Evidence and the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure

I am surprised by one of the criticisms offered about the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure and that is that no “real” evidence was presented. It was only testimony from those who had participated in the events and in the world today, or rather in the world of the UFO today, testimony from witnesses has been reduced to being of no value. Makes you wonder about all that testimony being taken on Capitol Hill in the IRS scandal (as a single example), or in various other arenas today. Why even talk to those who were there or participated in the events because it isn’t evidence?

Well, of course, that is a simplistic view.

The White House because I had the picture.

In law it can be said that testimony is evidence, and not just that provided by experts. Rule 701 seems to be the guiding force here, and I confess that not being trained as an attorney I might have slipped off the rails. However, in law, it seems that a witness may offer evidence, testimony, if the witness is not testifying as an expert and that the testimony in the form of an opinion is limited to one that is rationally based on the witness’s perception, helpful to clearly understanding the witness’s testimony or to determining a fact in issue and not based on scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702, which is guidance for expert testimony.

Or, in other words, testimony is a form of evidence, at least in the arena of law, which makes the testimony of those witnesses in front of the Citizen Hearing committee a form of evidence. I will grant you that it is not the best evidence, and it might not be convincing evidence, but it was, in fact evidence, in the eyes of the law.

We can slip into the arena of science here as well. Empirical observation is considered evidence. Empirical evidence is defined simply as information that is acquired by observation or experimentation. Of course those observations or experiments are later analyzed by scientists, but the observations can be made by anyone. So, the witnesses at the Citizen Hearing did provide evidence as empirical observations. “This is what I saw.”

Granted, those with training can analyze those statements and those observations later and provide information about what was seen. The interpretation of the observations is what becomes the question and not the observations themselves (well not entirely).

Again, to me, this says that the testimony was a form of evidence… and in both the law and science, that testimony is then interpreted by those who have some sort of specialized training, expertise, or technical knowledge.

But this is an argument over semantics and I think we all agree that testimony is often badly flawed, open to the interpretations of those giving it, especially after mere weeks have passed, and could be the result of ambiguous stimuli that is filtered through the witness’ own belief structure.

But that wasn’t the only evidence offered at the Hearing. There was documentation. We’ve already talked about the government documents from the Department of Defense that confirms that a Peruvian pilot fired at a UFO. This doesn’t prove that he shot at an alien spacecraft, only that the event took place.

The discussion one afternoon degenerated into questions about the end of Project Blue Book. Nearly everyone was unclear as to the reason for the demise of that study, though they did mention the role that the Condon Committee had in it. I provided some documentation that suggested that it was all a set up. The Air Force wanted out of the UFO investigation business and that was one of the things that the Condon Committee was to accomplish.

The Hippler Letter, discussed here before, gave the instructions to the Condon Committee, and Robert Low of that organization wrote back to say that he understood. That too is a form of evidence. It is documentation.

John Callahan

Finally, there was John Callahan, he of JAL 1628 fame. Not only did he talk about the investigation he had conducted into the incident, he brought the documentation with him including the radar records, transcripts of the aerial conversations, and a recreation of the event using the radar and audio records. The documentation, which included that recorded through instrumentality, was available at the Hearing. Multiple chains of evidence, one supporting the other, each gathered independently.

The point here is not to argue about alien visitation, which is one conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence, but to argue there was evidence beyond the testimony offered. There was documentation, radar traces, and photographs. There were several forms of evidence available to the committee.

For those with an open mind, then there was some very interesting evidence offered. But it was only evidence that something strange is going on and that many of the solutions offered do not fit all the facts, but as I say, it doesn’t take us directly to the extraterrestrial, only that something has happened.

Steve Bassett and the Citizen Hearing

(Blogger’s Note: There are those who have asked about the logistics of the Citizen Hearing. Steve Bassett has supplied some of that information in an email sent to a great many people. For those who might have missed it, and who have an interest in this sort of thing, I reprint that email below. Questions about it should be addressed to Bassett. While I did participate in the Hearing, I had no role in creating, organizing, selecting witnesses, or any other aspect of the Hearing.) 

Citizen Hearing on Disclosure (CHD)
(Main site)  www.citizenhearing.org

By the numbers:  The CHD brought 40 witnesses from 10 countries to the National Press Club in Washington, DC to testify for 30 hours over 5 days before 6 former members of the U. S. Congress.  The price tag was $600,000 provided by a film production deal and not a grant.  There were six strategic goals for the CHD: 1)  undermine the White House OSTP statement of November 4, 2011 regarding the complete absence of evidence for an extraterrestrial presence or the withholding of relevant information by the government; 2) prompt the U. S. Congress to hold its first hearings on the subject since1968; 3) motivate the mainstream political media to begin appropriate investigative coverage of the subject; 4)  inform the executive branch it risks not being the first nation to Disclose an ET presence; 5) increase awareness of the Disclosure movement around the world; and 6) add a UN initiative to the advocacy matrix.

All of these goals were advanced and the stage is set for more truth advocacy, the primary goal of which is nothing less than Disclosure this year.


CHD Media Coverage
www.citizenhearing.org/press.html

Media engagement of the CHD was significantly impacted by the tragic events in Boston.    Nevertheless, there was extensive print and video coverage which is being chronicled on the website.   The live and archived webcasts will help ensure more coverage going forward. 


Citizen Hearing Webcast
www.citizenhearing.org/webcast_archive.html

The CHD was webcast and archived in English and Spanish.  Additional languages will be archived later this year.  Webcasting is a developing technology.  It is not like television.   With so many types of computers, operating systems and Internet access, the spectrum of user satisfaction is broad.  And then there are the pay portals. 

Many of the user issues were caused by two factors:  1)  subscribers received two emails: one from PayPal with the receipt and one from CHD with the access password, and 2) often one or both of these emails were diverted to the subscriber's "spam" or "junk" email boxes.

Additional language has been added to the webcast pages alerting subscribers to these issues.


Citizen Hearing Foundation
Washington Communique
www.citizenhearing.org/foundation.html

The CHD Committee met on Thursday, May 2 to discuss an approach to the United Nations.  The result was the May 3, 2013 Washington Communique that states the following: 

Whereas: given the unfolding scientific understanding of the number of potentially life supporting planets within Earth's home galaxy, it would be the height of arrogance to assert that humans are the only sentient beings within that galaxy;  

Whereas: given that credible witnesses have brought forth overwhelming scientific evidence documenting the current presence of unidentified and unexplained aerial craft that many believe to reflect an extraterrestrial intelligence;  

And Whereas: given the enormous global implications if these craft are, indeed, of extraterrestrial origin, such an issue is a matter for the General Assembly of the United Nations;  

Therefore, we the undersigned request the Citizen Hearing Foundation use its offices to organize interested parties and raise the funds necessary to pursue a global campaign to convince one or more nations to propose a resolution within the General Assembly calling for United Nations sponsorship of a world conference addressing the possible evidence for an extraterrestrial presence engaging this planet.

 

The Citizen Hearing Foundation will begin raising funds immediately to implement this mandate to seek a world conference sponsored by the United Nations.

Comandante Huertas Revisited

Since few here seem to understand research on their own and seem incapable of finding things on their own, and since they seem annoyed by the posting about the Peruvian pilot, Comandante Oscar Santa Maria Huertas (Ret), let me add additional information.

For those interested, I spoke to the man in front of the National Press Club in Washington, D. C. on the afternoon of May 1, 2013. He showed me a copy of the Department of Defense document that recounted, very briefly, the events of his chase of a UFO. That document has been scanned and added here for those who seem to have no Internet search skills.

On May 2, 2013, Huertas appeared in front of the former members of Congress and told his story of the intercept. He made an opening statement and then was questioned about it. That was the first two sessions of the day and no, he was not the only member of that particular panel. That session may be archived with the others on YouTube and would be first-hand testimony given that you can watch Huertas make his statement in front of the cameras.

Leslie Kean, in her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, printed an account written by Huertas of his experiences on April 11, 1980. This would be first-hand testimony given that Huertas wrote it himself.

For those who seem to need other sources, though the above would seem to be enough, Timothy Good, in Above Top Secret printed a short account of the intercept and the document from the Department of Defense… oh, you can’t be bothered to look in the index? The account is on page 324 of the US Hardback edition and the document on pages 503 – 504 of the same edition.

Cliff Stone, in his self-published book UFO’s: Let the Evidence Speck for Itself, published a short account on pages 106 – 107 and the documents themselves on page 120 – 121.

My posting was based on my discussion with the pilot, with the statements he gave in Washington, D. C. and to Leslie Kean, and the Department of Defense document that shows something happened and that it was interesting enough to be put into a message to the DoD.

I will note that I neither endorsed the case nor debunked it. I provided an account that included statements that Huertas had made to me, made in one of two forums, and on what was said in the Department of Defense document. For those unable to figure out the various codes on that document, I will note that this was prepared by the Defense Attaché, who in other times and in other countries would have been called the Military Attaché or the Army Attaché.

I will further note, for those who have not had the pleasure of serving as a military pilot, that the capabilities of aircraft that are published are not necessarily the limitations of that aircraft. In military aircraft there are capabilities that allow it to exceed the printed information which might become useful in a combat environment (which is not to say that Huertas was engaged in combat with the UFO). Once you exceed those limitations, you could seriously damage the aircraft. I think of a MiG-25, that far exceeded what everyone thought it capable of, but when it landed and was inspected it was found the pilot had seriously damaged the engines. The point being, and given that Huertas was the pilot, I have no reason to doubt his estimates of speed and altitude.

In the end, I used first-hand testimony and quoted from some of it in preparing the posting. I used a government document and quoted a single line from it. I made reference to that document which I had in hand as I prepared the posting.

Now, all the information I have is out there and I can move on to other things (or rather, I can get back to finishing a book that is due in a couple of weeks… and for those interested, it is basically written. I’m doing the rewrites, cleaning up the manuscript and attempting to make sure that everything tracks).

I thought this an interesting little anecdote and because someone had asked for additional information, I thought I had supplied enough for that person to learn all he wanted. This was a case from Peru (where, BTW, FOIA doesn’t work) and the first-hand statements by the pilot could be accessed… so much better than the accounts in other books that might have been misleading.

Pilot Attacks UFO

As mentioned in an earlier post, there were pilots at the Citizen Hearing who told of intercepts of UFOs in which the craft were fired on but the bullets and missiles had no effect on the alien craft. I met the pilot of one of those missions just outside the National Press Club right after our panel on Roswell had finished. He was standing with Stan Friedman who called me over to look at a two page document from the US Department of Defense with a stamped date of June 3, 1980.

I read it over and noticed that it said, “The pilot, according to a third party, intercepted the vehicle [UFO] and fired upon it at very close range without causing any apparent damage.” I said to Stan, “We don’t know if he hit it.”

Stan said, “Why don’t you ask him. He’s standing right here.”

The guy was standing next to Stan, so I asked him. Comandante Oscar Santa Maria Huertas, a retired Peruvian Air Force pilot, told me that he had, indeed, hit the UFO with his cannon fire as he tried to intercept it.

Government documents, as well as the pilot, said that on April 11, 1980 an object like a balloon was hanging suspended off the end of the runaway about three miles away and about 2000 feet above the ground. Huertas was ordered to take off and bring it down. The object, whatever it was, was hovering in restricted airspace.

He took off in a Soviet designed SU-22 fighter, reached an altitude of some 8,000 feet, and got into position which would suggest he was above and behind the UFO. He fired a burst of sixty-four 30 mm cannon shells. He said that some of the rounds “deviated” from the target and fell away, but others hit it. He said that nothing happened and it seemed as if the rounds had been absorbed by the “balloon” which then it began to rise rapidly. It had now turned away from the base.

The “dogfight” didn’t end there. According to the pilot, he gave chase but the UFO always stayed in front of him. Huertas used the afterburners for additional speed but the UFO seemed to maintain its distance from him. He continued to climb until he was at 36,000 feet and some fifty-two miles from the base.

He was in full pursuit when the object stopped suddenly and he had to turn sharply to avoid a collision. From that point on, he was unable to get another “shot” at the UFO. Each time he was prepared to fire, the UFO would “escape by ascending vertically” seconds before he would open fire.

He said that he maneuvered into position twice more but before he could fire, the UFO again began a rapid climb. He gave chase until they were at 46,000 feet. He decided to try to get above it once again. By doing that, the UFO wouldn’t be able to suddenly climb out of position. He bumped his speed to Mach 1.6, something around 1,150 miles an hour.

His plan failed. The UFO suddenly climbed and fell into position near him, almost as if it was flying formation with him until they were at 63,000 feet. That momentarily eliminated his ability to attack it.

The UFO stopped again and he adjusted his wings and slats so that he would be able to maneuver at that altitude. He thought he might be able to get another shot at it now that it was no longer moving but that turned out to be impossible.

At that time his fuel warning light illuminated and he had just enough fuel to return to his base. He had to break off the pursuit but before he left the area, he attempted one last pass at the UFO. As he approached, to within 300 feet of the object, he saw that it was about 35 feet in diameter with a shiny dome on top that was cream colored. The bottom was silver that appeared to be metallic.

Although he never talked to American officials, and he never reported the incident to any American agency, as noted above, the Department of Defense received a report about it. This apparently came from the US Embassy Defense Attaché in Peru.

The flight, according to the pilot, lasted some twenty-two minutes. He had no conventional explanation for what he had seen.

Robert Salas and Me

While in Roswell a couple of years ago, I shared, briefly, a table with Robert Salas of Malmstrom missile fame. He was a little more serious about selling his book than I was in selling mine and at one point he snapped at me for joking with the UFO museum patrons. I hadn’t spoken to him since that time in Roswell. I mention this for the context it will provide for some later comments here.

Robert Salas

At the recent Citizen Hearing I saw him again. At the Sunday evening dinner for those who were participating in some fashion… that is, the former members of Congress, the witnesses which included researchers, and those volunteers who helped Steve Bassett to organize the Hearing, I made my way up front to speak with Bassett. On my way back I passed the table where Salas sat. He looked up at me and I said, “You can say, ‘hello,’” which, of course he did.

The next day, we ended up on the bus arranged to transport everyone from the hotel to the National Press Club and back. We were the only two on it, and we spoke again, briefly. I asked him a couple of questions about what had happened at Oscar Flight in 1967.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. If Salas was alone in his claims, then we could reject them simply because you’d expect others to have had similar experiences. Of course, there was a series of UFO sightings near Belt, Montana on the day that Salas claimed the UFO caused the missiles of Oscar Flight to “go off-line.” And, there were the documented events of Echo Flight which had happened just days before when all ten of their missiles did the same thing. In other words, Salas was not alone, and the other man in the capsule with him at the time, Fred Meiwald, confirmed the event.

There was a minor discrepancy. Salas said all the missiles had gone off line but his boss, Meiwald said only four or five. In the original information, Salas, according to what he said to me, “Split the different and I said eight.” He now has said all ten were involved.

Meiwald, interviewed by others including Robert Hastings for UFOs and Nukes, confirmed what Salas had said. The missiles had gone off-line, in essence failed. Combined with the documentation about Echo Flight, the words of Salas took on

Swearing in of the Missileers at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., May 2013.

added weight. In fact, Salas appeared in Washington, D.C. with two other officers who had been assigned to missile flights at other military bases who had experiences with UFOs. In other words, there are a number of reports of this sort and contrary to what the Condon Committee said this was a matter of national security.

I suppose I could point out here that all said they had been required, at the time, to sign nondisclosure agreements. They wouldn’t reveal what they knew and would not talk to others at their bases about this. It was a way to keep the information from spreading among the missile crews.

At any rate, we chatted on the short ride from the National Press Club to the hotel. Salas gave me a little more information and a slight preview of what he would say the next afternoon in front of the committee. I was there to watch, listened to Salas as he reported what he had seen, heard and done, and then listened to two other officers say some of the same things. UFOs had penetrated the missile sites and shut down the missile guidance systems. If an outside source could do that, it was a matter of national security. At the time, if the Soviets had been able to do that, they could have rendered our entire strategic missile system useless. They could shut it down from outside the system and prevent retaliation. But, of course, they didn’t have that capability, but in the 1960s and the 1970s, nobody knew that for certain.

It was sometime Thursday afternoon that I bumped into Salas again. It was just after several men from around the world had told of their experiences with UFOs and their governments attitudes about UFOs had testified. Salas came up to me and wondered if I could help him sell some of his books… It was a joke, related to what we had our spat about in Roswell. For those interested, his book is Faded Giant written with Jim Klotz is available at Amazon and probably other on line bookstores.

The real point here is that Salas opened the floodgates on this one aspect of the UFO phenomenon. He was among the first to talk about UFOs interfering with US missiles. Others, such as those who testified with him, and Jim Penniston and John Burroughs who had testified that morning, suggest that UFOs have interfered with our atomic weapons (which, I must point out here might not be a bad thing but that slides off into the realm of political opinion and not relevant here). All of that made for compelling testimony (and now we can hear that Rendlesham was a lighthouse and rabbit holes), and even if it was not alien in nature, national security was involved. Someone, or something, had caused the trouble at the missile sites.

Say what you will about Salas, he is not stand alone… and for me, he seems to have mellowed a little bit as well. Such is the world in which we travel.

Citizen Hearing and Alien Bodies

At the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, Merrill Cook asked a question that, at the time was confusing for those of us facing him and his former congressional buddies. He wanted to know, as near as I can figure now, if anyone who claimed to have seen the bodies of the alien creatures had mentioned it in 1947. We all struggled with this as he kept talking about it and we thought of military men who had seen the bodies but who had said nothing until years later. We didn’t think of anyone who had talked about it in 1947, or how we could expect to find anything about that now?

The committee listening to testimony at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure in Washington, D.C., May 2013.

Of course, a letter or diary that was written at the time would be one way, but the only diary I have ever found that was reliable was that of Ruth Barnett. There was nothing in it to suggest that Barney Barnett had seen anything unusual in 1947. Stan didn’t mention Gerald Anderson, I suspect because he was flanked by Don and me and he believed we would challenge that. Besides, Anderson had admitted to faking one document when confronted with the evidence of that forgery.

I looked at Don and he looked at me. We both thought of Edwin Easley, the provost marshal, but I had nothing from him to suggest he had talked about the bodies in 1947 to anyone. Sitting beside me was Jesse Marcel, Jr., but according to him, his father had never said anything to him about bodies.

The one person we didn’t think of at the time was Frankie Rowe. For this discussion, it doesn’t matter what you think of her tale, and I don’t really want to hear about Karl Pflock’s “evidence” that she wasn’t telling the truth. We know that some of his evidence has been debunked.

 

Frankie Rowe

Anyway, according to Rowe, her father, a fire fighter with the Roswell Fire Department, told her, and the family, that he had gone out to the crash site, and that he had seen the bodies of the alien creatures. Rowe said that her father described creatures as small and hairless.

 

This would have answered the question for Cook. Someone who, in 1947, talked about the alien creatures. One of the fire fighters, when interviewed several years ago, also mentioned that Dwyer, Rowe’s father, had told him, in 1947, some of what he had seen.

Granted, this is testimony gathered years after the event. Granted, it is all second hand. It does, however, answer the question as posed. Was there anyone who talked of the alien creatures at the time, meaning in 1947? The answer is, “Yes.”

Sometimes, we all get lost in the weeds. Neither Don nor I thought of Frankie Rowe in front of that committee. It would have been nice to have her sitting at the table to say, “Yes, my father told me about them that very night.” It would have been a powerful moment.

One that we lost.

Citizen Hearing and Merrill Cook

When I read that former Congressman Merrill Cook from Utah, one of those at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, had said, “I do not believe there has been any strong, credible evidence of [alien visits] at this point but I do think there has been some credible evidence of things that are unidentified that had been flying about,” I was disappointed. But then I thought about what he had said and realized that it was quite fair.

 

Merrill Cook

Cook, who asked some very convoluted questions, hadn’t dismissed the idea of alien visitation but had suggested that the strong evidence hadn’t been presented. Of course that was correct. Had there been that sort of physical evidence, then the conversation would have ended at that point and we could move onto the next phase.

 

There were some very persuasive documents presented. In one case from South America, a pilot, Comandante Oscar Santa Maria Huertas (Ret) of the Peruvian Air Force, who had fired on a UFO described the event. He had two pages of an official message about it. It said that he had fired on the UFO without results and I realized that could have meant he missed, so I asked.

 

Using a 30 mm cannon on his SU-22, he had hit the object when he shot at it. The rounds had no effect, and the object seemed to “absorb” the ammunition. Make no mistake, a 30 mm round is huge and explosive.

While I was on the “hot seat” along with Don Schmitt and Stan Friedman, Cook asked if anyone in 1947 had seen the alien bodies, but it wasn’t clear if he wanted to know if someone had discussed it in 1947 or if he wanted to know if someone there in 1947 had seen them. Each time we tried to offer an answer, he seemed to change the question by adding qualifications or modifications to it.

 

The answer was, of course, that none of us were around in 1947 (other than Stan) to gather evidence. However, Dan Dwyer had told family members in 1947 that he had seen the bodies, describing them as small humanoids.

This is the Frankie Rowe tale. She said that her father came home after seeing the crash site and told them of the little men he had seen. Later, Rowe’s sister, Helen Cahill said that sometime around 1960, she asked her father about the story and he told it to her. Does that make Rowe’s report true? No, just answers the question that we do have some testimony for that.

There was also Beverly Bean whose father, Melvin Brown, told her during the first moon landing that the UFOs were real and he had seen the bodies. There is another version of this that suggests he told her sometime later, but the point is that he was apparently saying these things prior to the publication of the Roswell information (and yes, both her sister and her mother have confirmed that Brown said these things, which, again, doesn’t make them true, only that he said them several times over the years).

I mentioned Edwin Easley and what he had said to family members, but, of course, this all came about in the early 1990s.

So, we had the names of people who seemed to have passed word of the bodies in 1947, and the names of people who had been there, in Roswell in 1947, who mentioned bodies to family members at some point after that. We had the answer to the question. We just didn’t articulate it well.

Cook at the Citizen Hearing

We did a poor job of answering the question for Cook and that is our fault. And before I get comments telling me that the testimony is in dispute, that we’re dealing with memories that are now decades old, and that we have some tales that have been disproved, I know all that. The question might have been had any of these people talked about bodies in 1947, and the evidence says that they did… but the proof is not there.

And he had a tendency to cut off an answer and ask another question, or maybe the same question a different way, which added to the confusion. He asked some convoluted question about the American Academy of Sciences and their endorsement of the Condon Committee report. I should have said that they had not engaged in a proper peer review because if they had, they would have noticed that 30% of the cases were unexplained. Worse, if possible, one was explained as a natural phenomenon so rare it had never been seen before or since but didn’t identify what that might be.

The real point is that we can prove the cover-up with documentation that has been declassified and documents that are clearly false. How else to explain the Air Force response to Senator Jeff Bingaman when he asked about Project Moon Dust? He was told that such a project never existed. Well it did and continues under another name (and no, I don’t know that name).

So Cook wouldn’t say that we proved to him that we have been visited, but we proved enough that he thought there is credible evidence that something unidentified is flying around. That might be splitting a hair, but I understand what he was thinking when he said that. Besides, he agreed that something unidentified was flying around and that is more than enough.

Had we had more time, had we brought other documents, had we provided more sources for the information, we might have done even better. For now, this is enough. Something unidentified is flying around and shouldn’t we attempt to find out what it is?

Steve Greer and Sirius

I have disagreed with much of what Dr. Steven Greer has done over the years. I suggested that he vet his witnesses with a little more enthusiasm and have found a few flaws in some of the witness testimony he has gathered. As a single example, he has an Air Force officer who talks about seeing a classified document come through the message center that describes a UFO crash. That is true.

Greer at Podium in Washington, D.C.

The problem? This refers to the Spitsbergen UFO crash. Several messages were exchanged in the early 1950s by various government agencies. Those messages have long been declassified and the crash has long been discredited. This specific case does nothing to advance our knowledge and gives us nothing of value. The tale is true, the officer did see the messages but they have been available to UFO researchers for decades.

Greer has a new passion that is Sirius. This is a feature length production that covers a great deal of territory, though my interest was in the remains of a little creature found in Chile a while ago. It is about six inches tall and according to reputable experts, lived to be six to eight years old.

True, I wasn’t all that interested in the discussion of the energy policies of the government, nor in the ways that energy can be produced without damage to the environment and little expense. Yes, that could potentially be of greater value than the little alien or little creature, but that was what I wanted to know about.

Greer took the podium and gave us an abbreviated lecture. He told us that many in the media, who had seen an advance copy of the movie, or had viewed it on the Internet before it was removed, said the DNA proved the little being was a human. But that wasn’t quite right. He noted that our genetic makeup matched that of the Neanderthal to more than 99% and that we shared 97% of our genes with the great apes.

This little creature had a genetic makeup that was about 90 or 91% of ours. That left some 9% that was unidentified. Greer said that this could be caused by problems with the computer analysis; it could be bad sequencing, or just damaged genes. There were many plausible answers for this discrepancy, but at the moment, there were none. Experts in genetics, top scientists in the field at prestigious universities were intrigued by these problems.

In fact, one of them, Garry Nolan, director of stem cell biology at Stanford University's School of Medicine in California, said that it wasn’t a monkey, that it had lived to six or eight based on an examination of the bones, and that it had been a living, breathing creature. In other words, Nolan, with the proper scientific credentials is just the sort of man you’d want to examine something like this.

And, as he pointed out, the creature, little human, tiny alien, whatever it might be, shouldn’t have been able to survive years given its size.

You could say that it was some sort of mutation that survived birth. A single example of a mutation that didn’t live long enough to reproduce, if it had ever been able. Greer, however, said that they may be other examples and he is chasing them down. One, in Russia, might have been seen alive by people who are still alive. In other words, there might be some very exciting evidence that these little things exist in the world today.

So, I found his documentary interesting, which is usually code for “I didn’t like it much but don’t want to say anything bad.” What I mean is that I didn’t agree with some of what he said, did enjoy the various clips of UFOs shown, and was very interested the information about the little being. Parts I ignored and other parts that I watched carefully.

But the point for me was the analysis of the little creature. Greer made it clear that the analysis was continuing and the final answer, if we get there, will be fascinating whatever it is.

Citizen Hearing on Disclosure

The Citizen Hearing on UFO Disclosure being held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. is now half over and I’m astonished at the abuse thrown by those not in attendance and the press seeking out the few who are members of the lunatic fringe. I have heard, repeatedly, about two who showed up wearing headbands with crystals but I never saw them (other than in a newspaper photo), and I have seen references to tinfoil hats which are not in evidence.

On the flip side, I see people smeared by association, called out because their views don’t match those of others, or something their children might have done. What it repeatedly overlooked, is the documentation presented, the credibility of many of the witnesses such as retired Air Force sergeants John Burroughs and Jim Penniston who were at the forefront of the Bentwaters encounter in 1980. Robert Salas, along with retired Air Force captain David Schindele and former captain Bruce Fenstermacher, who provided testimony about intrusions of UFOs over nuclear launch facilities and the momentary disabling of minuteman missiles, to name a few.

I have listened to the testimony of these men, I have known some of them personally for years, and I know the documentation supports the stories they tell. You might quibble about the alien nature of the encounters, but the documentation supports the events. Something happened at Bentwaters in 1980, missiles did mysteriously go off line at Malstrom Air Force Base in 1967, and national security was compromised. Again, you can argue the alien nature, but the events happened and they can be documented through government records.

But the media, or rather many of them, arrive with their preconceived notions, and rather than talk to the witnesses about what they saw, the researchers about what they have learned, the media look for a loon or two and then imply that the majority of those in attendance fit into that category.

Stan Friedman mentioned to me this morning that he had an email from a colleague? friend? acquaintance? Who felt the urge to ask how Stan could call himself a scientist…? nothing like rejecting an idea without looking at the evidence and attacking those who suggest that such evidence exists.

Each of the former senators or congressional representatives have mentioned the negative comments made to them, of the ridicule directed at them, and the bad press they have received. Few seem willing to listen to the testimony of those who have had documented experiences because it is simply too easy to look down their noses at those whose views do not agree with their own.

What I’m saying is that no one is looking at the information being shared by credible people, no one is asking if the health problems of some of the witnesses is not related to their UFO encounters, and no one is asking to see the evidence and the documentation.

No, they’re just more interested in displaying their superiority by making snide comments, tarring everyone with the same brush and ignoring the evidence. Or worse still, printing pictures of those painted green who weren’t at this event. That picture was taken somewhere else at some other time.

True, there are those here whose views I do not share, but if I avoid this venue, then my voice is silenced. If I do appear, then I join those in the tinfoil hats as some sort of kook, at least in the eyes of those offended by the Hearings.

Before you ask, yes, I listened to Steven Greer and found him to be quite entertaining. The audience was with him as he spoke and he is quite charismatic. I watched Sirius, and thought it spent way too much time on alternative sources of energy. I wanted to hear about the little alien, or maybe I should say, unusual little creature found. True, 90% of the DNA matched that of humans, but then some 9% didn’t, which doesn’t prove an alien connection. It is anomalous and interesting enough to engage very credible scientists at some very prestigious universities. That fact somehow gets lost.

In the past I have seen people review books without reading them, make statements about events they know nothing about, and offer opinions that are ill-informed. I wonder why those people do those things. Wouldn’t it be better to listen to the testimony, look at the background and the credentials of the witnesses, and then decide whether the effort was worth it? Why pass judgment before you see the results?

Historical UFO Research

After reading the article about the research into the June 23, 1947 Cedar Rapids UFO sighting, a few suggested that maybe we should do that for all these older sightings. I think that the idea might be more trouble than it is worth. Here’s why.

The Cedar Rapids case was important because it was alleged the sighting of a disc took place prior to Arnold and more importantly, it was documented prior to Arnold. Granted, the documentation was in a newspaper, but if the witness said that he had seen a disc-shaped object and it was reported before Arnold, it became important. It would suggest that the Arnold description didn’t have the influence that some have since claimed.

Now, as I explained, I looked at several sources, including Dick Hall’s The UFO Evidence. Some sources suggested the sighting was published in newspapers but I could only find a single footnote and it didn’t reference a newspaper article as the source. Instead, it cited Frank Edwards in a 1956 speech.

So I began the search which eventually revealed the sighting was not made on June 23, but on the 24^th, it didn’t happen in Cedar Rapids or Iowa, and it wasn’t published until sometime after Arnold. It became just another single witness sighting of something in the sky that did nothing to advance our knowledge of UFOs.

Many of these early sightings have nothing in them to help us. Many of the 1947 sightings that preceded Arnold were reported after Arnold. If there is no documentation to support the date, meaning something dated before the Arnold sighting hit the streets (meaning when it was published), then it does nothing for us. There are many of these, but in every case I have looked at, they were noted after Arnold.

I went back through Keith Chester’s marvelous Strange Company, looking for sightings of Foo Fighters that were described as disc shaped. The trouble was all of the sightings he collected were told to him long after Arnold had told his tale. That doesn’t mean that they were no good or were confabulations; it just means that they couldn’t be documented prior to Arnold.

This all came about simply because I wanted to document disc-shaped craft before Arnold… and there is very little to do that. Yes, I know that John Martin used the term in the late 19^th century but it was a description of size rather than shape.

Yes, I know that we can track through sighting reports from the early 20^th century and find some. But these are all prior to 1940. What I wanted to find was some disc-shaped craft reported between 1940 and Arnold in June 1947.

All this is a long-winded way to suggest that looking into the sightings that were reported after Arnold but claimed to have been made before Arnold isn’t going to help in what I wanted to do. Some of these sightings are of no real scientific value no matter when they were published. They were single witness and any evidential value they had has long eroded.

There is one thing that could be done. Everyone can do what I did with the Cedar Rapids sighting. Chase it down. If you live in a town with one of these old sightings, you might want to see if you can get to the original story and not the one that is currently being reported. If you find the information is accurate, so much the better… but I’ll bet that it has been skewed somehow. I don’t know how many times I have tried to chase a sighting to the original source only to find it is significantly different or even worse, was never reported. Someone made it up long after the fact.

The point is that some sightings are just of no real importance… others should be taken to the original source and see how that stacks up with what we see today… and finally there are some very important sightings that should be stripped of the rumors so that we can concentrate on the facts.

The Brookings Institution and Walter Sullivan

As I was looking into the history of the Brookings Institution report about their investigation into alien life and what would happen if we learned there were aliens out there, I made a somewhat startling discovery. Walter Sullivan, one time science editor of the New York Times had written a book, We Are Not Alone, in 1964, and he quoted from that report. He was writing about the short section that suggested that communication with an alien race might not be a good thing for the people of Earth… might not be bad, especially if it was only through radio astronomy, but there could be negative consequences.

 

He quotes exactly a long section from the report about what is found in “anthropological files” and how societies, “sure of their place” suffered from a variety of fates. The implication is that those societies were altered, often for the worse. I say just look at the history of contact between the old and new worlds to see what is meant.

Anyway, after these precise quotes (which I have not reproduced here) Sullivan begins to paraphrase. He wrote, “Such studies, the report continued, should consider public reactions to past hoaxes, ‘flying saucer’ episodes and incidents like the Martian invasion broadcast.”

But the report doesn’t say, “flying saucers.” The line paraphrased in the report says, “Such studies would include historical reactions to hoaxes, psychic manifestations, unidentified flying objects, etc. Hadley Cantril’s study, Invasion from Mars (Princeton University Press, 1940), would provide a useful if limited guide in this area.”

The structure of Sullivan’s quote seems to suggest that flying saucers belong in the hoax category and is somewhat dismissive of the idea of flying saucers. But the report used the term “unidentified flying objects” and it wasn’t next to the word, “hoaxes”, but separated from it. This seems to indicate Sullivan’s personal bias.

Now, let me say that my interpretation might be off base here. I just noticed the changing of the words and I remembered Ed Ruppelt explaining that the Air Force used the term, flying saucer, in a derogatory sense as in, “You don’t believe in those flying saucers do you?” Sullivan, by changing the term, was engaging in the same dismissive attitude… which, of course, is his right… except…

The way his sentence is structured, and the use of quotation marks around “flying saucer” suggests that the term was lifted from the Brookings Institution report. But the document doesn’t use the term, and the structure of that particular paragraph seems more benign to me.

Oh, I know, this isn’t a big thing. It was just something that I stumbled over and thought enough about it to mention it here. But it does, sort of, reveal an attitude that is found throughout the MSM and that is something that shouldn’t exist. They should keep the sneering attitude to themselves… and not only when writing about UFOs.

The June 23, 1947 UFO Sighting

I believe that I have found the original source for the story of a Cedar Rapids engineer who saw the flying discs. A headline in the Cedar Rapids Gazette said, “Flying Discs Seen By Railroad Man.” The problem? The newspaper is dated June 28, 1947 and appears two days after the Arnold story. And it didn’t happen in Cedar Rapids.

The article, which is not six lines or six paragraphs, but a little longer than that, said:

A railroad man said Friday [which is June 27, 1947 and eliminates the need for further information right there because the story appeared after Arnold] he saw “about nine” spinning discs speeding through the sky last Tuesday [June 24] the same day an Idaho flyer said he saw some flashing objects in the air.

Charles Kastl [yes, that is the way it is spelled consistently in the article], 60 [which means he would be 126 today], an employe [sic] of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad for 38 years, saw he saw the discs about 1:50 p.m. (CST) as he was walking along the highway to work.

No other person in the Joliet area reported anything unusual.

Kastl said he saw a string of flat, circular objects going faster “than any plane I ever saw” about 10 to 12 miles east of Joliet [Illinois]. They were flying about 4,000 feet, he said.

“They appeared to be very high, and were going from north to south,” he said. “I could see no connecting link between them, but they acted as though the leading disc had a motor in it to power the others, because when it flipped, the others would too. When it would right itself, the others would right themselves.”

Kastl said he did not tell anyone but his wife about seeing the objects until Friday, “because I didn’t think anything about it.”

When he returned from a railroad run Friday, however, he learned that Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, pilot had reported seeing objects similar to the ones he claimed to have seen. Arnold said he saw objects over the Pacific Northwest.

Charles Preucil, head of the Joliet astronomical society, said there would be no natural cause for a display such as Kastl described.

Given the information in this article and given the descriptions given for the Cedar Rapids sighting, I believe this is the source. It did not happen in Cedar Rapids, nor did it happen on June 23. I will assume here, risking fate, that someone (Frank Edwards?) miscalculated the date of Tuesday, believing it to be the 23^rd, and not realizing it was the 24^th.

In Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 by Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, the story was reported on page 22 as:

Thus, neither of those sightings made the papers before Arnold's account, but one story was actually reported to newspapers on the 23rd. The tale came from a railroad engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As he was climbing off his engine, he observed ten shiny disc-shaped objects flying in a string-like formation, "like wild geese." The six line story it generated produced little attention at the time.

 

Their footnote indicated that this information came from a speech given by Frank Edwards on April 28, 1956, to the Civilian Saucer Intelligence.

As I have mentioned, Richard Hall, in The UFO Evidence, reported, “6-23-47. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 10 shiny discs “fluttering along in a string.”

Even if we wish to keep the entry as a reliable report, we now know that it didn’t happen on June 23 and it was not Cedar Rapids but Joliet, Illinois.

And as also mentioned, Robert Loftin, in his Identified Flying Objects reported, “June 23, 1947 – Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Railroad engineer saw ten shiny disc-shaped objects, very high, fluttering in a string toward the northeast.”

This should put to rest the idea that there was a sighting in Cedar Rapids on June 23 by an engineer. It should end the discussion that this case preceded Arnold by a day. Everything I have learned about it suggests that it happened on the day of the Arnold sighting but was not reported until two days later.

I will confess one other thing about this case. I don’t believe it. I think the guy was just spinning a tale about seeing something and because these things were now part of that news cycle, a reporter talked to him and wrote the story. The original importance of it had been the suggestion that it preceded Arnold, and without that, it is another single witness case that does not advance our knowledge…

And I will add this. It is frightening because of how far it has been circulated and how distorted it has become. I don’t know what motivated Edwards to quote it, and quote it so badly, but quote it he did. Others picked up on it without checking the original sources, and it took me quite a while to chase it down. If I could, I would strike if from the UFO literature, but books last a long time and the Internet might be forever. This will live on but I can hope that others will stumble across this information as they search for evidence.

Cedar Rapids Engineer Sees Disks - Beats Arnold by a Day?

I’ve been working on a new book and I was chasing down stories of flying saucers, flying discs, seen prior to June 24, 1947. Sure there are some, but all, or almost all, seem to have been reported after Kenneth Arnold’s story appeared in newspapers.

One of the best of these, reported in many sources, came from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and according to one document, “Thus neither of those sightings [one from El Paso, Texas and one from Wapakoneta, Oregon] made the papers before Arnold’s account, but one story was actually reported to newspapers on the 23^rd. The tale came from a railroad engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As he was climbing off his engine, he observed ten shiny disc-shaped objects flying in a string-like formation, ‘like wild geese.’ The six line story it generated produced little attention at the time.” The source of this, according to the footnote, was a speech given by Frank Edwards in April, 1956.

I have found references to it in other publications. Richard Hall, in his 1964 book, The UFO Evidence, lists it in two places, Section XI, page 129 and Section XII, page 152. Neither supplies much in the way of information. It is basically a recap of this other story and in neither place is there a source.

An Internet site listed Ted Bloecher’s The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 as a source, but I was unable to find it there. If it is, I would hope that someone would point it out to me, but I don’t think they’ll find it. Bloecher used newspaper files for his documentation and so, if he didn’t find it in a newspaper, it was probably not published anywhere.

Now I was reading, the other day, a criticism of a UFO book, and it was suggested that primary sources were the best. Not witness testimony, but something that had been written down, such as a newspaper article or military document created at the time. If nothing else, that article could help establish the credibility of the sighting. Someone quoting another book would not be a primary source… it might be a secondary source, but might be even further removed from the primary source.

So, rather than quote those other books, rather than make a list of Internet and web sites that quoted the story, I thought about looking in the Cedar Rapids newspapers to find the original story. In June 1947, there were two newspapers in Cedar Rapids, The Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Cedar Rapids Tribune.

I carefully read the Gazette for June 23 and did not find the story. I went through the issue twice. I looked on June 24 but it was not there either. Nor was it there on the 25^th, 26^th, or 27^th. Of course, if printed after June 24, it was just another of the many cases that surfaced after Arnold’s report hit the national circuit.  Yes, I did find the Arnold story in the Gazette and thought the engineer story might be appended to it, but it was not.

The Tribune was not a daily paper and did not have an issue on June 23. I looked at several issues, but they didn’t even carry any flying disc reports. The newspaper was more geared to the local area.

And I was even allowed to search the library’s database for the newspaper articles. It wasn’t there, but then, I was told that they missed things in preparing the database. That it wasn’t there didn’t mean anything other than it wasn’t there. When appended to the other failed searches, that information becomes more significant.

While this sighting, if published on June 23, or even on June 24, would have been an important contribution to the UFO history, I was unable to find any documentation for it prior to Edwards’ 1956 speech. It does not appear in the Cedar Rapids newspapers, and I seriously doubt that any other newspaper would have carried it. Just nothing there of interest for them in it.

There is a school of thought that the case is listed in the Project Blue Book files, but it is from the Des Moines, Iowa area, happened on June 29, and involved a bus driver rather than a railroad engineer. But the details of the sighting are a match. The story was reported on July 8. If this is the right case, then it does nothing for us. It is just another of those sightings made after Arnold, reported after Arnold, and involves a single witness. The Air Force wrote it off as coming from an unreliable source.

I really wanted to document the details of the Cedar Rapids case, but simply could not do it. This is another “sighting” that should be removed from the various listings and databases. I don’t know how Edwards got it so twisted around, but I do know he didn’t get it from a newspaper in Cedar Rapids.

Project Contour and Alien Communication

As I was doing some research the other day, I came across some information from Mark Shippey (or information attributed to him) about a classified Air Force program known as Contour. This is how he explained it:

 

Today I met an old retired Air Force officer who claims that in the 1960s the Air Force conducted secret projects concerning possible communications with alien life forms…

He said one project was called “Contour”. He said that this project involved understanding “linguistic fundamentals of communication between different species”, and that one part of the project focused on understanding how “primates such as a gorilla might be taught to communicate.”

According to this retired officer, the Air Force was publically disregarding UFOs,” but privately was involved in “intense research concerning inter-species communication.”

He explained how one fascinating part of the project involved taking a gorilla that had been raised amongst humans and taught “basic sign language” back into the field to see how it related to and communicated with wild gorillas and if the domesticated gorilla could act as a “go-between” to communicate between the researchers and the wild gorillas.

All of this was supposed to have happened to, “help us learn fundamentals of language that could be helpful in communications with alien species.” 

I won’t go into the problems with this scenario as described, from the point that gorillas aren’t very receptive to new arrivals, to the point that the domesticated gorilla would not understand the wild gorillas’ communications having not interacted with them. Sort of like taking a baby of Japanese heritage raised in Oklahoma, for example, and dropping him or her into Tokyo and expecting some sort of psychic connection with the Japanese. The Oklahoma person would have no real connection with the land of his or her heritage and would be as out of touch with the Japanese as anyone plucked from another culture would be. The shared heritage might facilitate some interaction, but it really would have little impact on the meeting.

No, the problem with this tale, and I’m sure some of you recognize it, is because it wasn’t an Air Force project, but a plot point in a novel. Here’s what was written about it in the novel:

Pearl’s thesis attracted considerable attention, and funding from the U.S. Air Force, which had supported linguistic research since the 1960s. According to one story, the Air Force had a secret project called CONTOUR, involving possible contact with alien life forms. The official military position was that UFOs were of natural origin – but the military was covering its bets. Should alien contact occur, linguistic fundamentals were obviously critically important. And taking primates into the field was seen as an example of contact with “alien intelligence”; hence the Air Force funding. 

Now before we all take off on tangents to suggest this tale might be true, or have the elements of truth in it, let me point out the linguistic similarities between Shippey’s report and the paragraph in the novel. Let me point out that Shippey’s story surfaced in 1999 and the novel was published in 1980. Let me further establish that I have been unable to find any other references to Contour as a real project, even one with a different purpose.

And yes, I did try to find a Frederick Pearl who matched the description in the book. Yes, there are a couple of them. One, called Fritz, died in 1970 but was a gestalt psychologist and the other is an anthropologist, but is too young to have been writing papers on linguistics in the 1960s. The name seems to be an invention by the writer to advance the story and refers to neither a real person nor a real thesis.

At least this tale has not gotten wide spread circulation inside (or outside) the UFO community. There is no evidence that such a program ever existed, and for those who might suggest absence of evidence, well, they are required to produce some of it.

Oh, the novel? Congo by Michael Crichton…