I’m
watching the ABC Evening News,
something I attempt to avoid because there is so little news in the broadcast (but
that’s another story) and they tell me that the Project Blue Book files are now
declassified and on line. I’m wondering what they mean because they have been
on line for quite some time.
They’re
referring to John Greenwald’s efforts to post all of these files at his Black
Vault website, and his effort is commendable. But NICAP had many of the files
on line for years and I have never found a gap in the Fold 3’s Blue Book files also
on line. Or, in other words, the only “news” here is that John has provided us
with another site where we can see these files.
ABC
also seemed to suggest that this was something new. The Air Force had finally
released all of the files of its investigation, except, of course, they did
that in 1976. I made a trip down to Maxwell Air Force Base and spent time going
through the files*. Anyone could have done it but the fact the files had been
declassified hadn’t been announced publically. There had been some sort of
announcement in an Air Force bulletin that I happened to see, so I made
arrangements to take a look.
And
once those files were transferred to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.,
they were more accessible to the public. You could buy the microfilm copies for
something like eight or ten dollars a roll back then, but there were ninety
some rolls of them. Over the years I actually managed to obtain a full set of
the microfilms, so I’ve had all of the Blue Book files in my office for a
couple of decades.
The
statistics “announced” by ABC didn’t tell the whole story either, and they
seemed to think Blue Book began as a result of the Roswell UFO crash (Roswell
isn’t even mentioned in the Blue Book files except a short paragraph in a
newspaper clipping that is part of another file), but actually the idea for an
investigation can be traced back to December 1946 and probably had more to do
with the Ghost Rockets of Sweden and some sightings in the US than it did with
either Roswell or the Kenneth Arnold sightings. I laid this out in Government UFO Files, along with
documentation to support the idea.
They
said that 701 cases of the some 12,000 remained unidentified but the truth is
that many of the cases are labeled, but not identified. These are labeled as
“insufficient data for a scientific analysis.” In many of those cases all the
information necessary for a complete investigation is included, but it is
labeled that way. This was an attempt to reduce the number of unidentified
cases by labeling them as something else and that is all that it was.
In
addition to that, many cases that are labeled with a solution are clearly in
error. For example, the Portage County UFO chase of 1966. (It was on April 17
and involved several police officers, deputy sheriffs and their supervisors and
a stylized version was seen at the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. See also my posting here on May
20, 2014 for more information.). It has been explained as a combination of
Venus and a satellite. The police officers saw the satellite in the west and as
it passed over them, as they chased it across Ohio and into Pennsylvania; their
attention was then drawn to Venus. The trouble here, as outlined in the Project
Blue Book files is that there were no satellites visible in that part of the
United States at that time of the morning. Letters and other documents in the
Blue Book file prove this, yet the satellite portion of the solution is allowed
to stand.
To
make it worse, drawings made by the police officers show what was visible in
the sky. Those drawings mark the position of the UFO, that of the moon, and
that of Venus. Or, to put a point on it, the police officers did see Venus and
identified it as such. But the label on the case, which is clearly in error, is
allowed to stand and the case is shown to have a solution.
There
are many such cases in the Blue Book files. Cases in which the solutions are
simply not borne out of the documentation available. Yet we continue to hear
about only 701 unidentified cases when the number is probably closer to 5000
when the solutions are examined carefully and those labeled as insufficient
data are included. Insufficient data is not a solution, but is a label other
than unidentified.
It
was good to see a news report that treated UFOs seriously. It was not so good
to see facts and figures used that were clearly inaccurate. I’m sure John knew
the difference but I’ll wager that the reporter looked at a few things on line,
misunderstood them, and ran with his story. The best thing about all this is
that you don’t have to believe me. You can look it all up in the Black Vault.
*Bob
Cornett and I might have the first outsiders to go through the Blue Book files.
The first thing we did was list all the unidentified cases complete with the
names and locations. When the files were released into the public mainstream
the names had been redacted. We could, of course, put the names back in… but
the job of redacting was poorly done and in most of the case files you can find
the names. A complete listing of the unidentified cases is available in Project Blue Book – Exposed in both
hardback and as a Kindle ebook.
I
will note that Jack Webb, in preparation for his TV series about Project Blue
Book paid to have all the files microfilmed. We all owe him thanks for doing
that.
