Just the other day, Presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich (seen here) was outed by Shirley MacLaine. She said that while visiting her, they had seen a UFO... meaning, clearly, an unidentified flying object. 
This whole tale is not important because we have many known people who claim to have seen a UFO. Jimmy Carter made a similar claim, and recently explained that he had seen an object in the air that was unidentified and that doesn’t translate into an alien spacecraft or a belief in flying saucers. It means that Carter, along with MacLaine and Kucinich saw something they could not explain.
Now, just recently I have been told that some of those who claimed to have been involved in the Roswell crashed saucer recovery didn’t behave the way debunkers believe they should. Melvin Brown, for example, when he learned that William Moore and Charles Berlitz had written a book about Roswell should have contacted them with his insider information. Or, better yet, he should have gone to the newspaper to tell them what he had seen.
Instead, Brown merely told his family, wife and daughters, about it. The debunkers seem to believe that this is prima facie evidence that Brown was exaggerating his role in Roswell. Brown had been assigned as a cook and it seems that he shouldn’t have been in a position to see anything. And, if he did, why he’d want to shout it to the world when he learned that Moore and Berlitz had written their book.
But doesn’t this latest about Dennis Kucinich prove just the opposite. First, Kucinich didn’t rush to the newspapers to relate his story. And second, the headline at FoxNews.Com said, "Dennis Kucinich’s UFO Comments Prove He’s Nuts."
John Gibson, who, by the way, I met at the 50th Anniversary of the Roswell Crash, on the highway just outside of town, near the turnoff to Hub Corn’s ranch where it was said that something had fallen, wrote, "This is the guy who feels free to say Bush is crazy one day and admit something the next day that many, if not most, people think proves a person is crazy."
He continued in this vein, saying, "If you’ve seen UFOs you probably shouldn’t go around calling other people nuts. If you admit to seeing a UFO, martians [sic], space creatures, big foot [sic] and all the rest, you are by definition on the defensive against a charge of craziness."
He goes on and said, "And the rest of you who have seen UFOs, please don’t send angry e-mails. It’s not going to make any difference – I’ll still think y’all are crazy."
I’m not going to talk about the attitude here. Gibson knows that there are no UFOs, meaning spaceships, and he’s not interested in evidence to the contrary. He’ll stick with the discredited Mogul explanation for Roswell because that’s easier to believe than the military officers who retrieved the spaceship debris in 1947.
I’ve run into this attitude before. I was scheduled for an interview at the Chicago Tribune (you remember them... Dewey Defeats Truman was their banner headline in 1948). They sent an intern (not that I have anything against interns) but she told me that the editors didn’t want to do anything because they knew there was nothing to UFOs. When I said we had some very powerful evidence, she said that they didn’t care. They knew the truth.
Which is why every time you see a story about the end of the dinosaurs, you’ll see the media talking about the huge meteoric impact that wiped them out though there isn’t scientific consensus on that point. Or why you hear, repeatedly that we can’t win in Iraq when these same media types really don’t know it and have no basis for saying it, other than they probably believe it being the experts in military tactics they all are.
But I digress...
The point here is that we have moved into the 21st Century where we communicate with friends around the world on the Internet, where libraries are becoming obsolete because we can find virtually anything we need on the Internet using our home computers, where newspapers are dying, we have high definition TV and hundreds of channels, where people are actually booking passage for space flight (and where some wealthy people have already done it) and dozens of other marvels that people 50 years ago never thought possible and where we have to put up with the opinions of pundits on TV who don’t know what they’re talking about but can say anything they please because they have a forum.
So why should someone come forward with his or her story of UFOs when we all know, as it has been proven so many times recently (and I just picked on John Gibson because he had been to Roswell and his was the first bit of nastiness I found) that to come forward with a UFO report is to tell the world you’re crazy? It is no wonder that people like Melvin Brown, among many others, said nothing to the news media about this. They just didn’t want to be called crazy, belittled and insulted by those who know more than the rest of us.
And maybe some of them just want to be left alone because to admit something like this opens the door for the true loons out there. Bill Brazel told me that he would periodically get late night telephone calls from drunks in bars wondering if his tale of finding bits of debris was true. Others have been subjected to the "truly" religious who felt an obligation to explain the UFOs as the work of the devil and scream at them about it.
We supposedly live in an enlightened age, but how enlightened is it when someone, because he or she has a televised forum can call someone else crazy for reporting an unidentified object in the night sky? Maybe it is time that we limit the pundits and their ilk to staying inside the bounds where they do have some sort of expertise and realize that they simply don’t have all the answers though they seem to believe they do. Of course, if we limited them to that, then the news channels would have about twenty-three hours a day to fill with real news.
And maybe it’s time to realize that not everyone reacts the same way to things and what I might do in a specific circumstance is not what you would do. Maybe I see the flaws in the Mogul explanation for Roswell that you believe to be insignificant. And maybe you are telling the truth as best you can and haven’t decided to make it up so that you too can get your fifteen minutes of fame.
But really, it’s about understanding we don’t have all the answers and that calling Kucinich crazy and then using that brush to tar everyone else who has had some kind of an experience that we find inexplicable is, well, crazy.
Great post. Unfortunately, ufology does attract a certain crazy element to it. But for every crazy person, there must be dozens, if not hundreds, of genuine witnesses and level-headed researchers. Anyone who denies the existence of the UFO phenomenon is crazier than any obsessed UFO fan. So many anomalous sightings have been reported, world-wide, by credible witnesses, that it's folly to decide there's nothing to it. People are obviously seeing something, but what, is anyone's guess.
ReplyDeleteHaving a UFO sighting, however 'good' the sighting, is very different from claiming you have handled alien wreckage and seen alien bodies. In the case of the UFO sighting all you have seen is something you cannot explain (and which defies explanation at the time of the event, but may not do so forever).
ReplyDeleteWith Roswell and other similar cases, a few witnesses claim to have seen and handled ET craft/bodies, and some of them actually proclaim "these were ET bodies" (or used a similar phrase).
How do these witnesses know what an ET looks like when there is no such thing known to science?
This idea, of course, never entered their heads in 1947, but only did so between 32 and 50 years afterwards when they got conditioned to ET beliefs and getting their heads pumped full of ET ideas by the first investigators.
I have mentioned this before. There is also, er, the little problem of how the USAF has managed to sit on all the hardware & bodies for 6 decades and never once telling the scientific world that it has had proof of ET all this time. Meanwhile a zillion interested scientists the world over are being denied this knowledge by one branch of the US military. And all because of some 'above top secret' dictat that is supposed to be in force!
Kent Jeffrey finally saw the light of day, mainly influenced, I think, by the alien autopsy film. You, in line with other Roswell diehards, have not (yet)seen the light of day, but are still ever hopeful that the elusive proof will turn up.
It won't. And Roswell is a complete and utter 'no-hoper'.
If you are wondering what will cause me to see the light of day (in reverse) it is this: production of the hardware, bodies and some of the, literally, mountains of documentation/photos that undoubtedly exist in official hands if the ET crash was real.
It could all so easily be put on public display. But it won't, and the reason is all too obvious, isn't it?
And at least ten different administrations in Washington have managed to maintain this great secret. Truly amazing.
CDA
cda -
ReplyDeleteThis post was an attempt to show why some people who witness a UFO event would not immediately come forward. And it seems to me that you are attempting to deflect that argument into a different one altogether -- a lack of hard physical evidence for a Roswell UFO crash.
In other words, although that is certainly a worthy topic to discuss, it is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand -- so why bring it up at all?
A lack of hard physical evidence, an appeal to motive, and subtle personal attacks don't really change the fact that some people have not gone public with their sightings.
And most of all, since one can be labeled "crazy" for simply claiming to see a light in the sky, it stands to reason that one would very likely be much less inclined to come forward with an outrageous tale of handling alien wreckage.
to cda-
ReplyDeleteoh, shut up.
you know that the most level-headed people in the UFO community can answer every single objection you raised with a very plausible account of what might be, or what is probably, going on to "keep it secret." military compartmentalization, exclusion of senators and presidents from the activities/information (documented, by the way), etc. etc. even an avowed skeptic would be obliged--due to the crushing weight of intellectual honesty bearing down upon his mind--to point out that the content of your post contains nothing of relevance to the rational, informed discussion of UFOs, nothing that cannot be addressed in a mutually satisfactory way by appealing to the presently available evidence.
if you don't know this, you have homework to do.
if you do know this, please try to train yourself out of being satisfied with the Ideological Doubter's Standard Set Of "Arguments." it's boring and discouraging to see them deployed, especially when accompanied by an air of confidence in their rational superiority. at that point, it becomes depressing.
we ALL want to see the bodies and the crafts. but a true skeptic would acknowledge that, should they exist, they would not be available for investigation by the citizenry, would they?
when it comes to UFOs and ETs, there are likely only a very few people who know more than everybody else. what they know, we can't. what we know puts us all on the same page, because the great equalizer in this case is the fact that
you.don't.know.and.neither.do.i
so quit with the smartass condescension. it just makes you look like a tool.
On the contrary I, and probably every Roswell skeptic, would expect such important hard evidence to be on public display for at least the last 59 years, the said event now being 60 years old.
ReplyDeleteIf you think otherwise, please tell us when YOU reasonably expect this to happen: is it next year, next decade, by 2100 or 3000 perhaps? Or just plain never?
Which is it?
[To Jack: yes I put my comments in the wrong discussion, they were intended for the Kent Jeffrey section].
CDA
when i would expect the information to be made public is based on the most plausible assumptions about why it hasn't been made public yet.
ReplyDeleteso...never? when fossil fuel dependence can no longer sustain even the richest nations, and whatever alternative energy sources we know of must finally be marched out and put into use worldwide? when media attention puts the issue of a possible UFO coverup into the minds of enough citizens for it to become a pressing political/constitutional matter and governments are forced to address it? when/if ETs decide to "reveal" themselves in some major public scene? when/if governments decide to use either a real or imagined ET threat to the earth to further restrict freedom and privacy, and admit that we've known about them for some time to increase people's willingness to submit to greater authoritarian rule?
who knows? i certainly don't think, however, that the most reasonable thing to believe about roswell is that the evidence would have been on display for the past 60 years if it was really there.
we know that governments keep things secret--that's not up for debate. the question is, could this have been kept secret for so long, and how? and the compartmentalized-military/CIA-black-budget-conspiracy-theorists have an answer to that question.
you can ask whether it's likely. you can research what you can (does the CIA actually have a black budget? yep). but you can neither verify nor disconfirm the theory. not yet, anyway, not in a way that will satisfy most people. circumstantial evidence, no matter how impressive, is still circumstantial.
why do you think the roswell evidence would have been made readily available to the public?
have you seen this?
Yes I have seen Haut's latest affidavit. It is as useless as all the other anecdotal evidence.
ReplyDeleteNow why do you suppose Haut, a lowly PIO, would have been told all the details and been allowed to
handle the debris? This stuff was supposed to be Above Top Secret wasn't it?
Why should anyone take this latest news seriously? The story is captioned "deathbed confession" when it is nothing of the sort, being written (by Don Schmitt, signed by Haut) some 4 or 5
years before his death. I asked Kevin to comment on this latest affidavit by Haut. His failure to do so
(I have not seen any reply) surely indicates that he has doubts.
You are bringing in irrelevancies when you talk about energy resources, and the supposed ability of the
CIA to control things like news of alien visits (what about news of SETI confirmation of ET radio signals?). Think of the enormous prestige the USAF, or the US in general, would gain by announcing ET
presence on earth before some other nation did so. A crash in the USSR or China or Africa in 1947
would have severely upset any US plans to keep Roswell secret. The risk of this was always there,
and still is.
As I said, once the ET nature of the crash had been established (this would have taken a large team of
scientists perhaps 6 months or more), nothing would be gained by keeping it under wraps, and a great
opportunity of being 'firstest with the mostest' would be missed. And, by the way, this large team could certainly not be under any oath of secrecy for long, if at all.
The story would be too big to hold back. This is as true now as it was 60 years ago. Cast your mind back 11 years to the Mars meteorite. No holding that one back, was there? NASA just HAD to get the news out, even if there was still much more work to be done. Where was the CIA then? If and when SETI does come up with something (and it is a very big if), the CIA aint going to be able to stop it either, just as they are powerless to stop the announcement of other astronomical discoveries. Science does not work that way.
No, Roswell is a totally lost cause. It is not the ET visit that is hard to credit. It is the 60-year conspiracy, by one branch of the US military, that has zero probability.
CDA
I sincerely feel that there shouldn't even be an issue surrounding the fact of whether-or-not the Extra Terrestrial visitation hypothesis is more valid than an supposed crashed ET vehicle. The evidence shows clearly that the Armed Forces have, with out any doubt, acted in concert, up to the present time, in promoting the attitude of dismissal of the whole UFO issue!
ReplyDeleteThis statement is easily proven with the available evidence, and in truth, evidence that is many years old now.
In this evidence, if you would just read it, you would find that there is no question about the fact that while they have been playing it down, and promoting ridicule, and sometimes even worse, they had already proven that they are lying about the seriousness of the whole issue! You don't risk the lives of civilian and soldiers alike, just to chase willow-the-wisps around in our skies. And if the seriousness was at that level for simple sightings of unknown aerospace vehicles in say, 1951, then why should you, or anyone else believe that it would be different when it comes to information regarding the crashing and recovery of one of these devices? Were nice folks like yourself in the know, all this time, with respects to every Moon Dust recovery, of any foreign aerospace device? Wouldn't we shout out to the whole world to hear that we have recovered an enemy satellite? That would be a big deal, wouldn't it? Why wouldn't we brag about it?
Have any of you seen the booklet The Truth about UFOs and Aliens? It provides answers to some of the questions raised around here e.g. in the author's view, the coverup originally stemmed from the aliens themselves; the government had/has no choice but to keep it secret, for a long time. The ETs are essentially just getting us used to them by means of fleeting sightings etc, but it's a long, slow process. There must not be any premature disclosure, before sufficient familiarization and other requisite conditions exist. The aliens originally demanded secrecy, and have worked with the government since Roswell to maintain it, largely through misinformation. It is critical not only to prevent full, open disclosure now but to maintain the secrecy of alien-government contact. As the booklet shows, misinformation, or disinformation, is invariably intended to help conceal this contact, among UFO believers. KDR rightly rejects the so called MJ12 "briefing document" which the THE TRUTH... shows was leaked to help hide the greatest secret--the ET-government association.
ReplyDeleteCda says a lowly pio wouldn't be aware of a crash, showing he never served a day, and knows nothing about how a military unit/squadron/team works...especially in 1947...
ReplyDeleteThe pio of the only unit on the planet with nukes most certainly had at least a secret clearance, most likely higher. And he was part of the co's staff, and apparently a friend. All of Blanchard staff would have heard and seen things, no way around it..and without a chunk of the craft and a jar of tissue nothing would satisfy cda.....when nearly all of blanchards officers say there was a real, non explainable craft, then it takes a real smug, self important axx to belittle their statements, reliability and competence.........
An honest sceptic would say, I believe their statements are well meant, but suspect they may have been mislead by the air force..
No, they are all liars.......no use talking to such person...their derision is based in some personality defect, not honest scepticism