Given what we have
learned from Imminent, Lue Elizondo’s UFO book, which, of course, he
refers to as his UAP book, there are some developing issues. He comes at the
UAP phenomenon from the point of an insider. He is someone who has supposedly
had access to those hidden files and investigations that those of us on the
outside don’t have. But you have to wonder what those files were and what
information did he have because there seems to be problems with what he has
written about some of the well-known cases and some that have not received
widespread publicity.
As just a single example
is a case of recovered debris that might be remnants of some sort of off-world
craft. He wrote:
In 1977, on a night close to
Christmas, unusual lights were spotted in the skies over Council Bluffs, Iowa.
When witnesses ran to where these lights neared the ground, they found not an
aircraft but what looked like a small pool of molten metal. Had the craft
melted when it hit earth? Had it melted in the air and oozed to the ground?
Vallée had obtained materials recovered from this incident. He suspected the
multicolored lights seen in the sky by witnesses came from a wobbling craft in
distress. When no craft was actually found on the ground, it begged the
question: Was the pool of molten metal some sort of by-product of the craft?
After some sightings, researchers had recovered a fine metallic fiber on the
ground. They called it “angel hair.” I have handled some of this material. It’s
a little like steel wool. The working theory is that the exteriors of these
aircraft are ablative in nature; that is to say, they are capable of self-sacrificing.
When the skin of the craft interacts with the propulsion unit, the craft
ablates, or peels off, some of its outer surface, resulting in these fibers.
Back in 1977, the Council Bluffs case had undergone an unusually rigorous
amount of investigation by local and federal authorities. It was a blue-chip
legacy case.
But, like so much of
the book, we don’t get many facts about the case. We don’t get names and in
fact, we don’t get a date. I don’t know why that is left out. A simple Google
search tells us the event happened on December 17, 1977, which is, of course, a
“night close to Christmas.”
Here is the rest of the
story, as the late Paul Harvey used to say. At 7:45 p.m., three people saw what
they said was a red object at about 500 to 600 feet above the ground, falling
straight down. They lost sight of it when it disappeared behind the trees in
the Big Lake State Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa. That was followed by a flash
of bluish-white light and what they said were two arms of fire shooting into
the air. They believed that something had hit the ground.
Article from the Cedar Rapids Gazette, December 17, 1977 |
They drove to the park
to investigate and saw a glowing, orange blob with a bluish crystalline
substance in its center. It had impacted on a dike that was about sixteen feet
from the road. They said it looked like lava running down the dike and it
seemed to be cooling. They said it too hot to touch.
They were not alone. A
young couple saw what they called a big round thing that seemed to be hovering.
They drove to the park and then called the fire department when the saw the glowing
blob.
A third couple reported
a bright red object falling to the ground at Big Lake. It is interesting that
some of the witnesses reported that it was falling, suggesting something out of
control.
Fifteen minutes after
they had called the fire department, or about 8:00 p.m., Assistance Fire Chief
Jack Moore arrived. The molten metal was still glowing and had spread out into
a six by four-foot area. It was about three or four inches thick and said by
some to have weighed a thousand pounds. Moore described it as “some kind of
metal,” and said “you can’t break it and you can’t bend it.” That, of course,
suggests that it had cooled enough so that they could now touch it.
Moore called the police
and then Eppley Airfield and Offutt Air Force Base. There were no missing
aircraft and though the Air Force knew nothing about what had fallen, they
denied that there had been an aircraft accident. Moore said that the Air Force
officers were not interested in what he was telling them.
Samples of the metal
were collected. There was nothing exotic about the metal. It was high carbon
steel that wasn’t at all uncommon. It was used in manufacturing. Two foundries
in Council Bluffs could have produced the metal, though there is no evidence to
suggest that either of them was the source of the material.
There is one other
aspect to the story that might be significant. Four teenagers, in what was
called a small, foreign car, arrived just after the first group got there. They
asked the other witnesses if they had seen the thing fall out of the sky. The
teens then drove off.
There was a scientific
paper about the case published years later and that is available online. It
provides additional information, including the names of some of the witnesses
and an in-depth report on the analysis of the metal, including a photograph of
two samples. You can access it here:
I suppose the real
point here is that Elizondo presented nothing new about this case. In fact,
just typing Council Bluffs UFO into a search engine provided a wealth of
information, including the scientific paper that resulted from the analysis of
the metal.
I’ll have more to say
about Elizondo’s book and I am preparing a longer and more comprehensive review
of the material found there. I’ll post that as soon as I can.
(Blogger’s note:
In a world in which plagiarism is claimed even with the most innocuous failures
to properly footnotes, I did read an article written by Dr. Richard Warner who
serves on the board of directions of the Historical and Preservation Society of
Pottawattamie County, Council Bluffs being in Pottawattamie County. I also used
various newspaper reports and the scientific paper mentioned above.)
4 comments:
The link to the article containing the analysis is not working for me.
According to one version I read whatever fell made a loud boom. Maybe it didn't; this wasn't a crash. Council Bluffs was only one case in which an unusual object left behind metal or debris of some kind. But omit Maury Island the hoax.
The article link does not work.
A number of you have suggested that the link doesn't work. I'm not sure why, but here is an alternative solution. Type Council Bluffs UFO into Google and then scroll down to Improved instrumental techniques, included isotopic...
That should bring up the scientific paper.
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