The Other Side of Truth

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Dad, Where Do UFOs Come From?

Dad, Where Do UFOs Come From?

As always, Greg Bishop is worth a read.

Now, back to my hiatus.

Paul Kimball

Saturday, July 07, 2007

The Roswell Incident (1947 - 2007) - RIP & Rebirth

Amidst all the hoopla and partying in Roswell this weekend, I hope people take a moment to pause and think about what it all means. Because it isn't a celebration of Roswell's 60th anniversary that's going on there - it's both a wake, and a rebirth.

I say a wake, because the "Roswell Incident", as a serious UFO case, is dead. It's been on life support for quite a while now, but it's finally given up the ghost. Oh, sure, as with Elvis, there will always be a few people who think the "case" is still alive and kicking. New "evidence" - like the occassional Elvis sighting - will pop up from time to time to give them hope (the Walter Haut affidavit shows just how desperate some people are to keep it going, as does the fact that Donald Schmitt is still considered a top Roswell researcher). But the truth is that it's over folks. If the "Roswell Incident" was the crash of an alien spacecraft, we'll never know - at least not until the government admits it, or the aliens reveal themselves. If it was something more prosaic, like Project Mogul, or Nick Redfern's theory, or some other super-secret project, then there will always be those who don't accept that explanation, no matter how much proof the government or researchers might show them. The "case" is dead in the water, because there is no resolution in sight that will definitively answer everyone's questions.

Making matters worse, Roswell has been hit by a number of "bullets" in the past couple decades that have wounded it beyond saving. The Alien Autopsy, Majestic-12, Philip Corso, Frank Kaufmann, Glenn Dennis - any one of these things undermined it as a serious "case" worth investigating. The cumulative effect has been fatal.

So, to Roswell the serious UFO case, I say - rest in peace. Better that people focus their attention on better cases, like Tehran, or RB47, or the 1996 Yukon sightings, or Shag Harbour, or yes, even Rendlesham. Even better still, with Roswell dead to all but the most ardent "Elvis" fan, perhaps researchers can get back to the business of investigating modern sightings more thoroughly. In the process, as we have seen with the O'Hare case, they might discover that interest in the UFO phenomenon, which has waned in recent years, could rise again. After all, the maxim that all politics is local at the end of the day applies in a temporal way to the UFO phenomenon - the "here and now" is the "local". A sixty year old case like Roswell is the equivalent of Timbuktu.

What will this mean for the serious study of the UFO phenomenon? I confidently predict that not only will it survive Roswell's passing - in the long run, it will be better off without it.

But I also said that this weekend is a rebirth. Why? Because while Roswell as a serious UFO case might be dead, Roswell as a legend is just really being born, as my good friend Nick Redfern has recently pointed out. And it is as a legend that Roswell will continue to fascinate people for many years to come, much the same way that the insoluble Jack the Ripper case still fascinates visitors to London, or some of the disappearances in the so-called Bermuda Triangle continue to fascinate people, or the various stories about bandits like Billy the Kid still captivate us, even though we'll never really know which ones are true and which ones aren't.

That's good news for the city of Roswell, of course, and for the people there who make money off of the Roswell story. And there's nothing wrong with that - anymore than there's anything

wrong with people making money off of Jack the Ripper walking tours in London.

So, here's to the "Roswell Incident". No matter how hard people tried to crack it to everyone's satisfaction, it remained until its dying days a mystery. It left this world (er... no pun intended) the same way it came in - as a ball of confusion, with a wink and a nod, no compromises and no answers.
And here's to the "Roswell Legend". I predict it will have a long, and profitable, life from hereon in.

Call it the "Elvis" of ufology.

Long live the King!

Paul Kimball

Friday, July 06, 2007

Mac Tonnies and the Paranormal Mainstream

I had a long chat with my good friend Mac Tonnies this evening, which always makes me smile, because when we start talking to each other it feels like a jam session with the old band, where we would just play and play until we were played out (just check out our extended, extemporaneous riffing with Greg Bishop on our 2006 Radio Misterioso gig to see what I mean).

Mac is one of the brightest and most articulate people involved in the paranormal / esoteric field of study, and is always well worth a listen, even when, as is sometimes the case with me, one might disagree with him. It is to the enduring shame of Coast to Coast, that the likes of Richard C. Hoagland and Linda Moulton Howe make regular appearances and pretend that they know what they're talking about, whereas Mac has never been invited to be on the show. The Coast people are shortchanging their listeners - in a big way. So too are most conference organizers, who invite the likes of Michael Horn or Steven Greer, but routinely ignore guys like Mac, who might actually say something worth listening to.

What Coast and these conferences are doing, of course, is preaching to the converted. It was undoubtedly a sound business model in the past, but it will eventually run afoul of the law of diminishing returns, i.e. without some new blood with some new ideas, people will eventually get bored, and stop coming or listening. Given the declining numbers across the board at conferences, it should be clear that this process is already underway.

Of course, Mac isn't the guy you want at your conference or on your show if you just want to reinforce the audience's pre-existing beliefs, or to make them feel better. But if you want to challenge people, and stimulate them, and introduce them to ideas and concepts with which they may not be familiar - and isn't that what you should be doing - then Mac is one of the guys you want on board. But when was the last time that the "mainstream" paranormal / esoteric community actually wanted to challenge anyone with new ideas?

And there's the irony with the situation Mac finds himself in, and Greg Bishop, and others - in a field of study where the weird, wacky and far-out should be the coin of the realm, where ideas should matter, and where an intelligent discourse should be paramount, most people have settled for the familiar, comfortable, and easy-to-digest orthodoxy of the commercialized paranormal establishment. "Same old, same old" is the rule, not the exception. Which is why fewer and fewer people seem to care these days.

Religion may be the opiate of the masses in the general sense (or one of them), but in the paranormal / esoteric world, it's Coast to Coast, and Linda Moulton Howe, and Richard Hoagland, and most conferences, and so forth. The stagnation is palpable. It reeks of complacency.

It's not too late to change that, mind you. A good start would be for one of the Coast producers to give Mac a call, or shoot him an e-mail, and invite him on for a full three hour long show.

In the meantime, if you haven't done so, check out Mac's blog, The Posthuman Blues, which is an always interesting, and often amusing, grab bag of stuff, both paranormal and otherwise.

Paul Kimball

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Walter Haut and alien bodies at Roswell

Much ado is being made within ufology these days about statements made by the late Walter Haut, the young lieutenant at Roswell in 1947 responsible for releasing the "we recovered a flying saucer" press release, to the effect that he saw alien bodies. He made these claims in an interview with Wendy Connors and Dennis Balthasar in 2000, and again, in much more detail apparently, in an affidavit he signed for Donald Schmitt and Tom Carey in 2002.

My take?

It's much ado about nothing.

Let's all recall that Haut vouched for Frank Kaufmann, who was shown to be a fraud, and Glenn Dennis, who similarly has been exposed. This stuff about alien bodies, long after there was any reason for him to keep it secret, reads as bogus to me. Indeed, I interviewed Haut and Dennis in 2001 - they sat right next to each other, and Dennis told his story about dead bodies etc., and Haut said not a word about it. Don't tell me it was his "oath" either - he had already talked plenty about Roswell, and broken his oath if he had given such a thing.

It is my considered opinion, which will no doubt make me unpopular in certain quarters again, that there are three possible explanations for this "revelation":

1. Haut may have been manipulated, either intentionally or unintentionally, by unscrupulous or careless and untrained researchers for their own ends.

2. Haut may have told a purposeful tall tale in order to give new life to the Roswell story, which his family still has a financial stake in. A note here - when I interviewed Haut and Dennis in 2001, they both asked for money, even though I was doing a film about their old friend, Stan Friedman. It was only when Stan intervened personally that they dropped their request. They are the only witnesses to any UFO case that I have ever talked to who ever asked to be paid for an interview, and in my case I was talking to them more about Stan and his career than the Roswell incident itself. Charles Halt, Bruce Bailey, and Robert Salas, all veterans, made no such request for the recent Best Evidence film, for example.

3. Haut was simply an old man who had heard so many stories like Dennis' that he came to believe them himself.

The latter is the most charitable explanation I can come up with.

The fact that he insisted that none of this be released until after his death should be a red flag as well - it neatly inculcated Haut from having to answer the tough questions about what he said. As a piece of evidence, this kind of statement is practically worthless regardless of who made it, or the circumstances under which it was made, because the person who made it cannot be cross-examined / questioned by independent researchers.

A final note - if the affidavit was given in 2002, and Haut died in 2005, why is it only now making the rounds within ufology? If true, it is indeed an earth-shattering revelation, and yet it was neatly tucked away for well over a year, until (a) Schmitt and Carey had a book to sell (apparently they had to obtain permission from the Haut family to publish it, but why did it take so long), and (b) Roswell had a 60th anniversary to celebrate.

Consider those further red flags. Big ones. Because if aliens on earth really is the biggest story of the millenium, as Stan Friedman is wont to say, then these people deliberately withheld critical information from the public, for motives that could only be attributed to profit. So much for free and easy "disclosure".

None of this will stop those with financial and emotional interests in Roswell from flogging this story, probably for years to come, and claiming it as proof of crashed alien spacecraft near Roswell in 1947. Don't be deceived, folks. It is nothing of the sort.

Paul Kimball

Monday, May 28, 2007

Talking about Best Evidence on Strange Days... Indeed

FYI, I'm on Strange Days... Indeed with Errol Bruce-Knapp this week discussing Best Evidence in what was, I think, one of my better interviews.

You can tune in here, although if you're not already a subscriber, you'll have to sign up for a nominal fee. But it's worth it for what is perhaps the longest running, and maybe the best, talk-radio show devoted solely to the UFO phenomenon. The shows in the Archives are worth the price of admission all by themselves!

Paul Kimball

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Best Evidence - The Top 10

I've received a number of e-mails from folks who couldn't see Best Evidence because they don't live in Canada, asking what the final top 10 list was. Here it is, along with the people who appeared in each segment to comment:

10. Nuremberg, 1561 (note - this was actually an editorial decision on my part, as I bumped the case that came in at #10 so I could make the point about the pre-1947 nature of the UFO phenomenon, which a couple of people suggested I do) - Don Ledger, Stan Friedman

9. Skylab III - Brad Sparks, Stan Friedman

8. Yukon 1996 - Stan Friedman (I would have really liked to get Martin Jasek in this segment, and he agreed to do it, but time and budget just didn't allow for us to make it out to BC; Stan filled in admirably)

7. Malmstrom AFB 1967 - Captain Robert Salas, Dick Hall, Stan Friedman

6. Shag Harbour - Don Ledger

5. Santa Barbara Channel, 1953 (the "Kelly Johnson" case) - Brad Sparks, Stan Friedman

4. McMinnville, 1950 (the Trent photos) - Bruce Maccabee, Brad Sparks

3. Rendlesham Forest - Colonel Charles Halt, Dick Hall, Nick Pope

2. Tehran, 1976 - Stan Friedman, Bruce Maccabee

1. RB47, 1957 - Brad Sparks, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Bailey (who also discussed his own RB47 incident over the Gulf of Mexico five years later), Stan Friedman

In the closing segment, it is Mac Tonnies who gets the final word.

Paul Kimball

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Best Evidence - The Blog

I've set up a blog for information and other material about Best Evidence. I'll still be posting some information about the film here, but more in depth material will now be found over at the new blog, which is located here.

Paul Kimball

A Roswell Explanation Full of Hot Air

Not satisfied with offering wholly unsubstantiated explanations for the RB-47 case and Socorro, the UFO Iconoclast(s) (i.e. the discredited RRR Group) now seem to be offering an explanation for the Roswell incident that is, literally, full of hot air. I suppose, as everyone else is chattering about Roswell this year, they have a right to get their two cents worth in too. It's a free country, after all.

Their suggestion (these guys never actually come out an take a real stand) is that what crashed might have been a US Navy dirigible. Now, as you look at the non-rigid blimps pictured above, one can easily imagine that they may have been the cause of more than a few UFO sightings over the years, whether private or government launched versions - the Navy was using various dirigibles in a number of ways until 1962, for example. Some large radar airships could stay aloft almost indefinitely. One of the ships established the world record for flight endurance of eleven days. In March of 1957, the Snow Bird, commanded by Cmdr. J. R. Hunt, one of the Navy's ZPG-2 airships, flew from Weymouth, Massachusetts to Europe and on to Africa ending at Key West, Florida without refueling or landing. It's not quite Phineas Fogg, but was still quite an achievement at the time.

All very interesting, but what does it have to do with the Roswell incident?

Nothing - but the Iconoclast(s) are suggesting that one crashed near Roswell in July, 1947 (no doubt looking to stir the pot, which is their sole raison d'etre), and that this was what the Roswell incident was really all about. Of course, with them it's all "wink wink, nudge nudge, call us for our secret password to our super-secret bona fide researcher site", which is like playing Texas Hold 'Em with a guy who says he's won, reaches for the pot, but won't show his hand (guess how long he gets to sit at the table doing that).

Anyway, this is hardly an original idea, which should come as no surprise given the past offerings thrown out their by the Iconoclast(s) / RRR Group, who seem to view UFO research / commentary as some sort of Jackson Pollock painting, only without Pollock's sense of over-arching purpose. Speculation of the "dirigible" angle can be found here, for example (scroll down).

Further, as a commenter has pointed out at their blog, they mislead their readers with the picture they've put up, which is not of the kind of non-rigid airship that the US Navy was flying in 1947 (especially the M-class blimps the Iconoclast(s) specifically refer to), but rather of the USS Macon, a rigid dirgible that crashed in 1935. That's the rough equivalent of putting a picture of Ronald Reagan up when you're talking about George Bush.

Here is the interchange between "Hollis" and the "Iconoclast(s)":

If you're going to do blurbs on subjects such as this, at least do a little homework first and not be so misleading. The photo you used is one of the USS Macon, a ZRS-5 class DIRIGIBLE, circi 1931, which is not even remotely related to the M-series NON-rigid BLIMPS of the 1947 era. A blimp is merely a 'gas-bag', such as a hot air balloon, which encloses a volume of lighter-than-air gaseous material such as helium.

And yes, the M series blimps operated out of Almagordo, NM, since a primary helium production plant was located there. (it was a classified secret facility at that time). A lot of testing, including actual flights, was done using various ratios of hydrogen and helium. So of course, any lightning strike to the gas bag could easily cause a catastrophic explosion.

Hollis

RRRGroup said...
Hollis,

We used the blimp picture here for illustrative purposes only.

The one, small picture we have of the Navy blimp you reference shows only the tip of the craft.

We're going through the dirigible photos we've accumulated for the Goodyear series tested by the Navy.

Huh? They're trying to find a picture of an M-class blimp by going through the drigible photos they've accumulated?

Notice how they're trying to pretend they have expertise and resources that perhaps others don't.

Look, guys, it's not that hard - all you had to do was Google "M-Class blimp". Here's what one looks like:

It wasn't hard at all. If the Iconoclast(s) had a clue about what they're talking about, they would have found this photo, or one like it, of the proper airship, in five minutes or so. I'd tell them where to find this photo, but I think it's time they actually did some looking on their own.

Some of the paranormal news services, like the Anomalist, reference the posts of the Iconoclast(s). I can only assume they do so in order to offer a humourous break from the serious stories, because that's all the stuff offered up by the Iconoclast(s) is good for.

Paul Kimball
Addendum: April 26 - The Iconoclast(s) have now changed the photo they had from the USS Macon to the picture shown above. I guess it's a good thing for them that I didn't squirrel the photo away at my super-secret, password protected site for bona fide UFO researchers. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that their Roswell "trial balloon" is anything other than a colossal waste of time. There are photos on the Internet of crashed blimps and dirigibles (look them up yourself, boys), which are immediately recognizable as such to anyone other than a 3 year-old kid, and which would certainly have been recognizable to Major Marcel et al. But all of this does get them attention, and that's what they're all about, which is fair enough, if somewhat sad - they're not the first, and won't be the last, to glom onto a subject like UFOs for that reason. Just don't let them fool you into thinking they're serious about the UFO phenomenon, in any way, shape or form.

In the meantime - look, more M-class blimp photos!

Again, it took me a couple of minutes to find these ones.

P.S. If you want to read an excellent history of the US airship program, which is fascinating stuff in and of itself, you should read "Kite Balloons to Airships: The Navy's Lighter Than Air Experience" edited by Roy A. Grossnick and published by the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) and the Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, which you can access here - no password required. Who knows - you might even come across a photo of an M-class blimp.

Scientists Discover... Krypton?

Have scientists discovered Krypton, the home planet of Superman?

No, not quite (although they have apparently discovered kryptonite). But it's fairly big news nonetheless.

Potentially Habitable Planet Found

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.

"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer.

But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

Hawking should know better than to state that we haven't been visited by any "little green men" - we have no idea what alien life would look like, and it's pure hubris to imagine that we would be at the top of the intelligence chain when it comes to life and how advanced it might be. So, while it's true that we can't get to the stars yet, there's absolutely no proof that it can't be done - meaning they might have made their way here (key word? "might").

This news will probably provide a little boost for the ETH in the short term, and, as more and more potentially inhabitable planets are discovered nearby (relatively speaking, of course), the possibility that some UFOs may be ET will look more realistic, or at the very least be met with fewer howls of derision.

Which is a long way from proof positive - rather, it's just a shifting of the odds a bit.

Paul Kimball

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Best Evidence - Canadian premiere

Best Evidence will premiere on Space: The Imagination Station on May 10th, at 10 pm AST / 9 pm EST. You can see the listing here.

The accompanying blurb reads as follows:

Best Evidence

Whether they believe or not, people all over the world are fascinated by the subject of UFOs. Best Evidence, a SPACE supported documentary, looks at the 10 best UFO cases to date. Many are unknown to the general public, who for years have been fed tales of crashed flying saucers and government cover-ups at the expense of real evidence that shows that there is something unexplained happening in the sky.

Warning: There are no crazy aliens in the film, and no goofy backdrops to interviewees, or anything like that. In fact, to the best of my recollection, aliens aren't mentioned once, at least not directly. There is animation, but it's of the Discovery-channel variety, i.e. serious, and not of the Plan 9 From Outer Space variety, i.e. not serious.

As some UFO researchers are busy these days bashing UFO documentaries and networks and producers at UFO Updates, I'd like to take a moment to thank the good folks at Space for giving me the opportunity to try something a bit different - a serious film about serious UFO cases. It's a risk for them, and they deserve all the credit in the world (and beyond) for taking it, especially Charlotte Engel, who heads up their independent production section, and greenlit the film over two years ago.

The next UFO-related film I make, assuming I ever make another, which is at best a 50 / 50 proposition, would probably focus on the tongue-in-cheek, weird and wacky world of ufology (where truth really is stranger than fiction). Something where I head out with my pals Nick Redfern, Mac Tonnies, Tim Binnall and Greg Bishop on a ufoological road trip across America maybe - definitely in an RV. Kris Lee Mcbride will be tagging along as well. At the end we meet the Court Jester of Ufoology, the one and only Jim Moseley. I've earned the right to look at the lighter side of it all.

But for the moment, I'm Mr. Serious, and if Best Evidence isn't quite Dick Hall's The UFO Evidence (and I never claimed it would be, knowing full well that no documentary can match a book for detail), Dick was still smart enough to see the merit in the project, and contribute, as were a lot of others.

And unlike Peter Jennings and his team, I was smart enough to recognize the contribution that Dick has and continues to make - he's in the film, along with Nick Pope, Stan Friedman, Bruce Maccabee, Mac Tonnies, Don Ledger, and our chief consultant and my good friend, Brad Sparks - as well as witnesses Colonel Charles Halt, Captain Robert Salas, and Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Bailey.

Is it the greatest film ever made? Hardly - that would be Lust for a Vampire.* But is it a film you're going to want to see?

I hope so.

You can keep an eye on developments at the Best Evidence blog site.

Paul Kimball

* Just kidding. The greatest film ever made is clearly Dying Fall.**

** Still kidding. Obviously, it's Do You Believe in Majic?***

*** Okay, okay... I'll be serious this time. The greatest film ever made was...

History and Ufology - The need to avoid ahistorical analysis

One of the most common things you'll see in ufology is ahistorical "reasoning". Some of it has popped up in the comments to the MJ-12 / Landry post a few days ago. Folks who make this error usually mean well, but what they're doing is taking historical events out of their proper context and trying to fit them into their own view of how the world works today.

An example would be something like:

"Well, George Bush did X, which means that a president fifty years before must have or probably also did X." Or words / meaning to that effect.

Or this (one of ufology's favourites):

"Our intel and military services act like X today, which means that they must have acted like X in 1947."

And so forth.

History students are taught from day one to avoid this kind of "reasoning", but even there it rears its head more than you might think (I marked enough undergrad history papers to know whereof I speak - indeed, I've been guilty of it in the past myself).

Ahistorical analysis can be difficult to detect sometimes, particularly when the time periods are relatively close to each other, as is usually the case when the conversation is about UFOs (the difference between 1947 and today, which spans the modern UFO era, is a drop in the temporal bucket).

But try it this way:

"Our intel and military services act like X today, which means that they must have acted like X in the Revolutionary War."

That doesn't make much sense, does it?

This does not mean that there are not common threads that run through history. But these are patterns / conclusions that are drawn from common facts, not the other way around.

When examining historical events, we always have to remember to view them in their proper context, and not view them through the prism of our own time and experiences. In other words, we should stick to the facts as they were, not as we would like them to be, or think they were, and draw our conclusions from that. We can still be wrong (facts often support more than one reasonable interpretation), but at least we'll have gone about the process in the proper fashion, which always decreases the chances for error.

Paul Kimball

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Robert Landry and MJ-12

If Majestic-12 (or any other group like it) really existed in the wake of the crash of an alien spacecraft in Roswell, why would President Truman, who supposedly created this group, have asked his Air Force aide, Colonel (later Major General) Robert Landry, to keep an eye on the UFO phenomenon for him, and brief him quarterly?

This is how Major General Landry, who retired from the USAF in 1962, and died in 2000, described it in an addendum to a 1974 oral history interview (original here):

In this time period the UFO phenomenon was getting quite a bit of play in the press, radio, TV and from miscellaneous other sources. All manner of objects and things were being seen in the sky by people, including attempted UFO landings and UFO hoverings over isolated areas. There was even a report of seeing little men with big round heads getting in and out of a UFO. Well, the President, like any other citizen, is exposed to all these goings on, too.
In any case, I was called one afternoon to come to the Oval Office--the President wanted to see me. We talked about UFO reports and what might be the meaning for all these rather way-out reports of sightings, and the subject in general. The president said he hadn't give much serious thought to all these reports; but at the same time, he said, if there was any evidence of a strategic threat to the national security, the collection and evaluation of UFO data by Central Intelligence warranted more intense study and attention at the highest government level.
I was directed to report quarterly to the President after consulting with Central Intelligence people, as to whether or not any UFO incidents received by them could be considered as having any strategic threatening implications at all.
The report was to be made orally by me unless it was considered by intelligence to be so serious or alarming as to warrant a more detailed report in writing. During the four and one-half years in office there, all reports were made orally. Nothing of substance considered credible or threatening to the country was ever received from intelligence.
Note: the Air Force had been charged by the Department of Defense with the collection and evaluation of UFO data from all sources such as the other services, the National Weather Service, and any other reliable source.

Now, this isn't some sort of scoop on my part. General Landry's remarks have been reasonably common knowledge in the UFO community for some time now. Indeed, some pro MJ-12 ufologists like Grant Cameron have used them to buttress their claims that Truman was interested in UFOs, without seeming to understand how Landry's statement undercuts their belief in the existence of MJ-12, or any other super-secret UFO committee. If MJ-12 did exist, and Truman wanted a report on what the CIA was up to, all he had to do was contact DCI Hillenkoetter, who was also supposedly a member of MJ-12. Of course, Truman would have been getting reasonably regular reports on UFOs from MJ-12 anyway, if such a committee had existed.

So, what conclusions can be drawn from Landry's statement, the accuracy of which has never been disputed?

First, President Truman was clearly interested, at least to a degree, in UFO reports. This shouldn't come as a surprise - lots of people, in and out of government, were interested in UFO reports in the late 1940s, for the very reasons that Landry mentioned.

Second, there was no super-secret group, whether MJ-12 or otherwise, set up by Truman to deal with UFOs. If there had been, there was no conceivable reason for him to ask Landry (shown above in WWII, as commander of the 56th Fighter Group) for quarterly reports on the UFO phenomenon.

Finally - and this follows from the second conclusion, although it is less certain than the first two - there was probably no crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell, or anywhere else prior to 1948. If there had been, the MJ-12 proponents are likely correct in their assertion that Truman would have established some sort of oversight group. If he had, however, he would not have asked Landry to give him regular reports, and check in with the CIA.

These are the logical conclusions that should have been drawn from Landry's statement a long time ago. And yet ufologists like Grant Cameron, and Stan Friedman ignored them.

Paul Kimball

Thursday, April 19, 2007

The RB47 UFO Case(s)

Someone recently claimed to have solved the 1957 RB47 UFO case.

What they're obviously unaware of is that there was more than one RB47 case - although the 1957 one is the spectacular one, there were others. UFOs made a habit of playing tag with one of the most sophisticated electronic surveillance airplanes in the world.

One of the other incidents involved a plane in which Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Bailey was flying as an ECM officer. Bailey, pictured at the left with me in his home outside of Dallas, Texas, back in 2006, has served as the de facto historian for the RB47 since his retirement (his book We See All is a wonderful airman's memoir of what it was like to fly back then). He describes his crew's

own incident in my just completed documentary, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases. Bailey (third from right in the photo at left, back in his USAF days) also describes the aftermath, not only of his incident, but of others involving RB47 crews, including the classic 1957 case. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time he had talked about his case on camera.

Critics like Phil Klass have had a hard time solving just one RB47 case. It gets even harder to solve several, all of which had the same general characteristics, and all of which were reported by the best crews the United States Air Force had flying back then, with the best equipment - guys who more than once came up wing-to-wing with the Soviets, and never backed down.

In short, the kind of men you could rely on to not get rattled by simple lights in the sky.

Paul Kimball

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

MJ-12 meeting?

Is this a photo of an MJ-12 meeting?

As it would be hard to find a photo of a meeting for a group that never existed, the answer is no.

However, this photo of a 1948 meeting of the National Security Council does show some alleged members of MJ-12 - Sidney Souers, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, and James Forrestal.

You can find the original at the ARC in the NARA - here.

It's a wonderful resource, with lots of old photos already digitally archived - like this one of Forrestal, looking grim as he walks down the street. Note the guy to his right in the background, filming him.

The ARC site makes history come alive, which is always a good thing. And who knows - maybe there are some UFO-related nuggets hidden in there somewhere, waiting for a diligent researcher?

Paul Kimball

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The UFO Mystics

Those wacky UFO Mystics, Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, back during the New Frontiers Symposium in October, 2006.

I think Greg was singing some flying saucer tune.

Paul Kimball

Monday, April 16, 2007

Tim Binnall's take on Stan Friedman

Friedman has always been a lecturer, first and foremost. I highly suggest listening to the Xmas episode of BoA : Audio where we talk about his "early years". I agree that if you listen to a lot of Friedman, you'll hear a lot of stuff for the 2nd, 3rd, etc. time. But, considering he gives countless interviews a year, it's to be expected he'll have his set "routines". It's the job of the interviewer to (a) know those routines and avoid getting into them and (b) generate new, different and/or fresh material from him. (I can only hope I succeed w. the annual X-mas specials).

It's easy to look back now and consider him a great "researcher", because Roswell and MJ-12 got so huge. But he sort of lucked into Roswell and never knew it would become a cultural institution that it ended up being and the MJ-12 documents remain one of Ufology's more dubious stories, despite their fame.

I haven't heard him asked about alternative dimension hypothesis. As a matter of fact, I can't recall anyone really asking him his thoughts on all the various other theories. If you know of an interview, let me know, I'm sure it would be intersting to hear. I'll also keep that line of questioning in mind for next year's Xmas special.

I'll agree w. Paul Kimball in that Friedman will be (or at least should be) remembered by history as the great popularizer of the UFO phenomenon. By sheer longevity and dilligence, he's planted the UFO seed in the minds of countless people.

Original here (go to the "ufology" section, and then the "Stanton Friedman" thread).

Paul Kimball

Psi Factor

There seems to be an upsurge of interest in psychic phemomena in the last few years, particularly on television and in film, usually two pretty good barometers of what the public is fixated on.

But is there a scientific basic for Psi?

If that's a question that interests you (and frankly how could it not), then you should pick up The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena by Dr. Dean Radin, Director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Radin has done cutting edge psi research for Princeton University's department of psychology, the U.S government, AT&T, the University of Edinburgh, and other groups, agencies, and businesses. You might not buy everything he has to say (I'm not sure I do), but it's certainly thought-provoking stuff.

Here is an excerpt from chapter 1:

In science, the acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage sequence. In Stage 1, skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage can last from years to centuries, depending on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage 2, skeptics reluctantly concede that the idea is possible, but it is not very interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when the mainstream realizes that the idea is not only important, but its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined. Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who used to disavow any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually, no one remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.
The idea discussed in this book is in the midst of the most important and the most difficult of the four transitions – from Stage 1 into Stage 2. While the idea itself is ancient, it has taken more than a century to conclusively demonstrate it in accordance with rigorous, scientific standards. This demonstration has accelerated Stage 2 acceptance, and Stage 3 can already be glimpsed on the horizon. The idea is that those compelling, perplexing and sometimes profound human experiences known as "psychic phenomena" are real.
This will come as no surprise to most of the world’s population, because the majority already believes in psychic phenomena. But over the past few years, something new has propelled us beyond old debates over personal beliefs. The reality of psychic phenomena is now no longer based solely upon faith, or wishful thinking, or absorbing anecdotes. It is not even based upon the results of a few scientific experiments. Instead, we know that these phenomena exist because of new ways of evaluating massive amounts of scientific evidence collected over a century by scores of researchers.
Psychic, or "psi" phenomena fall into two general categories. The first is perception of objects or events beyond the range of the ordinary senses. The second is mentally causing action at a distance. In both categories, it seems that intention, the mind’s will, can do things that – according to prevailing scientific theories – it isn’t supposed to be able to do. We wish to know what is happening to loved ones, and somehow, sometimes, that information is available even over large distances. We wish to speed the recovery of a loved one’s illness, and somehow they get better quicker, even at a distance. Mind willing, many interesting things appear to be possible. Understanding such experiences requires an expanded view of human consciousness.
Is the mind merely a mechanistic, information-processing bundle of neurons? Is it a "computer made of meat" as some cognitive scientists and neuroscientists believe? Or is it something more? The evidence suggests that while many aspects of mental functioning are undoubtedly related to brain structure and electrochemical activity, there is also something else happening, something very interesting.
This is for real?
When discussing the reality of psi phenomena, especially from the scientific perspective, one question always hovers in the background: You mean this is for real? In the midst of all the nonsense and excessive silliness proclaimed in the name of psychic phenomena, the misinformed use of the term parapsychology by self-proclaimed "paranormal investigators," the perennial laughing stock of magicians and conjurers … this is for real?
The short answer is, Yes.
A more elaborate answer is, psi has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments. There are disagreements over to how to interpret the evidence, but the fact is that virtually all scientists who have studied the evidence, including the hard-nosed skeptics, now agree that there is something interesting going on that merits serious scientific attention.

This isn't dull grade 10 introductory physical science here. This is "gee-whiz" stuff that could have a very real application in our day-to-day world, and could alter the way we look at ourselves and our universe (or is that "mulitiverse"?). For example, Radin speculates about some of the applications Psi might have for politics:

A society that consciously uses precognitive information to guide the future is one that is realizing true freedom. That is, the acts of billions of people seeing into their own futures, and acting on those visions, may result in fracturing undesirable, "fated" destinies set in motion long ago. This would allow us to create the future as we wish, rather than blindly follow a predetermined course thorugh our ignornace.

On the other hand, Radin points out the potential problems, which sound like something straight from a science-fiction novel, but which may be more real than we currently imagine:

If too many people begin to accurately peek at their possible futures, and they change behaviors as a result, the causal loops established between the future and the past may agitate the future from a few likely outcomes into a completely undetermined probabilistic mush.

If all of this sounds a bit too much like Minority Report for some, it's worth remembering that often science fiction authors have been better at predicting future events than so-called experts. In this case, however, Radin goes much further than science fiction, and provides a scientific framework around which we can discuss intelligently the possibilities of things that have fascinated humans, in one way or another, for thousands of years.

Radin concludes:

Future generations will undoubtedly look back upon the twentieth century with a certain poignancy. Our progeny will shake their heads with disbelief over the arrogance we displayed in our meager understanding of nature. It took three hundred years of hard-won scientific advances merely to verify the existence of something that people had been experiencing for millenia.
At the turn of the twentieth century, imaginative scientists were slowly becoming aware of radical new theories on the horizon about space, time, matter, and energy. Some sensed, correctly, that developments such as relativity and quantum theory would radically alter our understanding of reality itself. Almost a century later, the impact of those discoveries is still reverberating throughout science, technology, and society.

As the twenty-first century dawns, astounding new visions of reality are stirring.

One thing that Radin says above all others rings true with me. We are arrogant. We assume, in many respects, that we know all there is to know, and we have experienced all that there is to experience. In taking this attitude, we have allowed ourselves to stop progressing. The desire to challenge new frontiers has waned. We have become complacent.

It's time to change that, and to rediscover the essense of the human spirit - the desire to explore, and the ability to embrace change. Our journey shouldn't be based on belief, or faith, but rather on science, and logic, and reason - none of which precludes an examination of that which might be called "the paranormal".

After all, if history has shown us, one generation's "paranormal" can become another generation's relatively mundane fact-of-life.

Remember that the next time you get on an airplane, or use a computer, or talk on the telephone.

Paul Kimball

UFO Hall of Shame - Who should be inducted first?
	Frank Scully
	George Adamski
	Dr. Seth Shostak
	George Van Tassel
	Frank Kaufmann
	Dr. Steven Greer
	Linda Moulton Howe
	Silas Newton
	Richard Doty
	William L. Moore
	Philip J. Klass
	Gerald Anderson
	Ray Santilli
	Billy Meier
	Bob Lazar
	Ed Walters
	Todd Zechel
	Budd Hopkins
	Dr. Edward U. Condon
	Marshall Applewhite

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Who belongs in the 1st class of The Other Side of Truth UFO Hall of Fame?
	Dr. J. Allen Hynek
	Major Donald Keyhoe
	Dr. James McDonald
	Captain Edward Ruppelt
	Dr. Jacques Vallee
	Stanton T. Friedman
	John Keel
	James Moseley
	Richard Hall
	Jim Lorenzen
	Coral Lorenzen
	Philip J. Klass
	Brad Steiger
	Jerome Clark
	Major Kevin Randle
	Errol Bruce-Knapp
	Gray Barker
	Nick Pope
	Dr. Bruce Maccabee
	Rev. Barry Downing

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Dad, Where Do UFOs Come From?

Tuesday, July 10, 2007