Coast to Coast - Congressional Mandate and Current Sightings

 

We all know that Congress has demanded briefings about UFOs, which some now insist on calling UAPs. Apparently there have been classified briefings made to the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committee and in leak heavy Washington, it is surprising that not much about this has leaked.

These briefings came some four months after Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act requiring the creation of the Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office, which is supposed to be up and running by June. However, if the past performance is any indication, that being the Director, National Intelligence, who was responsible for that report on June 25 of last year, is any indication, that deadline will probably be missed. Nobody will do anything until they realize that someone else is keeping track.

Deputy Defense Secretary, Kathleen Hicks, is the one who is charged with getting the program going with a permanent office, but as I have said in the past, we’ve been through this before… first with Project Sign which began as a priority project, with a proper classification and a dedicated staff.  After 1948, Sign degenerated into a do-nothing operation with limited staff and propensity for labeling sightings to keep them from the “unidentified” category. Many simply were ignored completely. In 1951, Ed Ruppelt was ordered to revitalize the UFO investigation. With a new emphasis, and a desire to find answers, the investigation became more robust. That is, until the CIA sponsored Roberson Panel of 1953 decided, based on opinion rather than evidence, that there was nothing to UFO reports.

In the late 1960s, we had the University of Colorado study, financed by the Air Force and known as the Condon Committee which had the conclusions supplied by the Air Force before the investigation even began. Although that information has been available for years, there are those who still cite the Condon Committee as a scientific study. For those interested in the history of this Condon Committee “investigation,” see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

Each of these investigations whether conducted by the Air Force, the CIA or a civilian organization, was supposed to be a serious study of the UFO problem but became little more than a way of convincing people that there was nothing to UFOs. That, of course, was their real purpose.

There is even a new call in the latest Congressional interest to identify UFO hotspots and set up a way to monitor those areas, something Ruppelt tried in the early 1950s. This had to do with the Green Fireballs that were being reported over the desert southwest. No one was quite sure what they were or why they were limited to that one geographical region. They even called in Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, the expert in meteors, thinking that he would be able to find the remains of one of the fireballs using the techniques he invented for tracking other meteor falls. Although he had been quite successful in the past, this time he failed to find any fragments.

Ruppelt’s plan, or the one offered by one of the other military officers involved with the Green Fireballs, was to place a series of cameras in the region that would automatically photograph the sky. This way they would have some photographic evidence. The trouble, according to Ruppelt, was that only a single camera was deployed and they moved it every time one of the fireballs was seen in a different location. Ruppelt pointed to the flaw in that system mentioning that duck hunters knew what was wrong with it. The implication was that the attempt failed, but Ruppelt hinted that some evidence had been gathered. The camera had captured an image, but Ruppelt never described the image nor where the photograph had gone for study.

I did make a quick survey to find out where UFO sightings are most likely since that was one of the suggestions. The data seem to depend on which outlet you surveyed. One of them listed California as number one, then Florida. In fact, that list of top ten reflected the most populous states and the ones with the best weather, meaning that more people are outside looking up into the night sky.

On April 22 of this year, the witness was out walking and saw a black triangle with red and green flashing lights, which sounds suspiciously like the navigation lights on an airplane. In fact, his first thought was that it was an F-35 fighter from 29 Palms Marine Base near Palm Desert, California. He ran inside and grabbed his Celestron telescope. He said that some of the neighbors were out looking at the UFO as well. Through the telescope he saw a triangular-shaped object.

It hovered for about ten minutes when a commercial aircraft appeared, passed the UFO and twenty seconds later the UFO disappeared. He said that his spouse had also seen the object and after it had disappeared, he used the Internet to search for photos of drones and VTOL aircraft, but this was nothing like those.

And, by coincidence, also on March 22, from Haslet, Texas, the witnesses were driving home about 7:20 p.m. when they noticed four bright lights overhead. They took video and when they zoomed in saw the saucer shape. I’m not sure what to make of this after a preliminary glance, but the photo is interesting.

Texas flying saucer.

Yes, I have issues with the picture, but I do find it interesting. If I learn anything else, I'll update the information.