The consensus throughout
the UFO community of the latest report from AARO was less than enthusiastic.
Almost universally, it was condemned as inadequate, riddled with errors and a
lack of understanding of the history of the UFO phenomena. While I didn’t
expect this alleged project to consult with any of us who have been around for
a long time, it would have saved them some embarrassment because we know where
the bodies are buried… I mean that figuratively rather than literally.
Barry Greenwood, one of
the best historians studying the UFO phenomenon from the beginning, noted some
of the same problems that I did. He posted a response online that said, in part:
[T]here is an entry [in the table
of contents] for “Project SAUCER (1946/1947 – January 1948” and then just below
that “Project SIGN (January 1948 – February 1949).” Project SIGN is the
previously-understood beginning of UFO investigation but that is relegated to
third place now behind Project SAUCER and whatever happened in 1945. The “whatever
happened in 1945” is not even given a name, though it is described as one of
the “UAP investigatory Programs.” The earliest specific date for a beginning of
a program is 1946, “Project SAUCER” Blue Book head, Captain Edward Ruppelt,
explained in his book “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956) that a
Project SIGN member told him Project SAUCER existed a year before SIGN under
that informal designation. Long-time UFO researchers might note an anomaly here
in that the phenomenon wasn’t even called “flying saucers” until the wave of
1947. How could it be called “Project SAUCER in 1946, even by insiders? The
only widely known public manifestation of a UFO phenomenon in 1946 was the
so-called “Ghost Rocket” wave in Scandinavia in 1946, not evident in the U.S
aside from press coverage of Sweden and not called anything like “saucers.”
There is documentation that the U.S. received information on the Swedish ghost
rockets but no investigative program was launched and no further action was
taken other than to be informed of developments on this.
This is an interesting
question but it points at the overall lack of historical understanding of the
UFO phenomenon. But as I mentioned in my last post, what it did was confirm the
research by Wendy Connors and Michael Hall, who reported that Colonel Howard
McCoy had been ordered to establish an investigation in December 1946 before
Kenneth Arnold’s sighting initiated the press and public interest in what the
world would be called “flying saucers,” about seven months later.
Greenwood also pointed
to another mistake, which actually showed that those creating the AARO report
had not followed the leads to the original source. They used Ruppelt’s book
without attempting to verify all the information in it. Greenwood explained:
Still a few more lines down in the
table of contents, there is an entry for “Project BEAR (Late 1951 – Late 1954).
There was never an official UFO investigation called “Project BEAR.” In fact,
it was a nickname given by Ruppelt to a project which he could not discuss at
the time by Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio. That was called Project STORK/WHITE
STORK and partly resulted in Project Blue Book Special Report 14. The original
purpose of this was to assess Soviet capabilities to conduct technological
warfare and that work crept into the UFO phenomenon. Project STORK/WHITE STORK
has not been classified for years and could have been used by AARO instead of
the inaccurate BEAR. But it can lead researches to pursue the wrong designation
with FOIA requests and get nowhere.
Other researchers have found other
areas in which the AARO report was in error. Robert Powell wrote:
Let’s begin with the many flaws and errors in this report.
Some were trivial but were flaws that any check of a paper should have detected.
There are many broken links in the references cited…
The Kenneth Arnold sighting is one of the most historical
cases in the early days of the phenomenon. The AARO paper listed the date of
the sighting as June 23, 1947. The correct date is June 24. This may seem trivial
but it is considered of the of important dates in UFO/UAP history. Furthermore,
the AARO paper stated that Arnold saw “circular objects.” This is incorrect.
Arnold never said he saw circular objects and he drew objects with a curved front
that tapered into a triangular form in back. Arnold clearly describes the objects
in an audio recording in existence…
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| The original drawing of Arnold's "flying saucer." available in the Project Blue Book files. |
Powell touches on some of the points
made by Greenwood about Project Stork and how the AARO paper gets much of that
history wrong. Powell then points out that one of the Congressional
requirements was that AARO investigate the history of the UFO phenomenon.
Powell then wrote:
The AARO paper ignored key historical parts of UFO history.
The AARO paper does not deal with the government involvement in any of the
major historical UFO/UAP cases. This is an egregious failure. Instead, it only
covers Roswell because it matches up with AARO’s stupor arguing against
captured ET craft. All of the following cases are some of the most interesting
sighting reports that were investigated and should have been discussed in any
historical report: May 11, 1950, McMinnville, Oregon photos; July 2, 1952,
Tremonton, Utah film; Summer of 1952 East Coast events and military orders to
fire on UFO/UAP; July 17, 1957, USAF RB-47 AWAC-type aircraft is trailed by a
UFO for two hours; Nov, 2-3, 1957, Levelland, Texas with 81 pages in Project
Blue Book; Oct. 24, 1968, Minot AFB, ND, B52/ICBM/radar… Oct. 18, 1973,
Mansfield, OH, Coyne helicopter incident…
I will add here that I have examined
several of those cases in-depth. The Levelland, Texas, case had had dozens of
witnesses, car engines stalled and other electric devices effected, and the
report of a landing trace on a ranch just outside of town. Not only were their
civilian witnesses who described the UFO, but members of law enforcement, and
even reports by military officers who followed the local sheriff out to search
for the egg-shaped object. There is good evidence that the car carrying Air
Force officers was stalled by the close approach of the UFO. I did write a book
about this case, cleverly entitled Levelland, that details the evidence
for these points.
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| Road to Levelland, Texas, obviously. Photo by Kevin randle |
I will add that I might by the only Army
trained helicopter that investigated the Coyne helicopter case. I understood
more about what went on in the cockpit because of that training. I discussed
the case at length in 1973: A Time of UFO Sightings, Landings and
Abductions. This is a book that dealt with the sightings of that year that
exposes the lie that the Air Force stopped investigating UFOs in 1969. Yes, a
couple of plugs for my books, but also a note of where a great deal of additional
information can be found including lists of original source material and
personal interviews.
There were other responses as well,
attacking different aspects of the AARO report. Many of the footnotes lead to
AARO case files, but we don’t learn much about those cases. These footnotes don’t
provide anything that could be considered transparency. We do not have access
to the files so that we might evaluate the quality of the information. We are
left hoping the information is accurate and fair, but hope isn’t part of the
scientific method. We need the data so that we know if there are alternative
explanations or if they should be considered unidentified.
For some reason, those who have been
tasked by the government to investigate UFOs (oops, I mean UAP), are loath to
admit that there are some cases that defy explanation. The failure to find a
terrestrial explanation that fits the facts does not mean that the sighting is
proof of alien visitation. It means that no plausible solution is available at
this time.
To cite but a single case in which the
sighting seems to defy explanation but was later identified, I think of the
Chiles/Whitted sighting of 1948, proves that point. When first reported, it was
listed as unidentified by the Air Force. I believe, in the world today, there
is an explanation. The descriptions by the two pilots of the UFO, Chiles and
Whitted, suggest they saw a bolide as it began to break up. For those who wish
more information about this, can find it here:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chiles-and-whitted-revisited.html
In the coming weeks, there will be
more commentary about this latest report. The MSM, who long ago abandoned any
real investigation, will repeat the conclusion of the report without worrying about
its accuracy. That conclusion said:
What is said here is the same thing
that those of us who have been around for decades have said. The vast majority
of the UFO sighting reports are of mundane and terrestrial objects. We
eliminate many of them in our investigations. We also know that in the body of “unidentified”
objects, there are many that would be resolved if complete data had been collected.
But we also know that there are sightings in which there are complete data and
no plausible explanation has been offered.
But, as they say, “It only takes one.”
And that one might be Roswell, or Levelland, or the Zamora sighting in 1964 or
the Hickson/Parker abduction in 1973, or the encounter in Rendlesham Forest in
1980. The point is that has been some very intriguing evidence that AARO overlooked
probably on purpose. This is not the end of the controversy.
6 comments:
I'm sorry, much as I would love to go back to believing this stuff again, but there will never be any proof of alien UFOs. Ever. Or Bigfoot. Or the Loch Ness Monster. Or dinosaurs in the Congo. It is all fantasy. But go on and think otherwise.
The predictable meltdown from the true believers... And the usual straw man evasions and nitpicking over minutiae. So where did STORK provide evidence for the ETH? Nowhere. Where is the evidence that K Arnold saw ET spaceships, however he described what he saw? He could have described flying buses or the Millennium Falcon, none of it would actually prove anything re the ETH. No descriptions even of what appear to be shiny ET craft by pilots and others over the decades actually evidences the ETH, because there is something called believing is seeing. This is bread and butter undergrad psychology and sociology, basic stuff, but not to the ET believers of course. It's like not getting to grips with basic arithmetic in maths, and then presuming to lecture on high on advanced calculus and topology.
AARO doesn't cover every case in Bluebook directly, it is inferred though in their overview of Bluebook. It would be absurd to just repeat what has already been done and covered in the Condon Report and Bluebook more generally. What would be the point of regurgitating what has already been mentioned more than half a century ago in a previous government report (that AARO references in a big way) that remains the most publicly conspicuous in UFO history, and is publicly available free of charge? And I am well aware of the shortcomings in the conclusions of that report, we all are. None of the cases you cite from Bluebook and no cases post 1970 worldwide actually evidence the ETH, they evidence an authentic anomaly that remains unexplained. Ironically you ET true believers have a lot in common with the pseudo-skeptics, pushing a false duality - it's either ET or a mundane explanation. No other hypothesis is considered. High Strangeness. What's that? Randle and gang are scared to go there but wouldn't know why. It touches on too many taboos re the human psyche and our culture more broadly.
There are problems with the AARO report but they are not what the ET true believers like Randle, Rudiak and Greenwood think they are. For one it is US centric. Other not unrelated issues, but can't write a book here.
Lawrence -
The nitpicking over minutiae is important, not because they are small mistakes, but because it displays a lack of attention to detail. If they missed these points, what else have they missed or misinterpreted. This undercuts the credibility of their work.
Arnold did see something that he couldn't explain and the descriptions he offered were not unique. I think of the Rhodes photographs taken days after Arnold's report that provide an interesting perspective to what Arnold saw. Two Army Air Forces officers, when assisting Arnold on an investigation, mentioned to him that the photographs existed. What we see later, but the Air Force investigation was an attempt to smear Rhodes with innuendo and distortions.
Is this proof of alien visitation. Nope. But it demonstrates the duplicity of the military investigations and makes you wonder why they would do something like that.
And while I wouldn't expect AARO to review the entirety of the Blue Book files, many of us have looked at thousands of those cases. Blue Book explained the Levelland sightings as ball lightning, overlooking the dozens of witnesses and the interaction of the object with the environment. Think of what might have been learned had the Air Force spent more than six or seven hours in Levelland... and for ignoring that ball lightning i very short-lived and never is larger than 18 inches to two feet in diameter.
Does Levelland prove that we are being visited... To some it certainly does, based on the multiple chains of evidence... to others Levelland suggested that better investigative techniques.
As for the Condon Committee, the alleged scientific investigation of UFOs had the conclusions written BEFORE the investigation began. Doesn't that tend to negate their conclusions.
I will note that we certainly do look at other theories, but in this particular case, we are looking at the AARO report. As for other theories, the Condon Committee explained one sighting as a natural phenomenon so rare it have never been seen before or since. Not much of an explanation, but one that would suggest a scientific investigation might have produced some interesting results.
Of course the AARO report was US centric. That was in the mandate of their mission. They were looking at the evidence gathered by various US sources, agencies and military pilots.
It is also interesting that we tend to examine the information found in the report but have refrained, for the most part, the individuals who created the mess.
Brian -
You might be correct, and I agree about Bigfoot and the Lock=h Ness monster. But the question here is why is the government trying so hard to suppress information about UFOs. For decades they have lied, hidden data, smeared witnesses, but have not be able to explain some very good sightings... or rather, have appended ridiculous explanations to them.
Misdirection? Project Mogul does not explain Roswell. The flight they name as the culprit was cancelled... or, if we believe Charles Moore, it was launched hours before it was cancelled. I will say here, what I have said all along, this does not prove that what was recovered near Roswell was an alien craft. We have no terrestrial explanation and for some that is enough. I would like something a little more concrete. All I know is that no solid explanation exists for it.
The latest endeavor by the US government in the form of AARO falls short. It would be interesting to learn what a real investigation would find.
Brian Wagner: In fact, you are not correct. Instead you are simply unaccepting of the preponderance (and moreso) of the evidence in regard to numerous alien UFO cases.
At this point I actually pity you that you are so close-minded.
P.S. And Kevin, not to go off on a tangent, but re: Bigfoot, do you not accept the legitimacy of the Patterson film?
John -
I refuse to get drawn into a debate about Bigfoot.
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