident, and then asks, "If, as the Colonel has asserted, the key event that led to the legend of the UFO crash at Roswell involved 'a next generation of Fugo' balloon that was responsible for launching an experimental aircraft that catastrophically crashed, then who better to enlist into the study of how and why the Roswell experiment failed than an expert on those very same balloons?" (This sounds an awful lot like the Donald Menzel line of reasoning with respect to MJ-12, i.e. well, Menzel was involved in crytopgraphy during the war, so he was a natural to be on MJ-12 to decipher the "alien" symbols).
Even if you believe Rickett's statement, however, there is nothing there to provide any corroboration to the Colonel's story. It is well known (and a quick search of LaPaz's name at www.bluebookarchive.com will confirm this, if confirmation is necessary) that LaPaz, while he may have worked on the fugo balloon problem in the Second World War, had moved on, and that his primary interest and expertise in the late 1940s was with meteors, green fireballs and other unidentified aerial phenomena. Studying these phenomena was the task for which he had been engaged by the military.
Also, if you accept Rickett's account, you have to accept it all, including this part: "Before [LaPaz] went back to Albuquerque, he told me that he was certain this thing had gotten into trouble, that it had touched down for repairs, taken off again, and then exploded. He also felt certain there were more than one of these devices, and that the others had been looking for it. He was positive the thing had malfunctioned." This bears no resemblance to the Colonel's description of the incident.
You also have to accept Rickett's explanation of why La Paz would have been involved, which had nothing to do with his wartime work on fugos, but rather his postwar work on meteors: "It was La Paz's job to try to find out what the speed and trajectory of the thing was. La Paz was a world-renowned expert on trajectories of objects in the sky, especially meteors, and I was told to give him all the help I could." (quoted in Friedman and Berliner, Crash at Corona, pp. 102 - 103)
There is nothing here that is even remotely corroborative. It is another red herring.
As should be clear by now, there is no real corroborative evidence for the accounts told by The Colonel, the Black Widow, Bill Salter, and Al Barker. Thus, their accounts must stand or fall on their own merits. As demonstrated in Part I, Barker's account is beset by a claim that is simply unbelievable, and which calls into serious question his overall credibility.
But what of the other three?
To be continued...
Paul Kimball
The big question is whether or nor there is independent corroboration for the Colonel's story. As Nick himself notes, "if the Colonel's testimony stood alone, then one could rightly question its veracity." (p. 119) However, Nick claims that there is independent corroboration for The Colonel's "controversial" story, which he sets out in Chapter 11 (titled "Corroboration"). This independent corroboration, according to Nick, can be found in “documents and accounts by others,” and led him to conclude that the Colonel's account "does not stand alone."(p. 119).
With corroboration, however, one must consider both the source and the report. In Body Snatchers in the Desert, here is what Nick presents as "independent corroboration" for the Colonel's account, as found in Chapter 11:
1. People
(a) The family of Meyers Wahnee, a pilot and aircrew commander of the 714th Bomb Squadron, 448th Bomb Group, who, according to Nick, told Roswell researchers Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, that the Roswell incident was true, that he was involved, and that there were “decomposing body parts.” What Nick doesn’t mention – and what calls the story into serious question – is that Wahnee (an old man by the time he supposedly related his story) also said that there were three separate crash sites, which does not square with either the traditional "Roswell as an ET crash theory," or Nick’s.
(d) Dee and Loretta Proctor, who allegedly told Schmitt and Carey that, in 1994, with the 81-year-old Loretta Proctor extremely ill with a life-threatening blood clot in her neck, her reclusive son Dee felt compelled to drive her to a remote location on the former Foster ranch where he told her that Mack Brazel had found "something else." Assuming that this is true, neither Dee not Loretta would tell Schmitt and Carey what the “something else” was, and yet Nick (as did Schmitt and Carey in their original article, which Nick quotes from), assume it to be corroborative evidence that Brazel found bodies. This is, needless to say, pretty thin evidentiary gruel. It is hardly corroboration.
(c) Paul Helmick and Albert Collins. What these men supposedly said is irrelevant, because they allegedly said it to Timothy Cooper, the purveyor of literally hundreds of phoney MJ-12 documents. According to Nick, they provided “important data that may corroborate… aspects of the Colonel’s account.” However, any corroborative evidence that comes from Cooper is, at best, suspect, and, in fact, is most likely as worthless as his MJ-12 documents (see. pp. 120 – 122).
(d) Vicki Ecker, editor of UFO Magazine, is cited as corroboration by Nick (pp. 123 – 124). Why? Because, a decade ago, she wrote, “What if the Roswell crash was a failed nuclear experiment – either ours or somebody else’s… [What if] it wasn’t nuclear; but if it was, that aspect has been kept secret. Maybe it was still a test of some kind, using shaved monkeys – or even worse, captured Japanese prisoners, for instance – as experimental passengers on an ill-fated flight. Ergo, ‘alien bodies.’” This is not corroboration – this is speculation. The fact that Nick considered it to be worthy of inclusion in the “corroboration” section of his book is indicative of just how little real independent corroboration there is for the stories told by the "Big Four." Even more interesting is the fact that Ecker speculated about “shades of those hideous Nazi experiments” and “Japanese prisoners.” One must legitimately wonder if any of Nick’s four main “whistleblowers” ever read UFO Magazine – or other sources that made similar unfounded speculations?
(e) Dr. Jacques Vallee, Martin Cannon, and Karl Pflock are all cited as “corroboration” in chapter 11 (pp. 124 – 125). Why? Because each posited that the Roswell case may have been related to a secret government experiment of some sort. Again – a theory by one person does not qualify as corroboration of a theory by another person.
(f) There is William Moore, upon whom Nick relies for various pieces of information. As with Cooper, Moore – he of MJ-12 / Paul Bennewtiz / AFOSI infamy - is hardly a pillar of credibility.
At one point even Frank Kaufmann is cited as a reliable witness (p. 15)! This, needless to say, is not a good sign – as Stan Friedman has pointed out in his review of Body Snatchers in the Desert, even Kevin Randle, long the staunchest supporter of Kaufmann as a reliable witness, now admits that Kaufmann was a fraud.
2. Documents
(a) Silas Newton's diary – I believe Karl Pflock when he says he saw something that might have been Newton’s diary, but it has not been authenticated, nor has it been seen by anyone else. There is no way to tell if it is Newton’s diary, or a forgery. Some would argue, correctly, that there is, other than Karl’s word, no evidence that the document even exists. And yet Nick makes no mention of these facts. Instead, he accepts the “diary” as real, a “fascinating piece of documentary evidence… that may ultimately shed more light on the psychological warfare angle of the crashed UFO mystery.” The use of such an alleged document for this purpose is a-historical, to say the least. As Karl told me, in an e-mail last October, “With the Newton journal, I'm NOT relying on an anonymous source. I'm saying: This is what the source showed me. Can anyone help me with independent confirmation / refutation? BIG difference.” A big difference indeed; unfortunately, it is one that Nick, does not take into account, or note for his readers.
(b) Otis Benson memos - Benson, who at the time of the Roswell incident was chief of the Medical Research Division in the Office of the Air Surgeon stationed in Washington, D.C. (see Benson's full biography at www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=4669 - Benson was a pioneer in space and aviation medicine, and rose to the rank of Major General), wrote a number of memos that Nick quotes from, and claims as corroboration. In fact, they corroborate nothing. They talk about various experiments the military was conducting, none of which fit the description of the types of experiments Nick's "whistleblowers" discuss, and all of which, at least in terms of subject matter, are now public knowledge. Further, one memo which Nick quotes from at length, dated 1 July, 1947, specifically contradicts Al Barker, who stated that there was a rush on to get the experiments done before the judgment was handed down at the SS doctor's trials in Nuremberg (which came in August 1947). The memo states that experiments dealing with the ability of the human body to withstand G forces would be "greatly extended in the next three months at higher speed utlizing a greater variety of aircraft" - meaning the experiments being referenced in this memo were actually being increased, and were projected to continue well past the "hush hush" date described by Barker. In fact, the memo makes clear that all of the work it described was proceeding apace, and was to continue (it states, for example, that "work is continuing on studies of cockpit cooling and the cooling of pilots employing airflow suits."). (p. 127 -128) Nick calls this document "intriguing;" in fact, it is wholly irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the experiments described by the "whistleblowers," and in fact describes the kind of cutting edge work - all of it perfectly legal - that was undoubtedly going on at the time, and was to continue going on for many years to come.
(c) After the red herring of the Benson materials, Nick references a memo that he states is "a true smoking gun." This memo, titled "Analysis of Factors Contributing to 'Pilot Error' Experiences in Operating Experimental Aircraft Controls," unlike the aformentioned Benson memo, does indeed seem to be, at least on the surface, relevant. Written on 22 September, 1947, it talks of "recent air accidents at White Sands Proving Ground" and a report "dealing with mutant experiments of extreme altitude flight, capsule ejection, and decompression effects." The document also talks of "radio-biological hazard studies incident to the work of this project," and a crash on 4 July, 1947 of a "loaned S-Aircraft (PF). (pp. 128 - 130)
The problems with this "smoking gun" should be readily apparent, however. For example, what about the "crash" of 4 July, 1947 that is described? The scenario as described by the Colonel et al deals with a Horten Wing type aircraft which was carried aloft by fugo balloons, and then crashed as a result of a catostrophic lightning strike. Certainly the military would have known, by the time this document was written, what the cause of the crash had been if it was a "catostrophic lightning strike." Instead, the document talks of "engine failure," and states that the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, could not fully agree as to the exact cause of the "engine failure," and were specifically looking into pilot error, and how to rectify the problem. Hardly a catostrophic lighting strike, which would have been, to put it mildly, "obvious."
Of course, this is pretty much moot, because the document is almost certainly a fake.
The source of the document (which can be seen at http://www.majesticdocuments.com/documents/pre1948.php - scroll down to "Lt. Col. Tucker to Office of Air Surgeon, 22 September 1947") is the "mysterious" Cantwheel, of MJ-12 infamy. This "retyped copy" of an alleged original was provided to Timothy Cooper by Cantwheel, who allegedly worked in "Army Counterintelligence."
The Cooper - Cantwheel documents are bogus, as any number of researchers have shown. Even Stan Friedman, who believes that the original MJ-12 documents are authentic, labels the Cooper - Cantwheel documents as frauds. At best (and I'm being extremely charitable here), any information provided by Cooper is as highly controversial as the information provided by the Colonel et al. Nick should have known better than to rely on a document provided by this "source" (and I'll note again that the document doesn't even corroborate the Colonel's story anyway). At the very least, he should have noted this fact in the book, but he did not.
(d) Lincoln LaPaz documents (pp. 134 - 136) - these documents cited by Nick as corroboration are, in fact, simply press releases from the University of New Mexico, where LaPaz was head of the department of Mathematics and the university's Institute of Meteoritics, which confirm that LaPaz had worked on wartime studies about Fugo balloons. Nick then links this to Lewis Rickett's statement that LaPaz was one of those people with whom Rickett worked in an investigation of the Roswell incident, and then asks, "If, as the Colonel has asserted, the key event that led to the legend of the UFO crash at Roswell involved 'a next generation of Fugo' balloon that was responsible for launching an experimental aircraft that catastrophically crashed, then who better to enlist into the study of how and why the Roswell experiment failed than an expert on those very same balloons?" (This sounds an awful lot like the Donald Menzel line of reasoning with respect to MJ-12, i.e. well, Menzel was involved in crytopgraphy during the war, so he was a natural to be on MJ-12 to decipher the "alien" symbols).
Even if you believe Rickett's statement, however, there is nothing there to provide any corroboration to the Colonel's story. It is well known (and a quick search of LaPaz's name at www.bluebookarchive.com will confirm this, if confirmation is necessary) that LaPaz, while he may have worked on the fugo balloon problem in the Second World War, had moved on, and that his primary interest and expertise in the late 1940s was with meteors, green fireballs and other unidentified aerial phenomena. Studying these phenomena was the task for which he had been engaged by the military.
Also, if you accept Rickett's account, you have to accept it all, including this part: "Before [LaPaz] went back to Albuquerque, he told me that he was certain this thing had gotten into trouble, that it had touched down for repairs, taken off again, and then exploded. He also felt certain there were more than one of these devices, and that the others had been looking for it. He was positive the thing had malfunctioned." This bears no resemblance to the Colonel's description of the incident.
You also have to accept Rickett's explanation of why La Paz would have been involved, which had nothing to do with his wartime work on fugos, but rather his postwar work on meteors: "It was La Paz's job to try to find out what the speed and trajectory of the thing was. La Paz was a world-renowned expert on trajectories of objects in the sky, especially meteors, and I was told to give him all the help I could." (quoted in Friedman and Berliner, Crash at Corona, pp. 102 - 103)
There is nothing here that is even remotely corroborative. It is another red herring.
As should be clear by now, there is no real corroborative evidence for the accounts told by The Colonel, the Black Widow, Bill Salter, and Al Barker. Thus, their accounts must stand or fall on their own merits. As demonstrated in Part I, Barker's account is beset by a claim that is simply unbelievable, and which calls into serious question his overall credibility.
But what of the other three?
To be continued...
Paul Kimball
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Body Snatchers in the Desert - Part I
Nick Redfern’s new book, Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story (New York: Paraview Pocket Books, 2005), has created quite a stir within the UFO research and commentary community.
Here is Nick’s theory (pp. 207 – 208):
“In May 1947, an experimental aircraft that was borne out of the revolutionary aviation research of the Horten brothers of Germany was test-flown from White Sands, New Mexico. The flight was part of a larger project begun in 1946 to examine the feasibility of both constructing and flying a nuclear-powered aircraft. On board the vehicle were a number of physically handicapped people who had been found in the remnants of the Japanese military’s Unit 731 laboratories and who were used in this dark and disturbing experiment – the purpose of which was to try to better understand the effects of nuclear-powered flight on an aircrew. The experiment ended in disaster when the aircraft crash-landed at White Sands, killing some of the crew. Two months later, in early July 1947, a second and similar vehicle was, once again, flown to White Sands. In this particular instance, the aircraft was affixed to a huge balloon array that was based upon advanced Fugo balloon designs developed in the closing stages of World War II by Japanese forces. The aircraft was piloted by a crew of Japanese personnel who had been specifically trained for the task and crashed near the Foster Ranch after being catastrophically struck by lightning. The lifting-body-style aircraft, the balloon materials, and the bodies of the crew were retrieved under cover of overwhelming secrecy and – either deliberately or unintentionally – hidden behind a smoke screen of crashed flying saucer stories. It is these two incidents that led to the legend of Roswell.”
What Nick has done is replace one super-secret government cover-up with another. Unfortunately for those who would like nothing better than to solve the Roswell Incident once and for all, Nick’s theory, to me, has significant flaws (it should be noted that, unlike many UFO authors who have their research critiqued after a book is published, Nick has been the model of civility and reasoned discourse over the past month or so, which, for those of us who know him, comes as no surprise) .
Nick’s theory relies primarily on the testimony of four people – Al Barker, Bill Salter, and two unnamed persons, whom Nick has called “The Colonel” and “The Black Widow.”
To me, with my background studying the Nuremberg Trial (and international war crimes law in general), the most apparent problem is Al Barker. Barker worked with the Army’s Psychological Warfare Center in the 1950s, and describes in detail the alleged experiments at the center of the Roswell Incident. However, he also claims that there was a great deal of pressure to shut down this research prior to the end of the Nuremberg Trial in August, 1947 (conveniently, just after the Roswell Incident).
“People were getting tense about using bodies and handicapped people in ways that went against Nuremberg and other things,” he told Nick. “Right or wrong, we tried to make these advances in the early years, but then it all gets blown away when everyone starts backing away with Nuremberg, so it’s back to the beginning and trying to get permission – official permission – to do these things, and not as they had before, kind of under the table, nothing in writing and unofficially… But after Nuremberg, everyone’s getting jittery and it all comes to a halt.” (pp. 144 – 145)
The problem is that this makes no sense.
Barker is referring to the trial of the SS doctors, which was conducted after the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which tried the major Nazi war criminals, was concluded on 1 October, 1946 (Nick, at p. 61, gets the details of the various trials conducted after the war confused).
The subsequent trials were set up on December 20, 1945, by the Allied Control Council, under Control Law No. 10, which established the basis for "the prosecution of war criminals and similar offenders." Each of the occupying authorities was authorized, in its occupation zone, to try persons suspected of committing war crimes. The Military Governor of the American Zone subsequently enacted Ordinance No. 7, establishing military tribunals with the power to try and punish offenders.
Unlike the IMT, which featured lawyers and judges from the US, USSR, UK and France, each of the subsequent tribunals was comprised solely by American lawyers and judges; the judges were recruited by the War Department (one of the best books dealing with these trials is Justice at Dachau by Joshua Greene, which tells the story of William Denson, a young American lawyer who led the prosecution of war criminals at the "Dachau trials").
The "Doctor's Trial", which ran from December, 1946 until August, 1947, was "Case 1" of 11. But the law was clear at the time the proceedings were authorized, and the defendants charged, as follows, from the Indictment handed down in October 1946 [source: Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953]:
“The United States of America, by the undersigned Telford Taylor, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, duly appointed to represent said Government in the prosecution of war criminals, charges that the defendants herein participated in a common design or conspiracy to commit and did commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined in Control Council Law No. 10, duly enacted by the Allied Control Council on 20 December 1945. These crimes included murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhumane acts, as set forth in counts one, two, and three of this indictment.”
According to the Indictment, the illegal activities included:
“Medical experiments upon concentration camp inmates and other living human subjects, without their consent, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed the murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts… [and] in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Such experiments included, but were not limited to, the following: (a) High-Altitude Experiments. From about March 1942 to about August 1942 experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp, for the benefit of the German Air Force, to investigate the limits of human endurance and existence at extremely high altitudes. The experiments were carried out in a low-pressure chamber in which atmospheric conditions and pressures prevailing at high altitude (up to 68,000 feet) could be duplicated. The experimental subjects were placed in the low-pressure chamber and thereafter the simulated altitude therein was raised...”
There were ten other types of experiments listed in the Indictment.
The point is this - if there had been any doubt before the Indictment was handed down in October, 1946, that these types of experiments and methods were considered illegal and punishable under international law, there could be no doubt after. The only question remaining was whether the particular Nazi defendants on trial were guilty (of the 23 defendants, 16 were found guilty – seven were sentenced to death, and the other nine were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment, most of which were later reduced on appeal. The other seven defendants were acquitted).
This was prior to the alleged experiments described by Barker and others that were supposedly conducted in the New Mexico desert in 1946 and 1947. No-one in the United States government would have been unaware of what was going on in Germany at this time, and the implications for anyone caught conducting this kind of “research.” It is simply unbelievable, therefore, that these people would have been working under the assumption, as Barker suggests, that, “gee, if only we get these experiments done by the end of the Doctor’s Trial in August 1947 (and one can never predict when a trial is going to end), we’ll be all right, but once that trial is over, we’re in trouble, so we’d better stop.”
This is the kind of detail that someone who is not telling the truth (for whatever reason) would insert in their story. It seems plausible on its face, particularly if the listener / reader doesn’t know much about the post-war trials – but it does not stand up to logical scrutiny.
At the very least, it calls into serious question Barker's credibility as a source.
To be continued...
Paul Kimball
Monday, July 18, 2005
UFO... or UAP?
Ace investigative reporter / blogger "Scoop Jupiter" ("pictured" above) has suggested that the time has come to retire the acronym "UFO" - just as "flying saucer" was generally retired many years ago - in favour of UAP, or "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena."
Check out his column at www.scoopjupiter.blogspot.com/2005/07/acronym-ufo.html
This may seem to be a step backwards to some - NICAP, after all, stood for National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena - but that may not be a bad thing, given that the acronym "UFO" is probably indelibly linked with the Extraterrtestrial hypothesis now.
Paul Kimball
The UFO Evidence vs. Exopolitics - Try This at Home
Anyone interested in the serious study of the UFO phenomenon must at least read, if not own, Dick Hall's The UFO Evidence, Volume I and II (Vol. II pictured below).
There is a great discussion underway at the moment at UFO Updates (www.virtuallystrange.net) about an Exopolitics conference being held in Toronto in September (Stephen Bassett, Paola Harris, Richard Dolan and Stan Friedman are speaking). My Nova Scotia colleague, Eugene Frison, has been perhaps the most vocal person at Updates in talking about how much damage Exopolitics does to ufology. I would wade in, but my opinions on the subject are already fairly well know - exopolitics is New Age snake-oil contactee-ism for the 21st century - so I leave this particular debate at Updates to Eugene, and other like-minded, reasonable people.
However, if you are thinking to yourself, "gee, lighten up fellas - how much harm can exopolitics really do?" then I have a little exercise for you. It's one that I conducted a few months ago, when Michael Salla and I were debating exopolitical "methodology" over at Updates.
1. Find a copy of The UFO Evidence (your best bet is to buy it). I used Volume II, as it is more current, but Volume I will work just as well.
2. Make 5 copies of the chapter dealing with military sightings, on pp. 73 - 115.
3. Contact five friends with at least one university degree each, but who have no expressed interest or involvement in the study of the UFO phenomenon, and ask them to read pp. 73 - 115. Tell them that after they're done, you have a single question for them.
At the same time, contact 5 more friends, again, all with at least one university degree and no expressed interest or involvement in the study of the UFO phenomenon.
1. Send them an e-mail directing them to www.exopolitics.org, Michael Salla's website.
2. Ask them to read "A Report on the Motivations and Activities of Extraterrestrial Races - A Typology of the Most Significant Extraterrestrial Races Interacting with Humanity," which can be found on Salla's site at www.exopolitics.org/Report-ET-Motivations.htm. Tell them that you have a question you want to ask them when they're done.
The question is the same for both groups:
"After reading the materials I sent along, what do you think of the UFO phenomenon, and would you be interested in learning more?"
As I said, I conducted this little survey a couple of months ago.
The results?
Of the UFO Evidence group, all five said they found it interesting, and eye-opening. Three asked for further references, which I provided.
Of the Exopolitics group, all five said they thought Dr. Salla was "out there" (I'm being politically correct here). None of them wanted further references - I sent each of them copies of pp. 73 -115 of the UFO Evidence anyway. All of them e-mailed or called me and asked me why I didn't send it to them in the first place! This time, two asked for further references, which I provided.
I urge everyone who is inclined to give exopolitics a free pass, or to say, "well, what harm can it do," to try this little exercise themselves, and, after the answers come in, ask yourself - "is exopolitics good or bad for Ufology?"
Paul Kimball
There is a great discussion underway at the moment at UFO Updates (www.virtuallystrange.net) about an Exopolitics conference being held in Toronto in September (Stephen Bassett, Paola Harris, Richard Dolan and Stan Friedman are speaking). My Nova Scotia colleague, Eugene Frison, has been perhaps the most vocal person at Updates in talking about how much damage Exopolitics does to ufology. I would wade in, but my opinions on the subject are already fairly well know - exopolitics is New Age snake-oil contactee-ism for the 21st century - so I leave this particular debate at Updates to Eugene, and other like-minded, reasonable people.
However, if you are thinking to yourself, "gee, lighten up fellas - how much harm can exopolitics really do?" then I have a little exercise for you. It's one that I conducted a few months ago, when Michael Salla and I were debating exopolitical "methodology" over at Updates.
1. Find a copy of The UFO Evidence (your best bet is to buy it). I used Volume II, as it is more current, but Volume I will work just as well.
2. Make 5 copies of the chapter dealing with military sightings, on pp. 73 - 115.
3. Contact five friends with at least one university degree each, but who have no expressed interest or involvement in the study of the UFO phenomenon, and ask them to read pp. 73 - 115. Tell them that after they're done, you have a single question for them.
At the same time, contact 5 more friends, again, all with at least one university degree and no expressed interest or involvement in the study of the UFO phenomenon.
1. Send them an e-mail directing them to www.exopolitics.org, Michael Salla's website.
2. Ask them to read "A Report on the Motivations and Activities of Extraterrestrial Races - A Typology of the Most Significant Extraterrestrial Races Interacting with Humanity," which can be found on Salla's site at www.exopolitics.org/Report-ET-Motivations.htm. Tell them that you have a question you want to ask them when they're done.
The question is the same for both groups:
"After reading the materials I sent along, what do you think of the UFO phenomenon, and would you be interested in learning more?"
As I said, I conducted this little survey a couple of months ago.
The results?
Of the UFO Evidence group, all five said they found it interesting, and eye-opening. Three asked for further references, which I provided.
Of the Exopolitics group, all five said they thought Dr. Salla was "out there" (I'm being politically correct here). None of them wanted further references - I sent each of them copies of pp. 73 -115 of the UFO Evidence anyway. All of them e-mailed or called me and asked me why I didn't send it to them in the first place! This time, two asked for further references, which I provided.
I urge everyone who is inclined to give exopolitics a free pass, or to say, "well, what harm can it do," to try this little exercise themselves, and, after the answers come in, ask yourself - "is exopolitics good or bad for Ufology?"
Paul Kimball
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Guest Column: Nick Redfern on the State of Ufology
My pal Nick Redfern (author / researcher / journalist / raconteur - below) e-mailed me today with a response to my two latest columns, "Winning the Ufological PR Battle" (www.redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2005/07/winning-ufological-pr-battle.html) and "Ufology - Going... Going... Gone?" (www.redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2005/07/ufology-going-going-gone.html).
As he gave me permission to publish his remarks, here they are.
"Hey Paul -
I just read the latest at your Blog re the lack of UFO books local to you, etc., and the implications for Ufology. I agree.
While those of us in Ufology that endlessly debate on UFO Updates, on the lecture circuit, in magazines, and elsewhere think that we are doing something important (and hopefully - to the people who share our interests, at least - for the most part we are!), as you have noted, the unfortunate reality is that 99.99999, etc., etc., of the population does not care in the slightest about UFOs.
And aside from watching the occasional TV show, or reading the occasional book on the subject, they won't care until the aliens land. If they land. If they exist. If we'll even still be around when they do finally say "Hi!" or say "XXZZGLP!" or whatever they say by way of a greeting.
They may, of course, also say the equivalent of "Eat Ray-Gun, Pal." And then it will matter even less what Ufologists think because we will all be worm fodder.
Ufology is not winning any PR battle.
In fact, ufology is a dwindling arena, with magazine sales dropping, membership of groups (including some very high-profile groups) dropping, and conferences suffering from dwindling audiences. The Golden Years of ufology have gone. People should just deal with it.
Today's world is one built upon reality TV; the erosion of civil liberties; the careful introduction of a Surveillance State; and the War on Terror.
One day, probably not too far into this century, I predict that ufology will be a thing of the past - completely - viewed by the generation after the next generation as some minor oddity of the 20th Century that came and went.
Will there be people still looking into the mysteries of this world? Of course, but I predict that in a few decades research into Ufology will be viewed in the same way that research into spoon-bending, Goblins and Pixies, and the Victorian era of spiritualism is viewed today.
But is that a bad thing? Maybe not. If we focus our energies on research instead of worrying about Ufological PR, we're far more likely to get the answers that we are looking for.
And I think that it's actually answers that most of us are looking for, not whether or not we have good PR or the public or the media cares.
So that's where we should focus: research. It doesn't matter what the public thinks of the subject - or doesn't think of the subject.
Well, actually, I suppose it does matter to some Ufologists, but they are the ones whose motives are not to resolve things, but to perpetuate the mystery to carefully continue their position on the lecture circuit, etc.
That's the point: the only people - as far as I can see - who are worried about Ufology losing its PR battle, are the ones who use the subject precisely for PR purposes. If people are into Ufology as I am, and as you are, to do research, then it shouldn't - and doesn't matter - what the rest of the world thinks.
They can go on losing sleep over who is going to get kicked off Survivor next week.
Some people may not agree with the data that appears in Body Snatchers in the Desert. But no-one can accuse me of trying to lengthen the controversy to ensure it goes on forever. I'm trying to do the exact opposite and lay it to rest, precisely so we can move on to other areas of the subject.
But that's life. In the words of the God-like Ramones: "Here today, gone tomorrow..." Or in the words of the equally God-like Sex Pistols: "No Future, No Future, No Future, for you..." Very apt, I predict for the subject!
Feel free to post this to your Blog if you wish.
Cheers mate!
Nick"
Much of what Nick says certainly resonates with me, and hopefully will resonate with ufology in general.
I still think that "winning the PR battle" is important because a real search for the truth requires serious scientific (and historical and journalistic) effort, and that will only come about if the public demands it.
That's why broadcasters spend lots and lots of money on reality shows - because people want to watch them.
That's why scientists seem to be writing a lot of popular books about time travel and parallel universes these days - because people seem to find them fascinating (I do).
Vox populi.
No public demand = no resources for serious UFO investigation.
Exopolitics, "ETH as fact" statements, and personal attacks on anyone who questions ETH orthodoxy = No public demand.
Because they'll think ufology is too far "out there."
Until this changes, there can be no doubt that ufologists - the good, serious ones, like Dick Hall, Jan Aldrich, Brad Sparks, Stan Friedman and Jerry Clark - will be left to wonder, in the words of the equally God-like Smiths (hey, if Nick can quote rock musicians, so can I - especially as I used to be one):
"How soon is now?"
Paul Kimball
As he gave me permission to publish his remarks, here they are.
"Hey Paul -
I just read the latest at your Blog re the lack of UFO books local to you, etc., and the implications for Ufology. I agree.
While those of us in Ufology that endlessly debate on UFO Updates, on the lecture circuit, in magazines, and elsewhere think that we are doing something important (and hopefully - to the people who share our interests, at least - for the most part we are!), as you have noted, the unfortunate reality is that 99.99999, etc., etc., of the population does not care in the slightest about UFOs.
And aside from watching the occasional TV show, or reading the occasional book on the subject, they won't care until the aliens land. If they land. If they exist. If we'll even still be around when they do finally say "Hi!" or say "XXZZGLP!" or whatever they say by way of a greeting.
They may, of course, also say the equivalent of "Eat Ray-Gun, Pal." And then it will matter even less what Ufologists think because we will all be worm fodder.
Ufology is not winning any PR battle.
In fact, ufology is a dwindling arena, with magazine sales dropping, membership of groups (including some very high-profile groups) dropping, and conferences suffering from dwindling audiences. The Golden Years of ufology have gone. People should just deal with it.
Today's world is one built upon reality TV; the erosion of civil liberties; the careful introduction of a Surveillance State; and the War on Terror.
One day, probably not too far into this century, I predict that ufology will be a thing of the past - completely - viewed by the generation after the next generation as some minor oddity of the 20th Century that came and went.
Will there be people still looking into the mysteries of this world? Of course, but I predict that in a few decades research into Ufology will be viewed in the same way that research into spoon-bending, Goblins and Pixies, and the Victorian era of spiritualism is viewed today.
But is that a bad thing? Maybe not. If we focus our energies on research instead of worrying about Ufological PR, we're far more likely to get the answers that we are looking for.
And I think that it's actually answers that most of us are looking for, not whether or not we have good PR or the public or the media cares.
So that's where we should focus: research. It doesn't matter what the public thinks of the subject - or doesn't think of the subject.
Well, actually, I suppose it does matter to some Ufologists, but they are the ones whose motives are not to resolve things, but to perpetuate the mystery to carefully continue their position on the lecture circuit, etc.
That's the point: the only people - as far as I can see - who are worried about Ufology losing its PR battle, are the ones who use the subject precisely for PR purposes. If people are into Ufology as I am, and as you are, to do research, then it shouldn't - and doesn't matter - what the rest of the world thinks.
They can go on losing sleep over who is going to get kicked off Survivor next week.
Some people may not agree with the data that appears in Body Snatchers in the Desert. But no-one can accuse me of trying to lengthen the controversy to ensure it goes on forever. I'm trying to do the exact opposite and lay it to rest, precisely so we can move on to other areas of the subject.
But that's life. In the words of the God-like Ramones: "Here today, gone tomorrow..." Or in the words of the equally God-like Sex Pistols: "No Future, No Future, No Future, for you..." Very apt, I predict for the subject!
Feel free to post this to your Blog if you wish.
Cheers mate!
Nick"
Much of what Nick says certainly resonates with me, and hopefully will resonate with ufology in general.
I still think that "winning the PR battle" is important because a real search for the truth requires serious scientific (and historical and journalistic) effort, and that will only come about if the public demands it.
That's why broadcasters spend lots and lots of money on reality shows - because people want to watch them.
That's why scientists seem to be writing a lot of popular books about time travel and parallel universes these days - because people seem to find them fascinating (I do).
Vox populi.
No public demand = no resources for serious UFO investigation.
Exopolitics, "ETH as fact" statements, and personal attacks on anyone who questions ETH orthodoxy = No public demand.
Because they'll think ufology is too far "out there."
Until this changes, there can be no doubt that ufologists - the good, serious ones, like Dick Hall, Jan Aldrich, Brad Sparks, Stan Friedman and Jerry Clark - will be left to wonder, in the words of the equally God-like Smiths (hey, if Nick can quote rock musicians, so can I - especially as I used to be one):
"How soon is now?"
Paul Kimball
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Ufology - Going... Going... Gone?
A "Very Serious Ufologist" e-mailed me today, after reading my "Winning the Ufological PR Battle" column, and said I had it all wrong. "Ufology," according to the VSU, "is winning the PR battle," as evidenced, he said confidently, by those opinion polls I mentioned - polls which show that more people accept UFOs as real than do not.
However, unlike most of the people who wrote me about the column (thanks everyone - the response has been, as the kids say, "off the chain" - er, or something like that), the VSU missed the point.
Polls do nothing more than measure surface responses. Where, I asked, is the serious interest in the UFO phenomenon within the general public, and particularly among younger people?
It is virtually non-existent.
Doubt that conclusion?
Fine - take a drive to your nearest bookstore, and check the shelves.
How many "UFO" books will you find (and you'll see why I put "UFO" in quotation marks)?
I've made this point before, but I'll make it again.
Last night, I wandered over to Chapters (Canada's equivalent to Barnes & Noble), and took a look.
The results?
As Obi-wan might say, "Not good."
Here are the UFO books on the shelf (and I mean "shelf," not shelves, as you could fit them all into one shelf, with room left over for some extra Harry Potter books):
Philip J. Corso's The Day After Roswell - 2 copies
Jerry Clark's Strange Skies - 1 copy
Barry Parker's Alien Life - 1 copy
Hopkins / Rainey's Sight Unseen - 3 copies
Redfern / Robert's Strange Secrets - 1 copy
William Birnes's UFO Encyclopedia - 1 copy
Zecharia Stichin - The 12th Planet - 5 copies; The Stairway to Heaven - 5 copies; The Wars of Gods and Men - 1 copy; The Lost Realms - 2 copies; The Cosmic Code - 2 copies; The Earth Chronicles Expeditions - 1 copy
Uh oh.
Contrast this to the fact that there were twenty shelves full of books about tarot (5 shelves), astrology (5 shelves), and wicca(10 shelves), and you get the picture.
The "Science" section (notably, nowhere near the UFO / Aliens "section") had about twelve shelves full of books, many by the likes of Michio Kaku, Carl Sagan, David Grinspoon, talking about other worlds, travel to the stars, time travel (including one by British ufologist Jenny Randles), and so forth. But while some of those books, like Grinspoon's, might reference UFOs, they are not about UFOs. I imagine Seth Shostak would be pleased, however.
I asked the assistant manager why so few UFO books. She sort of rolled her eyes, and said, "they don't sell - and, besides, you can always order them on-line."
Yes, on-line - but only if you already know about them. Not on the shelves in the store, where the casual browser might be inclined to pick one up.
Why?
They don't sell.
Why?
Because, polls or no polls, UFOs aren't on the general public's radar screen.
Doubt that conclusion?
Fine - wander over to your nearest university library. In Nova Scotia, a province with more universities and colleges than you can shake a stick at, you can check the Novanet system, and in one fell swoop see everything that is available at the following libraries:
Dalhousie Univeristy (4 libraries)
Atlantic School of Theology
Mount St. Vincent University
Nova Scotia Agricultural College
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Nova Scotia Community College (14 campuses, including Halifax's Institute of Technology)
St. Mary's University
St. Francis Xavier University
University College of Cape Breton
University of King's Colleges
In all of those libraries, serving post-secondary institutions which between them have tens of thousands of students, and are also open to the general public, how many books are there under the subject headings "UFO" or "Flying Saucer," or using the words "UFO," "Flying saucer" or "Roswell" in a title search?
Twenty-three.
Here they are:
On Roswell:
- Berlitz and Moore, The Roswell Incident
- Karl Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe
- Benson Saler et al, UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth
On UFOs or Flying Saucers in general:
Timothy Good - Above Top Secret
Don Ledger - Maritime UFO Files
Rhonda Blumberg - UFO
Susan J. Palmer - Aliens Adored: Rael's UFO Religion
Richard H. Hall - The UFO Evidence, Vol. II
Jacques Vallee - Messengers of Decption: UFO Contacts and Cults
Jacques and Janine Vallee - Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma
Martin Sable - UFO Guide, 1947 - 1967
Yurko Bondarchuk - UFO Sightings, Landings and Abductions
Arthur Bray - Science, the Public and the UFO
J. Allen Hynek - The UFO Experience
B. L. Cathie and P. N. Temm - Harmonic 695: The UFO and anti-gravity
Philip J. Klass - UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Business
Robert Sheaffer - The UFO Verdict
Donald Menzel and Ernest H. Taves - The UFO Enigma
Paul Thomas - Flying Saucers Through the Ages
C. G. Jung - Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies
Jay David - Flying Saucers Have Arrived
Desmond Leslie and George Adamski - Flying Saucers Have Landed
Edward Condon - The Condon Committee Report
That's it, folks.
The only books on that list written in the last ten years are Pflock's, Ledger's, Hall's, Saler's and Palmer's. Of those, two are sceptical, and one is about Rael - which, while very tangentially related to the UFO phenomenon, is probably not what most ufologists have in mind when they say UFO books.
Also note that a fair number of the other books are by sceptics / debunkers - Klass, Menzel, Condon and Sheaffer are all represented. Clark? Friedman? Keyhoe? Nowhere to be seen. And, while pro-UFO, Jacques Vallee will hardly give comfort to pro-ETH ufologists.
And then there's Adamski. Again, not exactly the book that most ufologists would hope some university student would pick off the shelf to learn about the UFO phenomenon.
Just for chuckles, I ran very quick title-only searches on astrology, tarot and wicca / witchcraft.
Tarot - 18 books
Astrology - 50 books
Witchcraft / Wicca - 258 books
Er... how about "astronomy," this time by subject?
1,399 books.
Get the picture yet?
See the pattern?
Is it sinking in?
Ufology isn't a page in the "book of public discourse" - it's barely a footnote.
Nobody cares, outside the very narrow confines of the ufological hard-core - and ufologists spend most of their time talking to that hard-core, not trying to figure out ways to broaden the appeal of the subject.
Sticking your head in the sand, or talking about the latest opinion poll, or blaming everyone else, is not the answer.
It is a PR problem, Mr. VSU - and it's arguably worse than it's ever been.
Rather than look about for someone to blame (hey - the government doesn't control all of these bookstores and libraries), it's time for ufology to look inward, and ask some pretty hard questions.
Do you want to grow, or do you want to slide further into irrelevance?
The clock is ticking...
Paul Kimball
Friday, July 15, 2005
Winning the Ufological PR Battle
Ufology in general is lousy at marketing itself. This is particularly true of ETH proponents.
Despite the fact that the majority of Americans (and Canadians, etc.), in poll after poll, state that they (a) are convinced there is life on other planets, and (b) are convinced there is something to the UFO phenomenon, ufology has failed to make any significant dent in the public consciousness.
I’m not talking about science fiction programs like the X-Files, or Roswell, or movies like War of the Worlds or Close Encounters of the Third Kind – I’m talking about serious, sustained public interest in the UFO phenomenon.
Instead of seeing opportunities, ufology sees conspiracies, and enemies. Instead of trying to find common ground with the mainstream, particularly the scientific community, ufology attacks them for not doing enough. Instead of a bird in the hand, ufology wants two in the bush, and a third in the field.
In short, ufology has an abysmal record at public relations.
Nowhere was this more evident than in ufology’s response to the ABC News special Seeing is Believing a few months ago. In short, ufology blew it. There were exceptions, of course, but for the most part all you heard was the same old whining and moaning about the “corrupt mainstream media” screwing ufology yet again - accompanied by what surely must be the world’s smallest violin.
Real potential for a positive step forward... and instead we got "Peter Jennings is a tool of the conspiracy of silence." [I paraphrase]
Last week, as another example, Larry King Live featured a program on UFOs, where the pro-UFO guys outnumbered the sceptics 2 to 1. What have we heard, by and large?
Carping about Seth Shostak (pictured above)!
It’s popped up again after a short article by Shostak appeared on the Internet today wherein he discusses the King program, and UFOs in general. Most ufologists who have referenced it have done so by attacking Shostak as, basically, an “idiot.”
Not exactly how one “wins friends and influences people.”
Even if you really do think Shostak is an "idiot," you don't win any points with people by saying so publicly. Sure, you'll please your "base," but you'll alienate everyone else.
Compare and contrast, folks.
Shostak sounds reasonable (whether what he says is reasonable is irrelevant). People who attack him don’t.
Who do you think the general public is going to listen to?
Here’s how the response should have gone if you happen to be an ETH proponent (I offer this as a free public service to ufology, with the caveat that it's not how I would do it):
SETI scientist Dr. Seth Shostak and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman agree - "UFOs are real; Space Travel possible"
Senior SETI astronomer Dr. Seth Shostak, following his appearance last week on Larry King Live with noted UFO experts Dr. Bruce Maccabee, former NASA and Boeing engineer John Schuessler, and others, released a statement today in which he says UFOs are real.
“Several recent television shows have soberly addressed the possibility that alien craft are violating our airspace,” stated Dr. Shostak. “Pilots, astronauts, and others with experienced eyes and impressive credentials have all claimed to see odd craft in the skies. It’s safe to say that these witnesses have seen something.”
While UFOs may be real, Dr. Shostak is not convinced that they are aliens visiting Earth.
However, he is convinced that there is almost certainly alien life “out there.”
“There’s clearly, to my mind, enormous probability that there’s life out there, even intelligent life,” he stated on Larry King Live.
While he is extremenly sceptical, Dr. Shostak did not completely rule out the possibility that some UFOs could be spacecraft from another world.
“Despite heated discussion by all concerned,” he noted, “let’s admit that interstellar travel doesn’t violate physics.” Although it is beyond our capabilities at present, he said, “It’s possible.”
Canadian nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman, an experienced UFO researcher, agrees with Shostak.
According to Friedman, if we look at just our local ‘cosmic neighbourhood,’ the odds are pretty good that there is life within travelling distance. “There are about 1,000 stars within 54 light years of earth – a mere walk down the block by galactic standards. Of these, 46 are estimated to be very similar to our sun, which means they are likely to have planets.”
Dr. Shostak pointed to a poll released in May 2005, which showed that most of the respondents think that extraterrestrials would be more advanced than us. “Well, of course, any extraterrestrial signals we might detect are very likely to come from societies that are, indeed, more technically advanced than our own,” stated Dr. Shostak.
Friedman, who has written several papers on the subject of UFOs and physics, concurs with Shostak and the poll respondents, even as he explains that we have to keep things in perspective.
“Of course, they wouldn’t be using chemical rockets, like we do. But if their civilisation is even one hundred years more advanced than ours is, who knows what kind of technology they have developed? Remember, our own scientists are already starting to examine the possibility of using things like worm holes for space travel. Just think of what aliens might have come up with if they have a thousand year head start on us.”
Friedman also points out that several scientific studies have shown that there are a large number of UFO sightings that simply cannot be explained by conventional means.
“The Condon study, conducted in 1968 for the United States Air Force, was one of the most thorough scientific studies of the UFO phenomenon ever,” noted Friedman. “When they were finished, they couldn’t come up with an explanation for thirty per cent of the cases they examined.”
Friedman notes, “if you got a hit thirty per cent of the time in the Major Leagues, you’d be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.”
He then points to the RB47 case, from 1957, as one of the many excellent sightings of which the public is largely unaware, but which indicates that the UFO phenomenon is definitely real.
“On July 17, 1957, an Air Force RB-47, equipped with electronic countermeasures (ECM) gear and manned by six Air Force officers, was followed by an unidentified object for a distance of over seven hundred miles and for a time period of one and a half hours, as it flew from Mississippi, through Louisiana and Texas and into Oklahoma. The object was, at various times, seen visually by the cockpit crew as an intensely luminous light, followed by ground radar, and detected by ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47. Of special interest in this case are several instances of simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of those physically distinct “channels,” and the rapidity of maneuvers beyond the prior experience of the aircrew.”
“The Condon Report classed it as unidentified,” explains Friedman, “and it remains an unsolved case to this day.”
On the Larry King Live show, Dr. Shostak noted that the late Dr. Carl Sagan once stated that “extraordinary claims require pretty convincing evidence.”
Friedman agrees. “Carl was absolutely right,” he says.
But he adds, “The evidence is there for all to see. It’s time we took a real look, with an open mind.”
END OF STATEMENT
Note – Dr. Shostak’s statements quoted above are taken verbatim from the Larry King transcript, his article today at www.space.com, and a blog post at http://blogs2.nationalgeographic.com/extraterrestrial/. Stan’s are an amalgam of various statements he’s made over the years, except for the RB47 synopsis, which is taken from Dr. James McDonald's analysis of the case.
This is called “framing the message” folks, and it’s part of the very real public relations effort that ufology needs to get serious about if it ever wants to be taken seriously beyond its own limited ranks.
The debunkers have been very good at it over the years. Whether you believe it or not, they are winning the struggle for hearts and minds, which involves more than getting someone to answer “yes” in the occasional public opinion poll.
It’s time ufology got in the game, too.
Paul Kimball
Thursday, July 14, 2005
MJ-12 - The Wescott "Analysis" Red Herring
Stan Friedman and I have been having a friendly e-mail back-and-forth over the past couple of days with respect to - you guessed it – Majestic 12. In the course of this correspondence, Stan pointed out to me that I’ve never mentioned Dr. Roger Wescott.
He’s right.
I guess there’s no time like the present.
Dr. Wescott (now deceased) was a linguistics professor at Drew University. He was engaged by Stan to try and determine whether the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) had been written by Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoeter (below).
Stan gave Wescott the EBD and twenty-seven other samples of memos, notes and other writings that had been established as having been written by Hillenkoetter.
Here is what Wescott came up with, after his first opinion (which Stan never mentions) proved, er... less than conclusive.
“In my opinion, there is no compelling reason to regard any of these communications as fraudulent or to believe that any of them were written by anyone other than Hillenkoetter himself. This statement holds for the controversial presidential briefing memorandum of November 18, 1952, as well as for the letters, both official and personal.”
Even Stan, however, admitted that this second statement, to be charitable, was less than definitive - leaving one to wonder how inconclusive Wescott’s original statement was!
In Top Secret / Majic, Stan wrote:
“Some people are upset that Dr. Wescott didn’t make a positive statement that his work proves that Hillenkoetter wrote the briefing. Obviously, no such statement could be made. Somebody working for the CIA, for example, could have read Hillenkoetter’s papers and simulated his style.” (p. 78 – as a side note, one should substitute “AFOSI” for “CIA,” and you’ll be on the right track)
Wescott himself made this clear a few months after he wrote the statement quoted above. In a letter to the International UFO Reporter, he wrote:
“I have no strong conviction favoring either rather polarized position in the matter… I wrote that I thought its [the EBD] fraudulence unproved… I could equally well have maintained that its authenticity is unproved… inconclusiveness seems to me to be of its essence.” [IUR, vol. 13, no. 4, July / August 1988, p. 19]
No lawyer, knowing what Wescott, as an “expert,” was going to say, would ever put him on the stand.
Why?
Because his “analysis” proves nothing (the very essence of "inconclusiveness").
In short, the reason nobody mentions the Wescott “analysis” is because it is irrelevant.
However, this hasn’t stopped Stan from trumpeting the Wescott letter as a sort of proof of the authenticity of the EBD (and if you don’t think he does this, you haven’t caught one of his lectures lately).
However, Stan rarely, if ever, mentions Wescott’s subsequent clarification in IUR, or even Stan’s own comments in Top Secret / Majic - and the obvious conclusions that must be drawn from them.
Those conclusions again?
Wescott’s “analysis” proves nothing, and is irrelevant.
Instead of admitting this, however, Stan says and writes things like:
“None of the vocal critics including Randle even discuss the findings of world-class linguistics expert Dr. Roger Wescott.” [www.v-j-enterprises.com/mj12_update2.html]
The implication is that Randle, in his book Case MJ-12, was trying to duck the Wescott “analysis.” The same is true when Stan e-mails me and says I’ve never mentioned Roger Wescott.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, when I interviewed Kevin in 2001 for the film Stanton T. Friedman is Real, he was happy to talk about the Wescott “analysis,” giving much the same reply as I have above. I just didn’t use it in the film – because it wasn’t significant… of anything.
So, if you hear Stan bring up Roger Wescott and his “analysis” of the EBD, just remember what Wescott actually said… and what Stan himself has written.
It is the epitome of a red herring.
But that's MJ-12 in a nutshell, isn't it?
Paul Kimball
He’s right.
I guess there’s no time like the present.
Dr. Wescott (now deceased) was a linguistics professor at Drew University. He was engaged by Stan to try and determine whether the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) had been written by Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoeter (below).
Stan gave Wescott the EBD and twenty-seven other samples of memos, notes and other writings that had been established as having been written by Hillenkoetter.
Here is what Wescott came up with, after his first opinion (which Stan never mentions) proved, er... less than conclusive.
“In my opinion, there is no compelling reason to regard any of these communications as fraudulent or to believe that any of them were written by anyone other than Hillenkoetter himself. This statement holds for the controversial presidential briefing memorandum of November 18, 1952, as well as for the letters, both official and personal.”
Even Stan, however, admitted that this second statement, to be charitable, was less than definitive - leaving one to wonder how inconclusive Wescott’s original statement was!
In Top Secret / Majic, Stan wrote:
“Some people are upset that Dr. Wescott didn’t make a positive statement that his work proves that Hillenkoetter wrote the briefing. Obviously, no such statement could be made. Somebody working for the CIA, for example, could have read Hillenkoetter’s papers and simulated his style.” (p. 78 – as a side note, one should substitute “AFOSI” for “CIA,” and you’ll be on the right track)
Wescott himself made this clear a few months after he wrote the statement quoted above. In a letter to the International UFO Reporter, he wrote:
“I have no strong conviction favoring either rather polarized position in the matter… I wrote that I thought its [the EBD] fraudulence unproved… I could equally well have maintained that its authenticity is unproved… inconclusiveness seems to me to be of its essence.” [IUR, vol. 13, no. 4, July / August 1988, p. 19]
No lawyer, knowing what Wescott, as an “expert,” was going to say, would ever put him on the stand.
Why?
Because his “analysis” proves nothing (the very essence of "inconclusiveness").
In short, the reason nobody mentions the Wescott “analysis” is because it is irrelevant.
However, this hasn’t stopped Stan from trumpeting the Wescott letter as a sort of proof of the authenticity of the EBD (and if you don’t think he does this, you haven’t caught one of his lectures lately).
However, Stan rarely, if ever, mentions Wescott’s subsequent clarification in IUR, or even Stan’s own comments in Top Secret / Majic - and the obvious conclusions that must be drawn from them.
Those conclusions again?
Wescott’s “analysis” proves nothing, and is irrelevant.
Instead of admitting this, however, Stan says and writes things like:
“None of the vocal critics including Randle even discuss the findings of world-class linguistics expert Dr. Roger Wescott.” [www.v-j-enterprises.com/mj12_update2.html]
The implication is that Randle, in his book Case MJ-12, was trying to duck the Wescott “analysis.” The same is true when Stan e-mails me and says I’ve never mentioned Roger Wescott.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, when I interviewed Kevin in 2001 for the film Stanton T. Friedman is Real, he was happy to talk about the Wescott “analysis,” giving much the same reply as I have above. I just didn’t use it in the film – because it wasn’t significant… of anything.
So, if you hear Stan bring up Roger Wescott and his “analysis” of the EBD, just remember what Wescott actually said… and what Stan himself has written.
It is the epitome of a red herring.
But that's MJ-12 in a nutshell, isn't it?
Paul Kimball
Monday, July 11, 2005
Ufology's Bottom 10
As Mac Tonnies has pointed out in a comment at "Ufology's Top 10," if there is a "Top 10" of the best / most influential (for good) people in the history of ufology, there must be a "Bottom 10" of the worst / most influential (for bad) people in the history of ufology.
Yin vs. Yang. Matter vs. Anti-matter. Luke vs. Darth.
Absolutely!
Each of the people listed below has had, in varying ways and to varying degrees, a detrimental impact on the serious study of the UFO phenomenon, whether in the eyes of science, the media, the general public, or ufology itself. In each case, ufology would have been better off if these people had chosen some other career path to follow, or another group of suckers to fleece.
Interested observers will note that one man made both the Top 10 and Bottom 10 Lists. To anyone who finds this confounding, I can only say that Richard Nixon managed to open relations with China and cover-up the Watergate break-in. Not everything - or everyone - is simple to figure out.
With that said, and without further ado, here are the Bottom 10 of Ufology - and some dishonourable mentions (a list that could have been much, much longer).
Let the debate begin...
Paul Kimball
1. Dr. Edward U. Condon – Condon was a distinguished scientist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, the director of the National Bureau of Standards, the president of the American Physical Society, and a professor of physics at the University of Colorado. It is in this latter post where his claim to ufological infamy rests. The Condon Report, which was the result of a two-year “scientific” study of the UFO phenomenon commissioned by the United States Air Force (known formally as The University of Colorado UFO Project), was released in 1968. Condon was the director. Virtually from the beginning, critics (including some of the committee’s members) charged that Condon and coordinator Robert Low were biased. When the report came out, in concluded that there were prosaic explanations for all UFO cases, and that there was no evidence to support the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. The Air Force, the American media (in general), and the scientific community (again, in general), accepted the report as the definitive word on the subject. Project Blue Book was terminated shortly after its release. Prominent critics such as Dr. Peter Sturrock, Dr. James E. McDonald, Stanton Friedman, and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, have all correctly noted that the report’s conclusions – which were authored by Condon himself – were sharply at variance with the evidence (Condon did not investigate any of the cases himself), which showed that 30% of the cases studied were classed as “unknowns,” higher even than earlier Air Force studies. As Sturrock wrote, “This report has clouded all attempts at legitimate UFO research since its release.” Little has changed in the almost four decades since the Report was released, as governments, the media, and many in the scientific community still cite it as proof that UFOs are not worth serious study. While it might seem unfair to include a real scientist like Condon on the same list as a fake one, like Bob Lazar (see #5), the Condon Report represents everything that science should not be, and irrevocably tarnished the reputation, for those aware of the facts, of a man who might otherwise have been viewed as one of the great American scientists of the 20th century. The damage it did to the serious study of the UFO phenomenon was incalculable.
2. Frank Scully, Silas M. Newton & Leo A. Gebauer (aka “Dr. Gee”) – If crashed flying saucer stories still have a bad reputation (and they do), it is because of these three guys. Newton, the con-man who cooked up the “Aztec Incident” back in 1949 – 1950, Gebauer, his partner who masqueraded as ace scientist “Dr. Gee,” and Scully, the gullible show-biz reporter who fell for the scam hook, line and sinker, and then wrote a book (Behind the Flying Saucers) based on Newton and Gebauer’s claims, are the best examples available of what kind of damage can be done to ufology when greed and dishonesty on the part of hucksters is mixed in equal parts with naiveté and the will to believe on the part of the listener (aka the “mark”). The sad part is that Newton and Gebauer are still sucking in a few well-meaning people to this day, decades after their deaths - people who continue to try and prove the “Aztec Incident” was a real flying saucer crash, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Ca plus ca change, ca plus ca meme chose.
3. “Professor” George Adamski – Adamski was one of the first people to publicly claim to have seen and photographed alien spacecraft, been contacted by aliens (he was one of the best known “contactees” in the 1950s), and to have even gone on flights with them! He wrote several books relating to his claims which caused quite a stir – both positive and negative – at the time, including the best-selling Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), which was co-written with Desmond Leslie. All of this, however, was based on a little-known science-fiction book that he wrote in 1949, Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Adamski enjoyed quite a bit of fame in the 1950s – he travelled the world on lecture tours (he even had an audience with the Queen of the Netherlands), attracted a fairly wide following, and published other books. Not everyone bought his act, however. Time Magazine called him “a crackpot from California,” which hit the nail on the head. His popularity began to wane when he publicly attacked the first moon photos as fakes and then, in 1962, announced that he was to be transported to Saturn for a conference of space travelers. His report of that “trip” was so bizarre that even his most ardent admirers began to have their doubts. By the time of his death in 1965, Adamski’s had become the subject of derision. While here are still some people today who believe that he was telling the truth (just as there are still some people who believe the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that there were no moon landings), it was during the 1950s, when Adamski’s influence was at its peak, that he did the most damage to ufology, undermining the efforts of groups like NICAP and APRO to gain recognition and acceptance for the serious study of the UFO phenomenon with his outlandish, undocumented claims to be a “contactee.” By the way – he wasn’t really a “Professor.”
4. Dr. Steven Greer – Has anyone done more harm to the cause of the serious investigation of the UFO phenomenon over the past decade than Dr. Steven Greer? Ask yourself these questions (I’ve whittled it down to four – I could have included many more): (1) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who charges people good, hard-earned money to wander about a field late at night, flashlights pointed to the sky, because that’s how you contact the aliens? Odd he has never taken a single photo or video of these sightings. (2) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who once claimed that U.S. military forces attacked a Colorado ET base inside a mountain using nerve gas? (3) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who constantly claims he briefed the CIA Director, when in fact this was merely a dinner party where UFOs came up in polite conversation? (4) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who held a press conference in Washington to promote disclosure, and ruined it by including a ton of bogus “witnesses” along with the credible ones, thereby tainting the good guys, and totally undermining any prospect of Congressional hearings for, oh, about the next twenty years? The answer to all of the above is: “Not seriously at all.” Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped people within ufology, notably those associated with Exopolitics, a wacky off-shoot of Greer’s “work,” from promoting him as a “serious ufologist.” With “friends” like Greer, who needs debunkers?
5. Bob Lazar – Stan Friedman said it best, so I’ll just quote directly from him (see his website http://www.stantonfriedman.com/ for the full article): “Incredible claims have been made about Bob Lazar for years. He supposedly is a physicist with an MS in Physics from MIT and an MS in Electronics from the California Institute of Technology. He was a "Scientist" for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and obtained a job back-engineering UFOs at a very secret site at Area 51 in Nevada through Dr. Edward Teller. Supposedly he figured out how saucers work using Element 115 -- matter/anti-matter, etc. He was able to steal a small quantity of 115 from the 500 pounds available, but this was stolen back. He came forward with his story despite death threats because he thought the public has a right to know. Videotapes are available with his claims. It is all BUNK. Not one shred of evidence has been put forth to support this story: No diplomas, no resumes, no transcripts, no memberships in professional organizations, no papers, no pages from MIT or Caltech yearbooks. He also mentioned, in a conversation with me, California State University at Northridge and Pierce Junior College -- also in the San Fernando Valley, California. I checked all four schools. Pierce said he had taken electronics courses in the late 1970s. The other three schools never heard of him…He was publicly asked when he got his MS from MIT. He said "Let me see now, I think it was probably 1982." Nobody getting an MS from MIT would not know the year immediately. He was asked to name some of his profs, He said: "Let's see now, Bill Duxler will remember me from Caltech." I located Duxler. He's a Pierce physics prof, and never taught at Caltech. Lazar was registered in one of his courses at the same time Lazar was supposedly at MIT! Nobody who can go to MIT goes to Pierce JC, not to mention the rather long commute between LA and Cambridge, Mass… I checked his High School. He graduated in August, not with his class. The only science course he took was chemistry. He ranked 261 out of 369, which is in the bottom third. There is no way he would have been admitted by MIT or Caltech. An MS in Physics from MIT requires a thesis. No such thesis exists at MIT, and he is not on a commencement list. The notion that the government wiped his CIVILIAN records clean is absurd…Scientists leave trails. Lazar is NOT a scientist. He couldn't even answer scientific questions put to him. An excellent review of Bob's "Physics" can be seen at www.serve.com/mahood/lazar/critiq.htm. THIS IS PURE BUNK. BUNK. BUNK.” The pathetic part is that there are still people out there, like Dr. Michael Salla, who defend Lazar, and accept what he says to be the truth – which says as much about them as it does Lazar.
6. Billy Meier – An anecdotal story – my brother and I were attending a UFO conference where a Meier supporter was speaking. He showed some photos and film footage “taken” by Meier of alleged UFOs. My brother leaned over to me and said, “Is there anybody here who can’t tell those are fakes?” To which I replied, “Yeah, go figure. What really ticks me off, as a filmmaker, is how bad the fakes are. I mean, really – I’m offended.” And yet, there were more than a few in the audience that afternoon who bought it all, just as there are people around the planet (including a few extremely gullible UFO “researchers”) who continue to believe that Meier, a Swiss farmer who has claimed to be in contact with “Pleiadian” aliens for the past several decades, is really telling the truth. Of course, if you see Meier for what he really is, then you are, according to his website, “obviously envious, pseudo-scientists, sectarians, fanatics, schizophrenics, or simply slanderers” - so much for peace and love, and the brotherhood of mankind! Here’s all you really need to know about Meier, again from his website: “There is probably no other case as richly documented by witnesses’ testimonies and material as this one…” Wow - Witnesses! Great!! Oh, wait – there’s more: “…even though none of the witnesses has ever had personal contact with extraterrestrials (this privilege was granted exclusively to Billy by the extraterrestrials who came from the planet Erra in the open star cluster of the Pleiades. They have never conducted personal conversations or conscious telepathy with any other person.)” FYI to all Meier-ites – those AREN’T “witnesses,” and Meier ISN’T for real. He IS the direct inheritor of the legacy of George Adamski – and just as damaging to the overall reputation of ufology.
7. Frank Kaufmann & Gerald Anderson – Every lawyer wants witnesses who can corroborate the basic story his client is telling. In the case of Roswell, both of the leading investigators – Stan Friedman and Kevin Randle – wanted witnesses who would corroborate their competing versions of events, which each believed to be the truth. Then, along came Gerald Anderson and Frank Kaufmann, telling tales that Friedman (Anderson) and Randle (Kaufmann) wanted to hear. Randle defended Kaufmann and attacked Anderson, and Friedman defended Anderson and went after Kaufmann. As we now know, both Anderson and Kaufmann were frauds, and both Friedman and Randle got taken as a result. The will to believe (and perhaps the need to one-up each other) got the better of Friedman and Randle for several years, undermining their credibility as investigators in general, and the Roswell case in particular, as they continued to defend Anderson and Kaufmann even after it should have been obvious that they were indefensible. Still, this was the effect – the cause were the falsehoods told by Anderson and Kaufmann, who serve as evidence not of the reality of Roswell, but rather the old saying that if “something is too good to be true, it probably is.”
8. Philip J. Corso – Proof that an honourable military career does not necessarily an honest man make. Corso’s The Day After Roswell basically set him up as the reverse-engineering genius behind everything from the integrated circuit chip (from Roswell to Silicon Valley), to the laser, to the microwave oven. Alas, it was all bunk, the ufological equivalent of the day after a 20 beer drunk – it might have felt good going down, but caused a lot of havoc on the way back up when you realize you can’t stomach it. By misleading Senator Strom Thurmond into writing an introduction for his book (Corso told Thurmond that it was about his career in the military, not Roswell), Corso may have been the first person to generate sympathy for the one-time segregationist Senator, which is, admittedly, quite a feat. Many have called Corso a fraud, which is on the mark. The better term, however, would be “carpetbagger,” because that’s what he did with Roswell.
9. Philip J. Klass – He made the Top 10 list simply because his impact on ufology cannot be ignored. He makes the Bottom 10 list because no-one (not even Donald Menzel) ever offered as many hair-brained, wacked-out, patently ridiculous explanations for the UFO phenomenon as Klass, and no-one (not even Donald Menzel) was ever as mean-spirited when doing it. Some people think Klass served a valuable function by keeping ufologists honest over the years. While that may have been true early on, the fact is that he quickly became such an obvious debunker (as opposed to a fair-minded skeptic) that he wound being ignored, or ridiculed - usually both.
10. Wilbert Smith – It’s hard to sum up everything that is wrong with the Wilbert Smith story in a short paragraph, but here goes (Some factually-challenged folks will no doubt call the following “character assassination.” Que sera sera...): Myths: Wilbert Smith was (a) a pioneering ufologist; (b) head of Canada’s super-secret UFO research and investigation program in the 1950s; (c) privy to the secrets of American UFO programs and research, including alien bodies; and (d) a top scientist. Facts: Wilbert Smith was (a) a UFO believer and a “contactee”; (b) a mid-level civil servant in Canada’s Department of Transportation in the 1950s, where he worked in commercial radio and television regulatory oversight; (c) director of a self-described “part-time” Project Magnet and operator of a “spare-time” UFO “research” station at Shirley’s Bay, Ontario, the latter not an official government project, and the former a project that failed in every respect – both were ignominiously cancelled by 1954; (d) author of a “Top Secret” memo that was not Top Secret (he just stamped it Top Secret), was not primarily about “flying saucers” (rather it was about “geo-magnetics”), and was full of more factual and logical holes than a block of Swiss cheese. And yet more than a few ufologists (most of whom have never done any real research into Smith's work or background) still treat Smith as some kind of ufolgical hero, which is the equivalent of confusing the Joker with Batman. For more info, see my various articles concerning my research into Smith.
Dishonourable mention – Wendelle Stevens, William L. Moore, Linda Moulton Howe, Donald Schmitt, William Steinman, Howard Menger, William Cooper, Dr. Michael Salla, Jeff Rense, Art Bell, Dr. Donald Menzel, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Frank Drake, Richard Doty, Timothy Cooper, MJ-12, J-Rod
Yin vs. Yang. Matter vs. Anti-matter. Luke vs. Darth.
Absolutely!
Each of the people listed below has had, in varying ways and to varying degrees, a detrimental impact on the serious study of the UFO phenomenon, whether in the eyes of science, the media, the general public, or ufology itself. In each case, ufology would have been better off if these people had chosen some other career path to follow, or another group of suckers to fleece.
Interested observers will note that one man made both the Top 10 and Bottom 10 Lists. To anyone who finds this confounding, I can only say that Richard Nixon managed to open relations with China and cover-up the Watergate break-in. Not everything - or everyone - is simple to figure out.
With that said, and without further ado, here are the Bottom 10 of Ufology - and some dishonourable mentions (a list that could have been much, much longer).
Let the debate begin...
Paul Kimball
1. Dr. Edward U. Condon – Condon was a distinguished scientist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, the director of the National Bureau of Standards, the president of the American Physical Society, and a professor of physics at the University of Colorado. It is in this latter post where his claim to ufological infamy rests. The Condon Report, which was the result of a two-year “scientific” study of the UFO phenomenon commissioned by the United States Air Force (known formally as The University of Colorado UFO Project), was released in 1968. Condon was the director. Virtually from the beginning, critics (including some of the committee’s members) charged that Condon and coordinator Robert Low were biased. When the report came out, in concluded that there were prosaic explanations for all UFO cases, and that there was no evidence to support the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. The Air Force, the American media (in general), and the scientific community (again, in general), accepted the report as the definitive word on the subject. Project Blue Book was terminated shortly after its release. Prominent critics such as Dr. Peter Sturrock, Dr. James E. McDonald, Stanton Friedman, and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, have all correctly noted that the report’s conclusions – which were authored by Condon himself – were sharply at variance with the evidence (Condon did not investigate any of the cases himself), which showed that 30% of the cases studied were classed as “unknowns,” higher even than earlier Air Force studies. As Sturrock wrote, “This report has clouded all attempts at legitimate UFO research since its release.” Little has changed in the almost four decades since the Report was released, as governments, the media, and many in the scientific community still cite it as proof that UFOs are not worth serious study. While it might seem unfair to include a real scientist like Condon on the same list as a fake one, like Bob Lazar (see #5), the Condon Report represents everything that science should not be, and irrevocably tarnished the reputation, for those aware of the facts, of a man who might otherwise have been viewed as one of the great American scientists of the 20th century. The damage it did to the serious study of the UFO phenomenon was incalculable.
2. Frank Scully, Silas M. Newton & Leo A. Gebauer (aka “Dr. Gee”) – If crashed flying saucer stories still have a bad reputation (and they do), it is because of these three guys. Newton, the con-man who cooked up the “Aztec Incident” back in 1949 – 1950, Gebauer, his partner who masqueraded as ace scientist “Dr. Gee,” and Scully, the gullible show-biz reporter who fell for the scam hook, line and sinker, and then wrote a book (Behind the Flying Saucers) based on Newton and Gebauer’s claims, are the best examples available of what kind of damage can be done to ufology when greed and dishonesty on the part of hucksters is mixed in equal parts with naiveté and the will to believe on the part of the listener (aka the “mark”). The sad part is that Newton and Gebauer are still sucking in a few well-meaning people to this day, decades after their deaths - people who continue to try and prove the “Aztec Incident” was a real flying saucer crash, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Ca plus ca change, ca plus ca meme chose.
3. “Professor” George Adamski – Adamski was one of the first people to publicly claim to have seen and photographed alien spacecraft, been contacted by aliens (he was one of the best known “contactees” in the 1950s), and to have even gone on flights with them! He wrote several books relating to his claims which caused quite a stir – both positive and negative – at the time, including the best-selling Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), which was co-written with Desmond Leslie. All of this, however, was based on a little-known science-fiction book that he wrote in 1949, Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Adamski enjoyed quite a bit of fame in the 1950s – he travelled the world on lecture tours (he even had an audience with the Queen of the Netherlands), attracted a fairly wide following, and published other books. Not everyone bought his act, however. Time Magazine called him “a crackpot from California,” which hit the nail on the head. His popularity began to wane when he publicly attacked the first moon photos as fakes and then, in 1962, announced that he was to be transported to Saturn for a conference of space travelers. His report of that “trip” was so bizarre that even his most ardent admirers began to have their doubts. By the time of his death in 1965, Adamski’s had become the subject of derision. While here are still some people today who believe that he was telling the truth (just as there are still some people who believe the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that there were no moon landings), it was during the 1950s, when Adamski’s influence was at its peak, that he did the most damage to ufology, undermining the efforts of groups like NICAP and APRO to gain recognition and acceptance for the serious study of the UFO phenomenon with his outlandish, undocumented claims to be a “contactee.” By the way – he wasn’t really a “Professor.”
4. Dr. Steven Greer – Has anyone done more harm to the cause of the serious investigation of the UFO phenomenon over the past decade than Dr. Steven Greer? Ask yourself these questions (I’ve whittled it down to four – I could have included many more): (1) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who charges people good, hard-earned money to wander about a field late at night, flashlights pointed to the sky, because that’s how you contact the aliens? Odd he has never taken a single photo or video of these sightings. (2) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who once claimed that U.S. military forces attacked a Colorado ET base inside a mountain using nerve gas? (3) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who constantly claims he briefed the CIA Director, when in fact this was merely a dinner party where UFOs came up in polite conversation? (4) How seriously is anyone who matters going to take a man who held a press conference in Washington to promote disclosure, and ruined it by including a ton of bogus “witnesses” along with the credible ones, thereby tainting the good guys, and totally undermining any prospect of Congressional hearings for, oh, about the next twenty years? The answer to all of the above is: “Not seriously at all.” Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped people within ufology, notably those associated with Exopolitics, a wacky off-shoot of Greer’s “work,” from promoting him as a “serious ufologist.” With “friends” like Greer, who needs debunkers?
5. Bob Lazar – Stan Friedman said it best, so I’ll just quote directly from him (see his website http://www.stantonfriedman.com/ for the full article): “Incredible claims have been made about Bob Lazar for years. He supposedly is a physicist with an MS in Physics from MIT and an MS in Electronics from the California Institute of Technology. He was a "Scientist" for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and obtained a job back-engineering UFOs at a very secret site at Area 51 in Nevada through Dr. Edward Teller. Supposedly he figured out how saucers work using Element 115 -- matter/anti-matter, etc. He was able to steal a small quantity of 115 from the 500 pounds available, but this was stolen back. He came forward with his story despite death threats because he thought the public has a right to know. Videotapes are available with his claims. It is all BUNK. Not one shred of evidence has been put forth to support this story: No diplomas, no resumes, no transcripts, no memberships in professional organizations, no papers, no pages from MIT or Caltech yearbooks. He also mentioned, in a conversation with me, California State University at Northridge and Pierce Junior College -- also in the San Fernando Valley, California. I checked all four schools. Pierce said he had taken electronics courses in the late 1970s. The other three schools never heard of him…He was publicly asked when he got his MS from MIT. He said "Let me see now, I think it was probably 1982." Nobody getting an MS from MIT would not know the year immediately. He was asked to name some of his profs, He said: "Let's see now, Bill Duxler will remember me from Caltech." I located Duxler. He's a Pierce physics prof, and never taught at Caltech. Lazar was registered in one of his courses at the same time Lazar was supposedly at MIT! Nobody who can go to MIT goes to Pierce JC, not to mention the rather long commute between LA and Cambridge, Mass… I checked his High School. He graduated in August, not with his class. The only science course he took was chemistry. He ranked 261 out of 369, which is in the bottom third. There is no way he would have been admitted by MIT or Caltech. An MS in Physics from MIT requires a thesis. No such thesis exists at MIT, and he is not on a commencement list. The notion that the government wiped his CIVILIAN records clean is absurd…Scientists leave trails. Lazar is NOT a scientist. He couldn't even answer scientific questions put to him. An excellent review of Bob's "Physics" can be seen at www.serve.com/mahood/lazar/critiq.htm. THIS IS PURE BUNK. BUNK. BUNK.” The pathetic part is that there are still people out there, like Dr. Michael Salla, who defend Lazar, and accept what he says to be the truth – which says as much about them as it does Lazar.
6. Billy Meier – An anecdotal story – my brother and I were attending a UFO conference where a Meier supporter was speaking. He showed some photos and film footage “taken” by Meier of alleged UFOs. My brother leaned over to me and said, “Is there anybody here who can’t tell those are fakes?” To which I replied, “Yeah, go figure. What really ticks me off, as a filmmaker, is how bad the fakes are. I mean, really – I’m offended.” And yet, there were more than a few in the audience that afternoon who bought it all, just as there are people around the planet (including a few extremely gullible UFO “researchers”) who continue to believe that Meier, a Swiss farmer who has claimed to be in contact with “Pleiadian” aliens for the past several decades, is really telling the truth. Of course, if you see Meier for what he really is, then you are, according to his website, “obviously envious, pseudo-scientists, sectarians, fanatics, schizophrenics, or simply slanderers” - so much for peace and love, and the brotherhood of mankind! Here’s all you really need to know about Meier, again from his website: “There is probably no other case as richly documented by witnesses’ testimonies and material as this one…” Wow - Witnesses! Great!! Oh, wait – there’s more: “…even though none of the witnesses has ever had personal contact with extraterrestrials (this privilege was granted exclusively to Billy by the extraterrestrials who came from the planet Erra in the open star cluster of the Pleiades. They have never conducted personal conversations or conscious telepathy with any other person.)” FYI to all Meier-ites – those AREN’T “witnesses,” and Meier ISN’T for real. He IS the direct inheritor of the legacy of George Adamski – and just as damaging to the overall reputation of ufology.
7. Frank Kaufmann & Gerald Anderson – Every lawyer wants witnesses who can corroborate the basic story his client is telling. In the case of Roswell, both of the leading investigators – Stan Friedman and Kevin Randle – wanted witnesses who would corroborate their competing versions of events, which each believed to be the truth. Then, along came Gerald Anderson and Frank Kaufmann, telling tales that Friedman (Anderson) and Randle (Kaufmann) wanted to hear. Randle defended Kaufmann and attacked Anderson, and Friedman defended Anderson and went after Kaufmann. As we now know, both Anderson and Kaufmann were frauds, and both Friedman and Randle got taken as a result. The will to believe (and perhaps the need to one-up each other) got the better of Friedman and Randle for several years, undermining their credibility as investigators in general, and the Roswell case in particular, as they continued to defend Anderson and Kaufmann even after it should have been obvious that they were indefensible. Still, this was the effect – the cause were the falsehoods told by Anderson and Kaufmann, who serve as evidence not of the reality of Roswell, but rather the old saying that if “something is too good to be true, it probably is.”
8. Philip J. Corso – Proof that an honourable military career does not necessarily an honest man make. Corso’s The Day After Roswell basically set him up as the reverse-engineering genius behind everything from the integrated circuit chip (from Roswell to Silicon Valley), to the laser, to the microwave oven. Alas, it was all bunk, the ufological equivalent of the day after a 20 beer drunk – it might have felt good going down, but caused a lot of havoc on the way back up when you realize you can’t stomach it. By misleading Senator Strom Thurmond into writing an introduction for his book (Corso told Thurmond that it was about his career in the military, not Roswell), Corso may have been the first person to generate sympathy for the one-time segregationist Senator, which is, admittedly, quite a feat. Many have called Corso a fraud, which is on the mark. The better term, however, would be “carpetbagger,” because that’s what he did with Roswell.
9. Philip J. Klass – He made the Top 10 list simply because his impact on ufology cannot be ignored. He makes the Bottom 10 list because no-one (not even Donald Menzel) ever offered as many hair-brained, wacked-out, patently ridiculous explanations for the UFO phenomenon as Klass, and no-one (not even Donald Menzel) was ever as mean-spirited when doing it. Some people think Klass served a valuable function by keeping ufologists honest over the years. While that may have been true early on, the fact is that he quickly became such an obvious debunker (as opposed to a fair-minded skeptic) that he wound being ignored, or ridiculed - usually both.
10. Wilbert Smith – It’s hard to sum up everything that is wrong with the Wilbert Smith story in a short paragraph, but here goes (Some factually-challenged folks will no doubt call the following “character assassination.” Que sera sera...): Myths: Wilbert Smith was (a) a pioneering ufologist; (b) head of Canada’s super-secret UFO research and investigation program in the 1950s; (c) privy to the secrets of American UFO programs and research, including alien bodies; and (d) a top scientist. Facts: Wilbert Smith was (a) a UFO believer and a “contactee”; (b) a mid-level civil servant in Canada’s Department of Transportation in the 1950s, where he worked in commercial radio and television regulatory oversight; (c) director of a self-described “part-time” Project Magnet and operator of a “spare-time” UFO “research” station at Shirley’s Bay, Ontario, the latter not an official government project, and the former a project that failed in every respect – both were ignominiously cancelled by 1954; (d) author of a “Top Secret” memo that was not Top Secret (he just stamped it Top Secret), was not primarily about “flying saucers” (rather it was about “geo-magnetics”), and was full of more factual and logical holes than a block of Swiss cheese. And yet more than a few ufologists (most of whom have never done any real research into Smith's work or background) still treat Smith as some kind of ufolgical hero, which is the equivalent of confusing the Joker with Batman. For more info, see my various articles concerning my research into Smith.
Dishonourable mention – Wendelle Stevens, William L. Moore, Linda Moulton Howe, Donald Schmitt, William Steinman, Howard Menger, William Cooper, Dr. Michael Salla, Jeff Rense, Art Bell, Dr. Donald Menzel, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Frank Drake, Richard Doty, Timothy Cooper, MJ-12, J-Rod
Friday, July 08, 2005
Ufology's Top 10
My pals over at the RRR Group blog (www.rrrgroup.blogspot.com) recently tried to devise a Top 10 List of ufologists, and could only come up with two names - Donald Keyhoe & Stan Friedman (despite their denials, I still think they were being cheeky, which is why I'm a RRR fan).
While both Keyhoe and Friedman make my list, there are many more people who have also made a profound and lasting impact (not always for good, in the eyes of some) on the study of the UFO phenomenon. Accordingly, here is my top 10 list of ufologists (all-time). Factors I have considered include public profile, respect within and without the ufological community, credibility, published work (both volume and quality), influence both within and without ufology, longevity, and what can best be termed "original thinking."
Without further ado...
1. Dr. Jacques Vallee (photo, above) - A respected scientist (he has an MS in astrophysics and a Ph.D in computer science), Vallee is unquestionably Ufology's "deep thinker," i.e. one of the few ufologists to consider the more existential aspects of the phenomenon, and possibilities beyond the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), of which he was initially a supporter. However, by the late 1960s Vallee had come to the conclusion that the ETH was untenable, and began exploring other theories, including the relationship between the UFO phenomenon and mythology, as detailed in his third UFO book, Passport to Magonia. Referred to in one interview as a "Heretic amongst heretics," Vallee is often at odds with die-hard ETH proponents, particularly in the United States, and as a result has largely withdrawn from the public realm of ufology, even as he continues his work in private. His public profile reached its peak when he served as the real-life model for the character played by Francois Truffaut in Steven Speilberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, his stature within both ufology and the scientific community remains unequaled to this day. Perhaps most important, he created the first scientific classification system for UFO reports. His website is www.jacquesvallee.com.
2. Dr. J. Allen Hynek - Long-time scientific consultant to the United States Air Force on the subject of UFOs, and founder of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), Hynek was a respected scientist (Ph.D in astrophysics) who did more than anyone else to bring a scientific approach to the study of the UFO phenomenon, and to encourage fellow scientists to take UFOs seriously. Initially a UFO skeptic, Hynek slowly came to the conclusion that the UFO phenomenon was an objective reality. He was a harsh critic of his fellow scientists, and their failure to take the UFO phenomenon seriously, writing, "ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility." Later in his life, like his protege Vallee, he became critical of the ETH. In 1976 he stated, "I have come to support less and less the idea that UFOs are 'nuts and bolts' spacecraft from other worlds. There are just too many things going against this theory... I think we must begin to re-examine the evidence. We must begin to look closer to home."
3. Stanton T. Friedman - A nuclear physicist, Friedman is the most vocal, passionate and effective spokesperson ever for the objective reality of the UFO phenomenon and the ETH (two different things). Stan has probably spoken to more people in more places about the UFO phenomenon than anyone else in the world. A powerful combination of showman and scientist, Stan still "packs them in" after all these years. His role as the "Father of Roswell," and his early scientific writings about UFOs and the potential of space travel, are also of significance. An eloquent humanist who uses a pointed sense of humour to help communicate his message (a rarity in a field where many people are far too SERIOUS), he is one of the most vocal advocates for viewing ourselves as "earthlings." His website can be found at http://www.stantonfriedman.com/.
4. Major Donald Keyhoe - the founder of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and the first real "ufologist," Keyhoe was an outspoken, unapologetic, tireless and controversial advocate for the objective reality of the UFO phenomenon and the ETH. Anyone whom Dr. Donald Menzel would call an "out and out nut" had to be doing something right! His 1950 book The Flying Saucers Are Real is a landmark in ufological literature - it popularized many ideas (including the ETH and government cover-up) that are still widely held within ufology today.
5. Dr. James E. McDonald - A respected scientist and passionate advocate in the mid to late 1960s of the ETH, McDonald interviewed hundreds of UFO witnesses, analyzed all of the Project Blue Book files, and gave numerous talks to a wide variety of professional societies. He testified before the United States Congress in 1968. His paper "Science in Default - 22 Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations," is perhaps the most profound - and stinging - rebuke to the failure of mainstream science to take the UFO phenomenon seriously ever written. Unfortunately, McDonald, despite his stature and many accomplishments, became the subject of ridicule while testifying as an expert in atmospheric physics before the House Committee on Appropriations regarding the supersonic transport in April, 1971. He unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself shortly after, and then committed suicide in June, 1971.
6. Dr. Peter Sturrock - A distinguished scientist and recipient of numerous awards from the American Astronomical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Cambridge University (among many others), Sturrock is emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University, and served as Director of the Center for Space Science and Astrophysics at Stanford from 1992 until 1998. Sturrock is best known within ufology for the Sturrock Panel, which he directed in 1997. The Panel was an international panel of scientists tasked to examine the UFO phenomenon. They concluded that UFO sightings have been accompanied by unexplained physical evidence that deserves serious scientific study. Sturrock's follow-up book, The UFO Enigma, is the best modern scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.
7. Coral Lorenzen - Co-founder (with her husband Jim) of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in 1952, the first worldwide civilian UFO group. The group's impact was significant enough to earn it a mention in the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel report. Moreso than an organization like NICAP, Lorenzen and APRO focused on scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon, publishing information about UFO reports, and educating the public about the evidence. An ardent proponent of the ETH.
8. James W. Moseley - The "Court Jester" of ufology, Moseley has been a significant player in ufology for over 50 years now. His satirical Saucer Smear remains a must-read amongst UFO cognoscenti (even those who dislike him), and his book Shockingly Close to the Truth (authored with Karl Pflock) is the best, no-holds barred account of the personalities within ufology over the years that you can find. If there hadn't been a James Moseley, ufology would have had to invent one.
9. Richard H. Hall - A long-time NICAP member, Hall deserves his place simply because of the UFO Evidence, Vols. I and II, which are the standard reference works for anyone serious about researching the UFO phenomenon. He also served as Chairman for the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR), and was a consultant to the 1966 - 1968 University of Colorado UFO study.
10. Philip J. Klass - Every yin needs its yang, and Klass - who is out and out hated by many pro-ETH types - qualifies as the most important of the ufological "yangs." The fact that pro-ETH ufologists often use the term "klasskurtzian" to attack their perceived and real opponents demonstrates Klass's lasting impact (the "kurtz" part refers to another CSICOP fellow, Dr. Paul Kurtz). Like Moseley, if Klass hadn't existed, ufologists would have had to invent him.
Honourable mentions go to:
Jerry Clark for his longtime work with CUFOS, his tenure as editor of the International UFO Reporter, and his UFO Encyclopedia; Brad Sparks, longtime UFO researcher, co-founder of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), and probably the most capable and knowledgeable UFO historian and case analyst today; Frank Edwards, whose Flying Saucers: Serious Business was a landmark book in the 1960s; Dr. Donald Menzel, who was ufology's "yang" until Klass broke the mold; Walt Andrus, the founder of the Mutual UFO Network; Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Blue Book leader and author of his seminal work The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects; Dr. Richard Haines, a former NASA research scientist and long-time UFO researcher, he is an expert on UFO sightings by pilots; Leonard Stringfield, a long-time UFO researcher and compiler of UFO reports; Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who is an excellent case analyst, scientific observer, and eloquent spokesperson for the reality of the UFO phenomenon.
These short notes on the honourable mentions don't begin to do them justice (Haines and Ruppelt in particular).
I would encourage anyone serious about the study of the UFO phenomenon to check out the research and writings of the people listed above. They are the best (and, in one or two cases, the "worst"), that ufology has had to offer over the years - at least in my opinion.
Now - let the debate begin!
Paul Kimball
While both Keyhoe and Friedman make my list, there are many more people who have also made a profound and lasting impact (not always for good, in the eyes of some) on the study of the UFO phenomenon. Accordingly, here is my top 10 list of ufologists (all-time). Factors I have considered include public profile, respect within and without the ufological community, credibility, published work (both volume and quality), influence both within and without ufology, longevity, and what can best be termed "original thinking."
Without further ado...
1. Dr. Jacques Vallee (photo, above) - A respected scientist (he has an MS in astrophysics and a Ph.D in computer science), Vallee is unquestionably Ufology's "deep thinker," i.e. one of the few ufologists to consider the more existential aspects of the phenomenon, and possibilities beyond the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), of which he was initially a supporter. However, by the late 1960s Vallee had come to the conclusion that the ETH was untenable, and began exploring other theories, including the relationship between the UFO phenomenon and mythology, as detailed in his third UFO book, Passport to Magonia. Referred to in one interview as a "Heretic amongst heretics," Vallee is often at odds with die-hard ETH proponents, particularly in the United States, and as a result has largely withdrawn from the public realm of ufology, even as he continues his work in private. His public profile reached its peak when he served as the real-life model for the character played by Francois Truffaut in Steven Speilberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, his stature within both ufology and the scientific community remains unequaled to this day. Perhaps most important, he created the first scientific classification system for UFO reports. His website is www.jacquesvallee.com.
2. Dr. J. Allen Hynek - Long-time scientific consultant to the United States Air Force on the subject of UFOs, and founder of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), Hynek was a respected scientist (Ph.D in astrophysics) who did more than anyone else to bring a scientific approach to the study of the UFO phenomenon, and to encourage fellow scientists to take UFOs seriously. Initially a UFO skeptic, Hynek slowly came to the conclusion that the UFO phenomenon was an objective reality. He was a harsh critic of his fellow scientists, and their failure to take the UFO phenomenon seriously, writing, "ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility." Later in his life, like his protege Vallee, he became critical of the ETH. In 1976 he stated, "I have come to support less and less the idea that UFOs are 'nuts and bolts' spacecraft from other worlds. There are just too many things going against this theory... I think we must begin to re-examine the evidence. We must begin to look closer to home."
3. Stanton T. Friedman - A nuclear physicist, Friedman is the most vocal, passionate and effective spokesperson ever for the objective reality of the UFO phenomenon and the ETH (two different things). Stan has probably spoken to more people in more places about the UFO phenomenon than anyone else in the world. A powerful combination of showman and scientist, Stan still "packs them in" after all these years. His role as the "Father of Roswell," and his early scientific writings about UFOs and the potential of space travel, are also of significance. An eloquent humanist who uses a pointed sense of humour to help communicate his message (a rarity in a field where many people are far too SERIOUS), he is one of the most vocal advocates for viewing ourselves as "earthlings." His website can be found at http://www.stantonfriedman.com/.
4. Major Donald Keyhoe - the founder of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and the first real "ufologist," Keyhoe was an outspoken, unapologetic, tireless and controversial advocate for the objective reality of the UFO phenomenon and the ETH. Anyone whom Dr. Donald Menzel would call an "out and out nut" had to be doing something right! His 1950 book The Flying Saucers Are Real is a landmark in ufological literature - it popularized many ideas (including the ETH and government cover-up) that are still widely held within ufology today.
5. Dr. James E. McDonald - A respected scientist and passionate advocate in the mid to late 1960s of the ETH, McDonald interviewed hundreds of UFO witnesses, analyzed all of the Project Blue Book files, and gave numerous talks to a wide variety of professional societies. He testified before the United States Congress in 1968. His paper "Science in Default - 22 Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations," is perhaps the most profound - and stinging - rebuke to the failure of mainstream science to take the UFO phenomenon seriously ever written. Unfortunately, McDonald, despite his stature and many accomplishments, became the subject of ridicule while testifying as an expert in atmospheric physics before the House Committee on Appropriations regarding the supersonic transport in April, 1971. He unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself shortly after, and then committed suicide in June, 1971.
6. Dr. Peter Sturrock - A distinguished scientist and recipient of numerous awards from the American Astronomical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Cambridge University (among many others), Sturrock is emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University, and served as Director of the Center for Space Science and Astrophysics at Stanford from 1992 until 1998. Sturrock is best known within ufology for the Sturrock Panel, which he directed in 1997. The Panel was an international panel of scientists tasked to examine the UFO phenomenon. They concluded that UFO sightings have been accompanied by unexplained physical evidence that deserves serious scientific study. Sturrock's follow-up book, The UFO Enigma, is the best modern scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.
7. Coral Lorenzen - Co-founder (with her husband Jim) of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in 1952, the first worldwide civilian UFO group. The group's impact was significant enough to earn it a mention in the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel report. Moreso than an organization like NICAP, Lorenzen and APRO focused on scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon, publishing information about UFO reports, and educating the public about the evidence. An ardent proponent of the ETH.
8. James W. Moseley - The "Court Jester" of ufology, Moseley has been a significant player in ufology for over 50 years now. His satirical Saucer Smear remains a must-read amongst UFO cognoscenti (even those who dislike him), and his book Shockingly Close to the Truth (authored with Karl Pflock) is the best, no-holds barred account of the personalities within ufology over the years that you can find. If there hadn't been a James Moseley, ufology would have had to invent one.
9. Richard H. Hall - A long-time NICAP member, Hall deserves his place simply because of the UFO Evidence, Vols. I and II, which are the standard reference works for anyone serious about researching the UFO phenomenon. He also served as Chairman for the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR), and was a consultant to the 1966 - 1968 University of Colorado UFO study.
10. Philip J. Klass - Every yin needs its yang, and Klass - who is out and out hated by many pro-ETH types - qualifies as the most important of the ufological "yangs." The fact that pro-ETH ufologists often use the term "klasskurtzian" to attack their perceived and real opponents demonstrates Klass's lasting impact (the "kurtz" part refers to another CSICOP fellow, Dr. Paul Kurtz). Like Moseley, if Klass hadn't existed, ufologists would have had to invent him.
Honourable mentions go to:
Jerry Clark for his longtime work with CUFOS, his tenure as editor of the International UFO Reporter, and his UFO Encyclopedia; Brad Sparks, longtime UFO researcher, co-founder of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), and probably the most capable and knowledgeable UFO historian and case analyst today; Frank Edwards, whose Flying Saucers: Serious Business was a landmark book in the 1960s; Dr. Donald Menzel, who was ufology's "yang" until Klass broke the mold; Walt Andrus, the founder of the Mutual UFO Network; Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Blue Book leader and author of his seminal work The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects; Dr. Richard Haines, a former NASA research scientist and long-time UFO researcher, he is an expert on UFO sightings by pilots; Leonard Stringfield, a long-time UFO researcher and compiler of UFO reports; Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who is an excellent case analyst, scientific observer, and eloquent spokesperson for the reality of the UFO phenomenon.
These short notes on the honourable mentions don't begin to do them justice (Haines and Ruppelt in particular).
I would encourage anyone serious about the study of the UFO phenomenon to check out the research and writings of the people listed above. They are the best (and, in one or two cases, the "worst"), that ufology has had to offer over the years - at least in my opinion.
Now - let the debate begin!
Paul Kimball
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