MUFON's Top 100 UFO Books

MUFON, or some members of MUFON, have come up with a list of what they think of as the one hundred top books about UFOs published over the last seventy years or so. There are some things wrong with that list that I thought I would mention, which is, of course, my opinion of what is wrong. You can see their list here:

http://micropublishingmedia.info/mufonbooks/list-mufon-top-100-books-of-all-time-2/

The first three books on this list were written by George Adamski (one with Desmond Leslie) and that makes me wonder about this. Adamski was the contactee who claimed communication with people of Venus. Tall, good looking people who apparently were worried about Earth and our warlike ways. In the 1950s and 1960s when the contactees were in their heyday, Venus was seen as a world somewhat similar to Earth except the surface was hidden in a perpetual cloud bank that suggested a steamy, jungle-like, swampy planet. Today we know the surface is hot enough to melt lead and doesn’t seem to be the likely home of any living creatures, let alone an advanced race capable of interplanetary flight. This would mean that Adamski wasn’t honest in his descriptions of Venus or in his communication with the inhabitants… his book might have been influential but it was complete fiction. Should it actually be on a serious list?

Adamski is not the only contactee represented here. Dan Fry, or should I say Doctor Dan Fry and his The White Sands Incident is on the list. Frank Stranges, or should I say Dr. Frank Stranges, is there with his Stranger at the Pentagon. I’m not sure why there are so many books by contactees who claim to have interacted with alien creatures, usually from other planets in the Solar System. I have to wonder why George van Tassel was overlooked.

Another entry that I think is questionable is The Philadelphia Experience. This is that tale we discussed a while back that is based on the hoax perpetrated by Carlos Allende or Carl Allen, depending on his mood. There has been quite a bit written about this, and it was the subject of several books, but the whole thing started when Allende (or Allen) created the letters about teleportation and Navy experiments. He even admitted the hoax and his parents and other family members confirmed the hoax. It seems that this is the fifth or sixth book of fiction to appear on the list.

This would be the same complaint about Behind the Flying Saucers. Though there has been some resurgence in the Aztec UFO crash, I believe the case has been discredited. Two of the primary sources had backgrounds that were less than sterling (though I know Frank Warren disagrees with me on that or at the very least doesn’t believe it disqualifies their testimony).

I also wonder why UFOs: God’s Chariots made the list when Erick von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods did not. I mean that if we’re going to credit someone with creating the whole ancient astronaut theory, it was von Daniken who popularized this idea though others had reported on this many years before von Daniken hit the bestseller list.

Don Keyhoe

Oh, there are some very good books on the list. David Jacob’s UFO Controversy in America seems to belong. So do the two books by J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report and The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. And let’s not forget Allan Hendry’s The UFO Handbook. Some of Vallee’s books are there, but I wonder if they might not be overly represented. I think the same thing about Keyhoe’s books because I worry that some of the information is more speculative than factual, but then, those books were certainly influential. The same can be said for the Lorenzen’s though they sometimes let their enthusiasm for the extraterrestrial cloud their vision.

I was surprised to see Carl Sagan on the list. His book with Thornton Page, UFOs: A Scientific Debate is properly there as well. Strangely, Steven Spielberg made the list with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is obviously a movie created for entertainment. The book based on it doesn’t add to our knowledge.

Actually, this looks more like a list someone prepared of his or her own library of UFO books. It is an eclectic mix of books that run from those that are clearly fiction (Adamski and Fry) to those that actually add something to our knowledge. I don’t know the criterion used to select the books, but it seems that it wasn’t very strict and probably had more to do with MUFON entering the book publishing business than anything else.

My List of the Best UFO Cases

For decades I have avoided answering the questions about what I believe to be the ten best UFO cases. I understood it to be a trap. Once I provide the answer, the debunkers would attack, explaining why those cases are nothing spectacular. There would find mundane answers for all of them, even if they have to make up the answers, which is not an unreasonable assumption.

I have discussed the Coyne helicopter case in the past. While some of you might disagree with some of the evidence of the case and point out that it is mainly the testimony of the flight crew, the fact is they were interviewed within hours of the event which provides us with a very good record of what they experienced. As you might remember, Phil Klass explained the sighting as a meteor with no evidence to support that explanation.

True, it might not have been an alien spacecraft, but Klass’ answer was pure fiction. This is the thing that worried me. People will remember this cockamamie explanation not realizing that it is bogus. The claim of an answer lives even when it makes no sense given the facts.

But this is about the cases I believe have not been explained. These are the ones that should have been investigated in depth at the time. Had that happened, we might have learned something important. Had that happened, we might be having a completely different discussion. As you will see, this is not a numbered list or a top ten list. It is a list of those cases I find interesting.

Pilots who attempted to intercept UFOs over
Washington, D.C.

In July 1952, on two consecutive weekends, UFOs were seen over Washington, D.C., reported by airline pilots, people on the ground and seen on radar. There were multiple attempts by Air Force fighters to intercept the objects. The Air Force pointed out there was a temperature inversion over Washington on those days which caused the radar returns and that some of the sightings were caused by the same natural phenomenon. The explanations don’t fit all the observations, but the press had an answer that made them happy. The Blue Book files on these cases are rather confusing which might have been the whole point.

(As a side note, and as I have mentioned here, these sightings were responsible for what I think of the greatest newspaper headline ever… SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL.)

Photo copyright by the Cedar Rapids Gaxette.

In November 1957, witnesses in at least thirteen separate locations in and around Levelland, Texas, reported a glowing object close to the ground, that stopped their car engines, dimmed their headlines and filled their radios with static. Many of them called the sheriff’s office or the local police to report the sighting unaware that others had seen the same thing and had reported the same thing. Sheriff Weir Clem (yeah, I wish he had a name like Jack O’Neill or something with a little more pizzazz) saw the object when he went out in search of it (he said publicly, he saw it in the distance, but it seems he might have gotten much closer) as did other law enforcement officials. The Air Force and NICAP’s Donald Keyhoe got into public arguments over the number of witnesses while no one actually made the attempt to interview them (no I don’t really count the afternoon that one Air Force NCO spent in Levelland talking to a few of the people and who proposed an explanation that did not fit the facts).

Looking down on the White Sands Missile Range. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

Within hours of the Levelland sightings and before the news media was reporting on them, MPs at White Sands Missile Range reported an object that landed near them. Twelve hours later a second team made a similar sighting. The Air Force interviewed three of the four MPs, mentioning that they were all very young, 20, 21 years old as if this disqualified them as observers. The Air Force explained the sightings as the moon and Venus. (As an aside, I remember being an aircraft commander and flight lead in Vietnam at 19 but you just can’t trust those teenagers and young men with anything important).

Lonnie Zamora.

I would include the Lonnie Zamora case but it is single witness with some landing traces. I do know that Phil Klass suggested that this was a hoax concocted by the mayor of Socorro, New Mexico, and Zamora to create some sort of tourist attraction on land owned by the mayor, except the mayor didn’t own the land and no tourist attraction was ever build. For me this case is somewhat problematic, though there are some very interesting aspects to it.

I also like the sightings around Belt, Montana, in March 1967. At the time these were going on, there was a shutdown of a Minuteman missile site nearby that the Air Force went out of its way to say it had nothing to do with the UFOs. What is important here is that Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Chase (he of RB-47 fame in 1957), the base UFO officer, when asked about some of this told the University of Colorado (Condon) investigator that he couldn’t discuss it because of national security… and yes, if a flight of missiles had been rendered inoperable by an outside force, whatever that force might have been, that was a matter of national security. The UFO sightings might have been a coincidence… but what if they weren’t?

One of the most documented UFO sightings took place in October 1967, while the Condon Committee was allegedly investigating UFO sightings. There were multiple witnesses to something falling into Shag Harbour in Canada. Although the initial reports came from a group of teenagers, eventually law enforcement and the military were involved in attempts to recovered whatever it had been… but the Condon Committee members, after a telephone call or two, decided the sighting was not worthy of additional investigation.

The series of sightings in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 are also interesting. The sightings were multiple witness, were reported officially, and there was physical evidence of the landings. Debunkers have explained the case, but I don’t find their explanations particularly persuasive. I have met both Jim Penniston and John Burroughs and I find them to be solid witnesses. I have also met Larry Warren who first leaked the case.

The JAL 1628 case is important because there are complete radar records of the flight. The FAA investigated and the chief investigator John Callahan has those files. He said it was the only case he knew of where there were thirty minutes of radar data with voice recordings so you could watch and listen to the case in real time. Callahan said that he briefed people at the White House about the case.

I haven’t mentioned many photographs simply because I have noticed that about

Blow up of images from the
Montana Movie.

99% of them were taken by teenagers and 99% of those were faked. But there are two movies, one made in Great Falls, Montana in 1950 and the other near Tremonton, Utah in 1952 that are very interesting. There is also evidence that the Air Force tampered with the Montana Movie, removing a portion of it that showed the objects as disk shaped. Allegations were made that they had done the same with the Tremonton Movie, but the evidence argues against it.

Frame of the Tremonton Films, and no I don't believe sea gulls answers the question.

Yes, the list is incomplete and involves cases that I investigated, talked to the witnesses, been to the locations and the like. I do not believe that adequate explanations have been offered. I believe that some of the evidence has been twisted to force it into an explanation because like nature abhorring a vacuum, the Air Force and debunkers abhor an unexplained UFO sighting… But sometimes there just isn’t a good solution which is not to say that one won’t appear someday or that any of them proves alien visitation, only we don’t have a good explanation… and some of them suggest that had a proper investigation been conducted at the time, we might be having a different discussion.

One of the Best Cases - Levelland, Texas

In the last few weeks I have been asked a couple of times about which UFO cases I believe have credibility. I have avoided these sorts of questions in the past because I know the pitfalls of providing a list like that. Debunkers (as opposed to skeptics) will then attempt to explain those cases in the mundane with little regard to the facts. A good example of that was Philip Klass’ explanation of the Coyne helicopter case as a meteor and ignoring the testimony of the pilots and crewmen. Rather than learn the procedures used by Army helicopter pilots, he talked to some unidentified guy who had flight time in helicopters never telling us if that flight time was at the controls or riding in the back.

Ignoring that, and my own trepidation, I will note that the best of the cases will have multiple chains of evidence, including multiple witnesses, interaction with the environment, measurements by instrumentality such as radar, landing traces, and photographs. You would think that after seventy years or so we’d have just such a case. Although we don’t there are a few that meet some of these requirements and one of the best is that from Levelland, Texas, in November 1957.

I have reported on this series of sightings in the past, including featuring it in several books, and in postings here that can be seen at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/06/levelland-texas-revisited.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/08/levelland-ufo-sightings.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/04/levelland-and-electro-magnetic-effects.html

Here’s the thing about the Levelland sightings. There is some evidence that investigations of that case from all points of view was less than stellar. According to the records I have reviewed and the documentation available from various

Levelland, Texas
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

sources, there were witnesses at thirteen separate locations who reported engines that stalled, lights that dimmed and radios that filled with static. The Air Force claimed in press releases that only three people had seen the object, though they would eventually claim six observers, and to them, if they hadn’t interviewed the witnesses, they didn’t exist. Donald Keyhoe claimed nine but his estimate, as we now know, was low.

The number of witnesses around Levelland would fulfill one part of that chains of evidence argument. We can say that we have multiple, independent witnesses. Given the circumstances, most of them were unaware that others have made reports. They called the Levelland Sheriff’s Office to report what they had just seen. A few, after hearing the news reports the next day, called to say they had seen the same thing.

These witnesses also reported an interaction with the environment which, of course, is their stalled engines, dimmed lights and static filled radios. The witnesses at each of those thirteen locations reported the same things, though not necessarily all of them. Although this information is based on witness testimony it is fairly consistent among them and it suggests an interaction with the environment.

The Condon Committee study a decade later didn’t bother to research this case other than talk to a businessman who claimed his car had been stalled by a UFO in 1967 under somewhat similar circumstances. Although they did make an investigation of that report, they concluded that there were discrepancies in the witness’s statements, no evidence, according to them, of a strong magnetic field near the car based on their mapping of the magnetic points on the car, and because there were no other witnesses, there was no need to continue to investigate. Given what they said, I would be inclined to agree with their assessment of that particular case. However, they also suggested that because the Levelland case was ten years old and the cars involved were no longer available, they couldn’t conduct their magnetic mapping of those vehicles. They decided they weren’t going to follow up on it. Had anyone tried the magnetic mapping in 1957, that might have resulted in some interesting information that hadn’t been found at the time. It seemed that they used the results of their single investigation to reject the Levelland case and this is only place in their study (page 108 of the Bantam paperback) where it is mentioned… Or, in other words, a chance to gather some interesting scientific evidence in 1957 was lost because no one thought to attempt it and nothing new was learned by the Condon Committee because they thought the case too old so they didn’t bother.

Had the magnetic mapping as suggested by those at the Condon Committee been done in 1957 that would have also, to a lesser extent, fulfilled the requirement for instrumentality. This would have provided some additional indirect evidence that something had happened at Levelland or maybe shown that there was no good evidence of a strong magnetic field which might also be important information.

As I have mentioned in the past, there is a hint of a landing trace as well. Before the skeptics point it out, let me note that it comes not from Levelland sheriff Weir Clem, but members of his family and is a claim made nearly half a century after the fact. Family members said that a rancher north of Levelland had found a large burned area on his land. The sheriff had seen it, but then there are no reports from the time, no pictures of it, and no first-hand witnesses to it. If that indirect evidence had existed, it could have formed another chain of evidence if properly investigated, but then that just didn’t happen.

And, of course, no photographs of the object have ever been found. In today’s world everyone who had experienced a sighting like this probably would have had a cell phone to take a picture. In 1957 most people, on routine business, didn’t carry a camera. Pictures, especially if taken from multiple locations, would be powerful evidence.

In what is a somewhat hilarious conclusion, the Air Force wrote off the Levelland sightings as “ball lightning,” a phenomenon that in 1957 was still a subject of scientific debate. Today ball lightning is described as appearing almost simultaneously with cloud-to-ground lightning, have diameters that can reach about three feet and that lasts from a second to about a minute. This, of course, suggests that what was seen in Levelland was not ball lightning. This doesn’t mean it was an alien spacecraft, only that the Air Force explanation for the sightings was bogus and because of that should be listed as “unidentified.”

The point here, however, is that I see Levelland as a very good case given the evidence that was collected. I also see it as a missed opportunity. If Keyhoe and the Air Force hadn’t been so busy arguing about the number of witnesses and what the effects of the close approach of the UFO might be, or that some of it was caused by a cracked rotor in a car, we might have learned something very important. It was certainly a missed opportunity and while there are hints of what else might have been collected, we simply can’t verify it as proof of alien visitation in today’s world.

The United States Air Force vs. the UFO Witnesses

As I was completing my last UFO book, I ran into a number of things that were somewhat disturbing. Some of those were the ongoing Air Force attitude that these things weren’t alien in nature, those who saw them were somehow deluded, and it was the Air Force mission to convince people that UFOs were an illusion. It didn’t matter to them how honest the witnesses might be, how carefully they had made their observations, or what their level of education or expertise might be. The Air Force mission was to stop the UFO reports. If they had to lie about it, misrepresent the situation, hide evidence or smear witnesses, that was all for the greater good… though they don’t seem to have an idea what that greater good might be.

I have pointed out time and again, including the posting that preceded this, the clash between the Major Donald Keyhoe, he of the original NICAP and the Air Force in their discussions about what had happened in Levelland, Texas, in 1957. The short version is that Keyhoe, in the national press said there were nine witnesses to the UFO and the Air Force countered with there were only three who saw the object. The Air Force files carried the names of more than three witnesses and I now believe they were splitting a fine hair. They were saying only three had reported a craft and Keyhoe was talking about nine who had seen something in the sky including a craft. As I have said, repeatedly, both were wrong. More than three saw the craft (more than three names were available in the Blue Book files) and there were more than nine witnesses scattered throughout the Texas panhandle around the Levelland area who saw something strange that night.

This can be taken a step further, as I learned in working on the book. The Air Force sent a single NCO to Levelland to investigate. It seems he spent the lion’s share of a day there and returned to file a report that suggested a variety of answers that really explained nothing. By way of contrast, just days later when a fellow named Reinhold Schmidt told Nebraska authorities that he had been taken onboard a craft, the official response was officers from two separate command structures. They spent quite a bit of time with Schmidt and his clearly invented tale.

You have to ask yourself, “Why?”

The answer is simple. Schmidt was quite obviously making it up, the physical evidence he claimed was motor oil of a type found in his car’s trunk, and the public relations benefit for the Air Force was clear. “Look at the nonsense we have to investigate wasting time, money and personnel resources.”

At the other end, they do nothing to call attention to Levelland, dispute Keyhoe even though they knew that he was right based on what was in their own files, but that didn’t matter. Smear Keyhoe as someone just in it of the money and who had no worry about what the truth might be. That sort of outlines the Air Force position because, when Levelland is examined in a dispassionate light, Keyhoe’s report was much closer to the truth than that of the Air Force.

This isn’t the only time that the Air Force went after Keyhoe. A scientist in Australia, Harry Turner, produced a report that suggested there was something extremely strange going on Down Under and he believed it to be alien in nature. In his report, he quoted Major Donald Keyhoe, who, in his book Aliens from Space, had suggested that he, Keyhoe, was working from official and classified documents not to mention discussions with those in high places who had some of the inside information. Keyhoe was drawing his conclusions on what he had seen and what he had learned from various officials and Turner was basing his report on many of the claims made by Keyhoe.

The Royal Australian Air Force queried their counterparts in the USAF, asking about Keyhoe and his claim of access to important but classified documents and his access to important and high-ranking officials in the US government. The USAF response was that Keyhoe didn’t have the access to classified information he claimed, the documents from which he quoted did not exist, and his access to these important people was limited. He had exaggerated the information for the financial gain of a successful book. Keyhoe and his information were not to be trusted. The RAAF, believing they had received the straight information from the USAF, rejected Turner’s report because of the negative comments about it and ignored, as best they could, UFO sightings reported inside Australia.

The truth was that Keyhoe had not been overly exaggerating and the documents he claimed he had seen or used as reference did exist saying much of what he said they did. While Keyhoe might have engaged in some hyperbole, or slanted his take toward his bias, the USAF did the same thing in their attempts to discredit him. It turns out that Keyhoe was closer to the truth than the Air Force was which is sad state of affairs but also tells us something about the climate of the time.

And finally, though I don’t mean to keep harping on the November 1957 sightings, these cases offer some of the most compelling evidence of Air Force duplicity and showed that when they couldn’t find anything else, they attacked the witnesses themselves. The James Stokes sighting is a case on point. Everyone around him suggested he was an engineer. Even his bosses in the Air Force at Alamogordo referred to him as an engineer. But the Air Force couldn’t find a college degree and labeled him as a mere technician. That Stokes worked as an engineer and was called that by others in the Air Force made no difference. In the press, the Air Force investigators made it clear that Stokes couldn’t be trusted because he had been disingenuous in describing himself, or, at least that was the situation according to the Air Force.

The point here is that we just can’t take anything for granted when we look at the UFO files created by the Air Force. We can see that they were less than candid, and while it might be said, based on what I’ve presented here that this was limited to 1957, the truth is there are other examples scattered throughout the files, up to and including the letter that Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler to the Condon Committee explaining what the Air Force expected for their half a million bucks. I’ve explored that in earlier posts here.

Or, to put a point on it, everything the Air Force claimed should be verified because we have found the errors in their files. Some of those errors were simple mistakes, some of them born of incompetence, and more than a few were lies designed to hide the truth.

Fort Itaipu and Footnotes

I’ve been working on my new book, which is sort of a follow up to Government UFO Secrets (notice that I’ve slipped the name of my last book into this) and I have been doing something that I don’t think is being done very much. I’ve been chasing footnotes again. This means as I research a case, looking for all the information available on it, I attempt to return to the original source as much as possible. One way of doing that is look at the footnotes in other books to see where they gathered the information.

The case in question here is the attack on Fort Itaipu, Brazel on November 4, 1957. According to all those other sources, two sentries on duty saw a “new” star blossom in the distance, over the Atlantic Ocean, fly toward them, hover and then slowly descend. It was an orange disk that was humming slightly. There was a blast of heat that caused the sentries to panic. One fell to the ground unconscious and the other torn at his clothes screaming. That alerted the garrison, all of whom apparently reacted to the UFO.

About the same time, as the confused soldiers attempted to find out what was happening, the lights failed, as did their communications ability, their generators and even their weapons.  The electricity came back quickly and the clocks, set to ring at 5:00 a.m., began at 2:03 a.m.

The injured soldiers were removed, first to the infirmary, and later to an Army hospital. The fort commanding officer ordered an information blackout, telling the soldiers not to discuss the case with anyone, not even their fellow soldiers. Someone did talk, and Dr. Olavo Fontes, APRO’s representative in Brazil learned of the case some two or three weeks later. Though he tried to interview the soldiers, using his contacts as a medical doctor, he failed. His information came from some of the officers at the fort, but he never mentioned their names, nor did he identify the soldiers.

This is the bare bones of the sighting. As I was conducting my research, I looked to see what others had written about the case. In The A.P.R.O. Bulletin of September 1959, Fontes’ tale was published apparently as it appeared in his book Shadow of the Unknown. Later, in 1962, Coral Lorenzen, in her 1962 book, The Great Flying Saucer Hoax: The UFO Facts and Their Interpretation, repeated the information supplied by Fontes but in her own words. She suggested that Fontes had talked to an officer who was at the fort, but she didn’t supply his name or that of the sentries.

Jacques Vallee, in Anatomy of a Phenomenon, quotes from Lorenzen’s book, and adds nothing new to the case. Donald Keyhoe, in Aliens from Space, reports on the case in his own words, but there is nothing in that report that is new or different. He does speculate about alien motivations and their worries about our first tiny steps into space. Keyhoe wrote, “It would also mean that the burnings were intended as a demonstration of superior weapons they could use against aggressive explorers from Earth.”

But the point is that everything comes back to the article by Fontes in The A.P.R.O. Bulletin. I could find no new information about the case that wasn’t traced to Fontes. I did email Thiago Luiz Ticchetti, a Brazilian UFO researcher and a co-editor of Revista UFO and Coordenador da Revista UFO Brasil: www.ufo.com.br, who did update the case for me. He wrote that he had been unable to verify the tale of the injured soldiers, and unable to verify the power outage whether it was momentary or something a little longer. According to what he told me, most Brazilian UFO researchers believe that there had been a UFO sighting, but the details of what would be a Close Encounter of the Second Kind, meaning a sighting in which there are some sort of physical effects, remained unverified.

Fontes, according to his own writings, never got the chance to talk to the sentries, so much of what he wrote about their reactions had to come from the officers that Fontes said he had interviewed. The problem is that he never identified them. The tale then is based, at best, on second-hand testimony and we have no way to verify the information supplied by Fontes. We must trust him based solely on the trust that Coral Lorenzen had in him and if we have no faith in that, then almost everything he wrote about the Fort Itaipu case must be carefully scrutinized. In the end, the best we can say, based on what we know, is that there was a UFO sighting and the other elements are yet to be verified.

Levelland, Texas Revisited

In an earlier post I had suggested the Air Force lied about some of the information hidden away in the Project Blue Book files. I had been going to expand on the comments about the Portage County UFO chase, but then remembered some of the things I had read about the Levelland, Texas UFO landings and EM Effects case of November 2, 1957.

What struck me as I read the file in years past was that the Air Force and Donald Keyhoe, at the time the Director of the civilian National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), were engaged in a publicity war, each suggesting the other was lying. The Air Force said there were only three witnesses but Keyhoe said there were nine. Well, both couldn’t be right so I thought I would take another look at what appears in the Blue Book files.

In a document from those files, I found the following statement. “Contrary to Keyhoe’s and Washington Press reports only three, not nine persons witnessed the incident.”

But later in the file, there is another document that said, “A mysterious object, whose shape was described variously as ranging from round to oval, and predominately bluish – white in color was observed separately by six persons near the town of Levelland.”

In a separate document which was apparently part of a newspaper account of the Air Force investigation, the reporter wrote, “The investigators said further (note the plural) [which is a parenthetical comment in the document] that they could find only three witnesses who actually saw the object.”

This could explain the discrepancy inside Air Force file which is to say that only three saw the object but the others were involved in the incident. This would mean that the Air Force, while not telling the whole story was only slightly shading the truth.

Except, in another part of the file, that included newspaper reports, it is clear that more than three saw an object as opposed to a streak of light. For example, the sheriff, Weir Clem, is reported to have said, “It lit up the whole pavement in front of us [he and a deputy] for about two seconds.” He called it oval shaped and said that it looked like a brilliant red sunset.

This brings up a separate issue, which is the color of the object. The Air Force focused on the blue-white light, suggesting that this was related to lightning, supposed to be flashing in the area at the time. But in several of the cases the witnesses talked about a bright red and if that was accurate, then the Air Force explanation fell apart or partially fell apart.

The Air Force eventually explained the case as ball lightning, a phenomenon that science was still investigating in 1957. Those descriptions found by the Air Force claimed it was a bright blue-white and ball shaped. What the Air Force didn’t bother to mention was that ball lightning was short lived, just seconds, and that it was extremely small, something on the order of eight or nine inches in diameter. The witnesses suggested something much larger.

This newspaper quote about the sheriff seeing something larger and oval from the time seems to corroborate statements made by Clem’s wife some forty or forty-five years after the fact. According to a report by Richard Ray of FOX News 4, Oleta Clem, the sheriff’s widow said, “Well, he just said he’d seen a thing that lit down in that pasture with lights all around. It come down and then it went back up as fast as it come down.”

So, we have Clem describing, in 1957, an oval-shaped object and we have his wife saying, in 2002, that he had seen a thing with lights all around. She is telling us he was closer than the Air Force gave him credit for and we had him, making statements in the public record in 1957 that says the same sort of thing. Is this good proof? Not really, but it is interesting testimony and it does suggest that the Air Force was playing fast and loose with the facts.

The Air Force file contains newspaper clippings that have the names of many of the witnesses, statements made by them about what they saw and what happened to their vehicles, and giving the hometowns or locations of these witnesses. Without too much trouble, it is possible to come up with the names of more than three people who saw an object, all available in the Project Blue Book files which negate the Air Force statements about the case.

And yes, I would agree that these newspaper reports are not the most reliable source of documentation, but it would have provided the Air Force investigators, if there had been investigators, a place to begin. Instead, they noted in the file that they hadn’t interviewed one of the primary “sources” because he didn’t live in Levelland, but outside the town… and as an aside, there was but a single investigator who spent most of a day attempting to find and interview witnesses rather than investigators.

What we have here is a clear case of the Air Force pretending to investigate a major sighting and then writing it off as ball lightning when everything argues against that explanation. There were multiple sightings of an object made by more than three people in separate locations, and who made the reports independently to various agencies including the Levelland sheriff and the news media.

The other thing that caught my attention was the NICAP investigator who showed up, one James A. Lee of Abilene, Texas, and said that he had been studying these things for twenty years. Since this was 1957, that would mean he started his investigations in 1937. I would have liked to know what sparked this interest. Had he seen something? Had he read Charles Fort? Did he know of the Great Airship of 1897, or one of the other airship waves that had happened? Or was this some sort of hyperbole to show his long and deep interest in UFOs? I don’t know, but found the qualification, mentioned several times, interesting.

The point here, however, is simply the nonsense of an argument over the number of witnesses rather than an attempt to interview them. Had this happened in 1957, in the days that followed the sightings, we might have learned something about UFOs, electromagnetic effects and a possible landing trace case. Instead we have a file labeled as “ball lightning” and witnesses who were not interviewed in 1957. Everyone dropped the ball.

Wilbert Smith and Project Magnet

For some bizarre reason, the Wilbert Smith documents have gained new life and I’m not sure why. Smith was a Canadian radio engineer who worked with, or for the government and was well thought of. He was, for example, the Senior Engineer at the Canadian Department of Transport. He also, according to researcher Grant Cameron, was responsible for “Radio Ottawa” where the Canadian “spies” reported in and which also monitored Soviet communications. Yes, I wondered about Canadian spies as well, but that something for another time.

According to the latest information, this memo, written by Smith on November 21, 1950, has just been recovered from the Archives of the University of Ottawa. I guess that means that the document was found in their collection, but it has been available for a long time. Though originally classified as “Top Secret,” it has been downgraded over the years so that it is no longer classified (which means only that its classification was downgraded and says nothing about the importance of the information included in it.) The complete text says:

TOP SECRET -------------- (downgraded to CONFIDENTIAL 15/9/69)

D E P A R T M E N T O F T R A N S P O RT

Intra-departmental Correspondence OTTAWA, Ontario, November 21, 1950 Place date

File Subject Our file Geo-Magnetics (R.ST.)

MEMORANDUM TO THE CONTROLLER OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS:

For the past several years we have been engaged in the study of various aspects of radio wave propagation. The vagaries of this phenomenon have led us into the fields of aurora, cosmic radiation, atmospheric radio-activity and geo-magnetism. In the case of geo-magnetics our investigations have contributed little to our knowledge of radio wave propagation as yet, but nevertheless have indicated several avenues of investigation which may well be explored with profit. For example, we are on the track of a means whereby the potential energy of the earth's magnetic field may be abstracted and used.

On the basis of theoretical considerations a small and very crude experimental unit was constructed approximately a year ago and tested in our Standards Laboratory. The tests were essentially successful in that sufficient energy was abstracted from the earth's field to operate a voltmeter, approximately 50 milliwatts. Although this unit was far from being self-sustaining, it nevertheless demonstrated the soundness of the basic principles in a qualitative manner and provided useful data for the design of a better unit.

The design has now been completed for a unit which should be self- sustaining and in addition provide a small surplus of power. Such a unit, in addition to functioning as a 'pilot power plant' should be large enough to permit the study of the various reaction forces which are expected to develop.

We believe that we are on the track of something which may well prove to be the introduction to a new technology. The existence of a different technology is borne out by the investigations which are being carried on at the present time in relation to flying saucers.

While in Washington attending the NARB Conference, two books were released one titled "Behind the Flying Saucer" by Frank Scully, and the other "The Flying Saucers are Real" by Donald Keyhoe. Both books dealt mostly with the sightings of unidentified objects and both books claim that flying objects were of extra-terrestrial origin and might well be space ships from another planet. Scully claimed that the preliminary studies of one saucer which fell into the hands of the United States Government indicated that they operated on some hitherto unknown magnetic pinciples. It appeared to me that our own work in geo-magnetics might well be the linkage between our technology and the technology by which the saucers are designed and operated. If it is assumed that our geo-magnetic investigations are in the right direction, the theory of operation of the saucers becomes quite straightforward, with all observed features explained qualitatively and quantitatively.

I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

b. Flying saucers exist.

c. Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.

d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

I was further informed that the United States authorities are investigating along quite a number of lines which might possibly be related to the saucers such as mental phenomena and I gather that they are not doing too well since they indicated that if Canada is doing anything at all in geo-magnetics they would welcome a discussion with suitably accredited Canadians.

While I am not yet in a position to say that we have solved even the first problems in geo-magnetic energy release, I feel that the correlation between our basic theory and the available information on saucers checks too closely to be mere coincidence. It is my honest opinion that we are on the right track and are fairly close to at least some of the answers.

Mr. Wright, Defence Research Board liaison officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, was extremely anxious for me to get in touch with Doctor Solandt, Chairman of the Defence Research Board, to discuss with him future investigations along the line of geo-magnetic energy release.

I do not feel that we have as yet sufficient data to place before Defence Research Board which would enable a program to be initiated within that organization, but I do feel that further research is necessary and I would prefer to see it done within the frame work of our own organization with, of course, full co-operation and exchange of information with other interested bodies.

I discussed this matter fully with Doctor Solandt, Chairman of Defence Research Board, on November 20th and placed before him as much information as I have been able to gather to date. Doctor Solandt agreed that work on geo-magnetic energy should go forward as rapidly as possible and offered full co-operation of his Board inproviding laboratory facilities. Acquisition of necessary items of equipment, and specialized personnel for incidental work in the project. I indicated to Doctor Solandt that we would prefer to keep the project within the Department of Transport for the time being until we have obtained sufficient information to permit a complete assessment of the value of the work.

It is therefore recommended that a PROJECT be set up within the frame work of this Section to study this problem and that the work be carried on a part time basis until such time as sufficient tangible results can be seen to warrant more definitive action. Cost of the program in its initial stages are expected to be less than a few hundred dollars and can be carried by our Radio Standards Lab appropriation. Attached hereto is a draft of terms of reference for such a project which, if authorized, will enable us to proceed with this research work within our own organization.

(signed) W B S M I T H

(W.B. Smith) Senior Radio Engineer

That is the full text of the document and it is clearly a document that was held at a high level of classification by the Canadian government. But there are some things that we can say about it.

First, this is a report by one man telling of his meetings with others and some of their discussions. For the parts that interest us, which is, of course, the material relating to UFOs, there is no outside corroboration of the facts as he stated. It is clear that he is reporting what he believes to be the truth, as told to him by others, but that doesn’t get us to a point where there is an official confirmation of the data by either the Canadian government or by the United States.

In that respect, this is similar to the FBI document that generated all that interest last year. Yes, that document referred to UFO crashes, and yes it was an official FBI document, but that report seemed to be generated by the Frank Scully book and not by anything official. This seems to be some of the same thing.

Might I relate a bit of personal experience here. I had appeared on a national television program in 1991 and before I could get home, some fellow had attempted to contact me with important information and with evidence in the form of classified documents. He had received them from an inside government source who was credible, but who, because of his government position wanted to remain anonymous.

What did he have?

The Eisenhower Briefing and the Truman memo from MJ-12. I don’t know where he got his copies, but by 1991, they were floating all over the place. If the man had truly gotten them from an inside source, and had we had the name of the source so that we could verify his government connections, that would have been one thing. But we didn’t, so that information was as useless as the rest of the MJ-12 documents.

This document created by Smith is a report by a member of the Canadian government about several issues, including the flying saucers. He does make reference to two books, one, Behind the Flying Saucers has been discredited, and the other, by Major Don Keyhoe does not talk of crashes and bodies, but of the cover up by the Air Force. Smith doesn’t mention any other sources of information and that seems to be a critical point here.

What we have to do is see it in the context of the time and the context with which it was written. It wasn’t an official government study approved up and down the chain. It wasn’t designed to prove anything about UFOs one way or another. It was simply a report by one man about a conference he attended and he mentioned the UFOs as part of the discussions that took place there, unofficially.

In other words, it is interesting, but it doesn’t provide the evidence of either flying saucers or government cover ups. It is a document composed of rumor without foundation, and unfortunately, that is all that can be said for it.

Extraordinary Claims...

Not all that long ago I took on the propaganda phrase “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” I pointed out that it was used when there was no evidence for a particular theory and it is the last defense as a point began to collapse.

Proponents of the extraterrestrial theory for UFOs are not the only ones who had a pet and somewhat meaningless phrase. Debunkers ofter claim that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” They trot this out when it begins to look as if some of the evidence does support the idea of alien visitation. That the evidence isn’t overwhelming isn’t really the point here but this phrase is often used to belittle any solid evidence or ignore it completely.

It can be argued that a claim of alien visitation is extraordinary and to prove it there must be some very persuasive evidence. Two or three, or a dozen people standing around and seeing a light in the sky that seems to move with great speed, maneuver in a way that defies physics as we understand it, and then disappears “like a light being extinguished,” certainly isn’t extraordinary evidence. There are too many other explanations for that sighting including illusion.

In fact, sighting reports in and of themselves will probably never be sufficient to prove alien visitation. Even if those making the observations are classified as “trained observers” meaning scientists, or police officers or military and civilian pilots, or a combination of all three, it is still just a sighting. When everything is examined, the report is still just the observations of those men and women and certainly open to interpretation.

What is needed are observations that are accompanied by other types of evidence. What is needed are chains of evidence independent of one another. A photographic case that is witnessed by several, with radar or other instrumentality involved, and maybe landing traces, or bits of debris that seem to defy an earthly origin would be perfect. What is needed is a scientific study of a case that mirrors that done in the early nineteenth century by Jean-Baptiste Biot. He was the French scientist who put together a study of a fireball that had fallen in France about three weeks before he initiated his investigation and changed the science of the time.

He did interview witnesses about what they had seen. He didn’t reject them simply because they were poor, uneducated, or rural. He didn’t reject them because they were not scientifically trained observers. He took down all the eyewitness accounts that he could.

But he also gathered physical evidence in the form of the rocks that were alleged to have fallen from the sky. Under analysis, he was able to establish that they were unlike the other geological samples from the region and that they had been introduced at some point after a recent survey of the minerals had been completed. They must have arrived as the witnesses claimed. They must have fallen from the sky.

He was able to reverse the scientific thought of the time and convince his colleagues that rocks did fall from the sky. His evidence was not extraordinary. It was eyewitness testimony and an analysis of the rocks that had fallen based on that witness testimony.

In the world of UFO, we begin the fight with the vast distances encountered among the stars. Everyone, it seems, agrees with the idea that there is life out there in the universe somewhere and some of it is intelligent. But then there are those who tell us that even with that, these alien races have not solved the problem of interstellar flight because, if they had, well, they would be here by now.

When we suggest that Earth has been visited, we are told that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and then dismiss everything that has been gathered as if it were not evidence, or, at least does not rise to the level of extraordinary evidence.

Okay, I can stipulate that much of the evidence has been poorly gathered. I can stipulate that the personal belief structures and the biases of those gathering the data come into play. I can even stipulate that many of those who have gathered the data were unfamiliar with the rules of evidence and scientific observation. But I will also note that some of those who complain about those of us who believe aliens have visited have done much to inhibit the gathering of proper data.

What do I mean?

Philip Klass routinely called the employers of witnesses, or investigators, of lecturers and researchers, and told them that their employees believed in alien visitation. He sometimes compared them to communists. He told half-truths about them. He attempted to silence them for reasons I do not now, and have not, understood. He wasn’t arguing evidence but attempting to silence these people through intimidation.

Klass would call venues hosting UFO conferences and suggest these same things, sometimes forcing the venue to be changed at the last minute. Klass, in fact, attempted to inhibit UFO investigation and once accused James McDonald of using government money to chase UFOs. The allegation was untrue but it caused McDonald a great deal of personal anguish and to what end? It didn’t stop the investigations and it might lead to an even more sinister consequence.

Klass wasn’t the only villain in this. The Air Force had a hand in it, though their role was never so outrageous. The official spokesmen, or those at Project Blue Book spokesman, believed the Air Force was wasting resources to investigate UFOs. They paid lip service to the idea of investigation and worked to avoid having to study the question. Documentation has been found that underscores that bit of reality.

How do I know?

The Levelland UFO case is illustrative. Here was a case that might have met this mythical idea of extraordinary evidence if it had been investigated properly at the time. It had multiple chains of evidence with many witnesses found at thirteen separate locations. In many of those locations there were multiple witnesses. There was evidence that the UFO interacted with the environment in a way that could be calibrated. There is even a hint of a landing trace which meant there would be physical evidence of the UFO’s presence. Or, at the very least, indirect evidence.

And what happened?

The Air Force almost called Major Donald Keyhoe, the director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena a liar for what he said about the Levelland UFO reports. Air Force spokesmen said that Keyhoe had claimed nine witnesses but their investigator had found only three. My point in today’s world is that I was able to identify many more showing both the Air Force and Keyhoe were wrong. Both underestimated the number of witnesses but both were too busy arguing this unimportant point to get to the heart of the matter.

Without going into detail about the case, we have sightings by law enforcement officers, travelers, ranchers, and a host of others. They reported that a close approach of the craft stalled their vehicles, dimmed their lights, and filled their radios with static. Not just one or two of these witnesses, but all of them at all the separate locations. All talked about this prior to news coverage and without consultation with witnesses at the widely scattered locations.

But no one was really investigating this case. The Air Force NCO sent in spent a day talking with three witnesses and if a witness did not talk to the Air Force, then that witness did not exist. Even with the suggestion that UFO could suppress the electrical fields around vehicles, the Air Force didn’t pursue the investigation. I would think that the weapon potential would have been obvious to anyone in a military arena and that should have interested them. Today we call that the electromagnetic pulse or EMP.

Don Burleson, a UFO researcher from Roswell, New Mexico, which is some three hours from Levelland, said that about a decade ago he talked to the daughter of the Levelland sheriff. According to that information, the sheriff was more deeply involved than he let on in 1957 and according to her, knew of a burned area on a ranch. Who knows what sort of evidence might, and I stress the might, have been found if properly investigated in 1957? Today this information, while interesting, is useless. We don’t have anything from the sheriff, there is nothing to see there, and we’re dealing with, at best second hand information. We’re only forty or forty-five years too late.

But here was a chance to learn something important. Here was a chance to pursue those multiple chains of evidence. Here was a chance to gather, within hours of the event, the observations of those involved. Here was a chance, a possible chance, to gather physical evidence. And in the end, it was lost because of a disbelief by those in charge of the Air Force investigation and a fight over how many witnesses there really were.

It is possible that the extraordinary evidence might have been gathered at this point. We don’t know because no one actually attempted to gather it at the time.

There are other cases that present these sorts of opportunities. The McMinnville pictures of 1950 show some sort of object that is not of obvious origin. There are the photographs that are available for analysis. There is the witness testimony. There are not a horde of witnesses, but there were two known and a possibility of a couple of others. This seems to be a case that is either of something not of terrestrial manufacture or it is a hoax. Maybe not extraordinary evidence but certainly interesting evidence suggestive of something that borders on the extraordinary.

There are the Washington National UFO sightings from July 1952. The Air Force eventually claimed that they were the result of temperature inversions over Washington, D.C. But there were sightings by civilian pilots, by military pilots, by witnesses on the ground, and importantly, radars. In one case, radars at three separate locations showed the objects. Multiple chains of evidence that suggested something extraordinary, but a case that was labeled quickly and forgotten.

My point here, however, is that each time we suggest a case has some interesting elements, we are reminded that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I suspect, however, that if we produced an alien ship, there would be those who would believe that we whipped it up in a lab just to prove our point. There are people who argue that no man has ever walked on the moon. There are those who deny everything and base their denials on personal belief rather than evidence review.

But trotting out the argument doesn’t really provide much of an answer. It is a fall back position that allows the user to take what he or she believes to be the scientific high ground, and reject everything that is offered. Nothing will ever meet this arbitrary standard of extraordinary evidence. No matter what is offered, it will not be extraordinary enough. Just as some say, “Absence of evidence,” we have those at the opposite end of the spectrum saying, “Extraordinary claims...”

I merely suggest that we not allow ourselves to be diverted by propaganda such as this. Yes, we must improve our methodology, yes we must improve our techniques, and no, we really don’t need more sighting reports. What we must do is gather the evidence in a professional manner and present it in a professional manner. Once we do that, we can get away from the propaganda machine and just maybe learn a thing or two.

UFOs and the Old Geezers

Many times when someone posts something somewhere that is ridiculous or meanspirited, I just ignore it. Ignorance is in great supply in the world of the Internet and all you need to do to see that is take a look at the comments appended to news articles. Ignorance of the UFO world is overwhelming.

Just recently the RRR Group posted a picture that my wife took at the MUFON Symposium in Denver and claimed that those of us on the Speakers panel were a bunch of geezers who had failed to solve the UFO question. It was time for us to get out of the way and let those younger, brighter and more enlightened take over. We had our chance and we failed.

Except we haven’t failed. We solved the problem. We have the proof that some UFOs are alien spacecraft and we can make that point over and over. The evidence for that is overwhelming, but not unlike Galileo, who failed to convince the church that there were moons orbiting Jupiter, we get a bunch of people who "refuse to look through the telescope."

Old geezer Ted Philips, being interviewed during th MUFON Press Conference made an important point. Talking about the four thousand or so landing trace cases that he had investigated, he mentioned that once he had a description of the craft, he could predict what the landing traces would be. In other, more scientific words, we had reproducibility, meaning the same things observed under similar circumstances and the predictability that comes from repeated observation. This was science at its best and it’s something that the debunkers, the skeptics, and apparently those in the RRR Group ignore.

Old geezer Chris Rutkowski (seen here) reviewed, at length, a longitudinal study of twenty years of UFO reports in Canada, looking for trends. Here again was a statistical study that provided information about what people saw and how it was identified, if it was identified and what it meant when the mundane, or what some would call the rational, did not explain the events. These were unidentified sightings that suggested alien visitation.

Old geezer Stan Friedman (seen here) diverted from his normal "Flying Saucers Are Real" talk and spoke about the possibilities of interstellar travel, something the youngsters, the debunkers, and the skeptics will always reject out of hand. The distances are too vast and we just can’t travel that far with our chemical rockets.

Well, of course, a chemical rocket would quickly run out of fuel, but other methods of propulsion have been discussed everywhere from science fiction to science conventions... and ways to generate the necessary energy have been discussed. Methods that aren’t beyond our current technology so that when the opposition says the Voyager spacecraft will take 70,000 years to get to the nearest star, they don’t mention that it is not accelerating. Any trip to another star will require constant acceleration until a point is reached that the craft will have to begin to slow down, but the round trip time drops considerably.

Old geezer Bruce Maccabee (seen here) examined the pictorial evidence for UFOs and there are some cases in which there are but two possible solutions. The object is either alien or the case is a hoax. Maccabee mentions the McMinnville, Oregon case which he had investigated for decades and he finds no evidence of hoax... which, coincidentally, is the solution offered by the Condon Committee, the University of Colorado scientific study of UFOs. The object in the photographs matches no known earthly-built craft and was, or is, therefore good evidence of alien visitation.

I, myself an old geezer, would point to the Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr. in 1951. The four known pictures show the objects in V-shaped formations over the town and are either of some unknown craft (which could be of earthly manufacture though no one can point to it) or they are faked. Donald Menzel, that paragon of scientific thought and rationality, for no reason what-so-ever, declared the pictures to be fakes. Carl Hart, Jr., told me in an interview a number of years ago that they weren’t faked and he doesn’t know what they were.

I could point here that the Air Force has been less than candid in its investigation of UFOs, slapping on ridiculous solutions just to be able to label the case. For the 1957 sightings in Levelland, Texas, which involved multiple witnesses, the UFO interacting with the environment, sightings by law enforcement officers and even the suggestion of a landing trace, the Air Force decided the sightings were weather related and the culprit was ball lightning... at the time, even science denied the existence of ball lightning. No one then seemed to catch the irony of using something that didn’t exist to explain the sightings of something else that didn’t exist, at least according to those in the Air Force.

If you are interested in the duplicity of the Air Force, let me point out that according to their nearly day long investigation, their representative spoke to only three witnesses. Later, when Major Don Keyhoe suggested that there were nine witnesses, the Air Force all but called him a liar.

But the truth is that both Keyhoe and the Air Force were wrong. There were many witnesses in thirteen separate locations. Many of their stories, gathered before the publicity and within minutes of their sightings were strikingly similar, including the electromagnetic effects on their vehicles engines, radios and lights.

What all this means is that we geezers have solved the UFO question. We know what is going on and we use our experience to provide answers for those cases that we can and we suggest that some of these UFO sightings are the result of alien visitation. I believe that we know what is going on with the cattle mutilations, a subset of UFOs, I’m fairly certain we know what is happening with crop circles, another subset, and the jury seems to be out on alien abduction, though we have some very interesting terrestrial solutions.

And now we have people... scientists saying the evidence is anecdotal but, of course, that is a way to reject it without having to examine it. We have people claiming that after 60 or 70 years of investigation we have no answers, though we have many solid answers, and we have one group waiting impatiently for those they consider geezers to die off and get out of the way of the new breed who can bring a fresh approach to the problem.

I ask, just what will this new breed do differently? Use the Internet for their research? Rehash the cases that have been solved and involve us again in messes like the Allende Letters, which was explained thirty years ago? Or maybe the RRR Group will support more experiments like those two clowns in New Jersey who proved that witnesses report accurately what they see and that UFO investigators provide answers quickly...

Old geezer Marc D’Antonio told me that he knew the objects in the New Jersey case were either Chinese Lanterns or flares after examining the tape of the lights. The only people fooled were the news media who haven’t conducted much in the way of investigations in thirty years and the employees of a Ford dealership. The two "twenty-somethings" who conducted the "experiment" lied to the media, lied to the researchers, interjected themselves when the publicity began to slip, and then drew conclusions that were not based on the research but on their own personal bias. So much for the new life interjected into UFO investigations and research by the young, hip, enlightened youth.

Here’s the bottom line in this. We know the answers but we can’t get the scientists, the Air Force, the media and the debunkers to look through the damned telescope. They know there are no such things as alien visitors and any evidence that shows otherwise must be manufactured.

And now we have to put up with those enlightened individuals who believe that we have failed in our mission the last several decades. But no, that’s not where we failed. It was in the public relations war. The bad guys had access to the media who are too sophisticated to believe that creatures from another world were smart enough to get here from there. They’re too sophisticated to believe that an average person is smart enough to distinguish between the mundane and something extraordinary. They’re simply too sophisticated to look through the telescope.

So what is the answer here? Simply do a better job communicating the results of investigations to the press. Make sure that everyone knows when an explanation is the result of a desire for a specific truth rather than the culmination of an investigation. And to get those who refuse to finally look through the telescope.