Philip Klass Explains It All - Part Two

There are those who thought that I had been unfair to Philip Klass when I mentioned the article from the Bangor, Maine newspaper that reported his take on the Loring AFB unidentified craft (and note here that I didn’t use the more pejorative UFO). Turns out, there wasn’t much in that article that didn’t appear in his book, UFOs: The Public Deceived. It was just a little more condensed in the newspaper and some of the wilder assumptions made had been left out.

First, he seemed to be very annoyed that one of the newspaper reporters, in this case Ward Sinclair, had been dismissive of him, telling him, when asked if he had thought about calling Klass for his take on Loring, “No. In no way would I check with you. Why would I check with you? You’ve assigned yourself a credential that I have every right to be as suspicious of as Todd Zechel’s credentials.”

For those out of touch, Zechel claimed many things in his life that turned out to be less than credible and I wouldn’t cite Zechel as a source without checking out his information with other sources first. In fact, I would probably ignore anything Zechel said if there wasn’t any other source for it. In fact, if Zechel told me the sky was blue, I’d probably go out and look.

But I do understand Klass’ annoyance because, on the flip side, I’ve run into it. I was scheduled for an interview at the Chicago Tribune, but rather than a reporter from on staff, the interview was conducted by an intern in the hallway. She said that the editors knew there was nothing to UFOs so they weren’t overly interested in anything that might suggest they were in error. Sort of the same attitude that Klass had run into with Sinclair and sort of the same attitude we sometimes see here. A personal bias that colors thinking rather than an intelligent exchange of competing points of view.

The Bangor newspaper article had mentioned Klass’ theory that some radicals might have obtained a helicopter to acquire an atomic bomb. Well, in his book this isn’t quite as direct, but he is still of the opinion that a helicopter was responsible for the intrusion at Loring and there were radicals at the controls. In a footnote on page 97, he wrote, “At the time some radical groups protesting the war in Vietnam were resorting to violence and the use of explosives.”

And my criticism remains… didn’t these radicals, in October 1975, realize the war was over and the communists were in Saigon? Didn’t anyone point this out to Klass such as a copy editor… or maybe someone who had read the newspaper article about the fall of Saigon. This idea seems to be out of touch with reality but no one seemed to realize it. Not to mention that this has absolutely nothing to do with the sightings at Loring.

Klass did find that a helicopter had been scoping out part of Maine. He talked to a former sheriff deputy, Ivon Turmell, who reported on a helicopter landing at the Moosehead Motel. Klass wrote, “When I called Turmell, he told me that the red and white helicopter, built by Hughes Helicopter company, had created some talk in the small town [Rockwood], when it landed outside the Moosehead Motel and operated from this site for several days, taking off each morning and returning every night. When Turmell had called the owner of the motel out of curiosity, he learned that ‘the whole thing was very hush-hush,’ he told me, adding that the crew and maintenance personnel carefully avoided talking to other guests at the motel.”

 

Well, this is sort of interesting, I suppose, except for a couple of facts. According to Klass, in his book, this all happened “shortly” after the late-October incidents at the air base. And, Rockwood and the Moosehead Motel are some 120 miles from Loring AFB. Close in time and distance, but probably unrelated to the intrusions at the base. But someone was flying a helicopter, of some indistinct type, (which Hughes helicopter was it?) and they were in Maine. To Klass: Case Closed…

Klass wanted to know, “Could Rockwood’s ‘mysterious helicopter’ have been the same craft that reportedly penetrated Loring’s airspace on the night of October 27?”

No, and there is no apparent reason to connect the two events. Had we on this side of the fence attempted something like that, we would be condemned for “ufological thinking.” This is debunker thinking… just throw out a question about an event that might explain the sighting and then pretend that it does.

One other point should be made. The available documents show that there was an intrusion at Loring, and in at least one case, seemed to penetrate the weapons storage area. Although they mention that it was a helicopter in those documents, they were unable to identify it, catch it, or apparently stop it. Violating the restricted area and flying over the weapons storage area would be a matter of national security and should have caused a somewhat more robust Air Force response. The documents suggest that the Air Force couldn’t identify the helicopter but didn’t work very hard to find out who had committed the crime. I have to wonder if Klass could find a possible culprit by talking to an ex-deputy, couldn’t the Air Force have found the same culprit and wouldn’t they have followed up on it? It would seem to me that the Air Force would have investigated this, and since it goes unmentioned, means the helicopter had nothing to do with the intrusion.

 

So, they, debunkers and the Air Force, call it a helicopter though the witnesses on the ground, and sometimes within 300 feet of it, couldn’t recognize it as such. They described it as hovering, and dropping below radar coverage in the manner like that of a helicopter. The Air Force, rather than using the term UFO, chose to call it an unidentified helicopter. One witness, in November, did report a mysterious craft that did look like a helicopter, but then, that was in late November and that’s not part of the Loring sightings in late October.

The skeptics line up behind the Klass explanation because they all know that there can be no alien visitation. They accept his information about the helicopter, though it isn’t actually in the right place at the right time. They assume the witnesses, who mentioned a motion like that of a helicopter, meaning it hovered, just couldn’t identify it for some reason, and dismiss everything in that way. Nothing to look at here folks, just move along.

 

And now I must always add a caveat to these postings. No, this case does not prove alien visitation. It suggests something unidentified was seen over Loring, and the Air Force response seems inadequate given the penetration of the weapons storage area. The mystery helicopter was never found, and given the national security aspects, I would have thought the Air Force would have responded with more enthusiasm.

But, since it was a matter of national security, I don’t believe that all the relevant documents have been seen… nor do I expect them to be released through FOIA. This was, after all, a matter of national security.

Philip Klass Explains it All... Loring AFB

I hate to keep picking on Philip Klass, but I’ve just stumbled on another of his solutions and thought we might look at it. Back in 1975, at Loring Air Force Base in Maine, Sergeant Steven Eichner, was working with Sergeant R. Jones, when Jones saw a red and orange object over the flight line. To both of them the object looked like a “stretched out football” that hovered and then seemed to disappear as the lights went out. It reappeared over the north end of the runway, moving in what they described as “jerky motions.” They began to give chase, maybe just get closer for a better look, and when they turned onto the road that led to the weapons storage area, they saw the UFO some 300 feet in front of them. It was about five feet off the ground and the air around it seemed wavy, such as heat coming off a desert highway. They saw no doors, hatches or windows on it.

 

It wasn’t long before sirens sounded and Eichner said that he saw many flashing blue lights on the Air Force security team coming at them, or rather toward the weapons storage area. They didn’t want to be close by as the Air Police tried to identify the lights and find out what was happening.

That is a quick rundown of what Eichner and his buddy saw that night. I mention it only because in the newspaper column that we’re going to talk about, Eichner was mentioned and his story recounted. This gives us all a view of what happened without getting into a discussion of whether it was something from space or something from Earth.

 

Philip Klass decided to see what he could learn about this and investigated. He told John Day of the Bangor Daily News, that “…he investigated the 1975 Loring incident. Among other things, he was given access to base Telex communications during the four or five nights when the mysterious object repeatedly hovered over Loring’s nuclear storage facility. According to Klass, the cable traffic shows that Loring officers had strong evidence that the mysterious object cited by Eicher was a helicopter. Their concern was not that the SAC base was being penetrated by spacemen, but that a radical anti-Vietnam group had rented a helicopter and was trying to steal a nuclear warhead.”

I will only note here that any messages that might have affected national security would have been highly classified, even five or six years after the event and I doubt that Klass had access to them. He certainly would have seen the regular traffic, but in this case, with someone or something attempting to penetrate the nuclear weapons storage facility, the classification of the communications would have been increased.

Day wrote, “According to Klass, the cable traffic he obtained pertaining to the Loring UFO incident indicated that authorities established that a well-financed crew operating out of a motel near Moosehead Lake, was flying on the nights the mysterious object was observed hovering over Loring’s nuclear stockpile.

“Klass has no proof that the Moosehead Lake helicopter was the object which buzzed Loring. He says it is unfortunate that the Air Force never followed up on their suspicions, or made public the results of their investigations.”

 

Let’s just think about this for a moment. Klass claims that the cable traffic suggested a “well-financed crew operating out of a motel near Moosehead Lake, was flying on the nights the mysterious object was observed” but that the Air Force didn’t follow up on it. We have this helicopter (and it does sound like a helicopter meaning the maneuvers, hovering, sound like a helicopter but there is no sound associated it which is odd) which the Air Force apparently knew was flown by a crew staying in a local motel, but they do nothing about it. These guys and girls, these anti-Vietnam radicals (who apparently didn’t know that Vietnam War was over, US forces had long been withdrawn and Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, was in the hands of the communists) were attempting to steal an atomic bomb. But the Air Force didn’t follow up on it, so Klass has no proof for it.

I’m surprised that Day could write this without phoning out to Loring to ask them a couple of questions. Oh, I doubt he would have gotten much in the way of an answer, but he could have asked where these radicals went after they failed to steal an atomic bomb. I would have thought a reporter would wonder why the Air Force didn’t care enough to find those trespassers and have them arrested. Isn’t deadly force authorized to keep intruders out of those weapons stock piles? I mean, if they can shoot you for trespassing, it would seem that they would want to arrest you, even if you were aiding the local economy by renting helicopters, staying in local motels, and I would guess buying food, and probably more than one bottle of bourbon.

 

But no, even though they knew the name of the motel, and surely could have learned where the helicopter was parked and who owned it, the Air Force didn’t follow up on it… or maybe as Klass said, never made public the results of their investigation… which also seems odd. They would have arrested the people and wanted others to know what would happen if you rented a helicopter and flew it over their weapons storage facility.

So, no, I don’t believe Klass’s anti-Vietnam radicals, which is not to say that aliens were responsible, only that there is no evidence of Klass’s theory (ah, but absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, or does that apply here?). Anyway, I thought I’d give everyone a chance to see this wonderful explanation for the Loring UFO sightings.

 

Day finished up writing, “When you think about it, there’s more logic to Klass’s contention that UFOs are more the product of overactive imaginations on earth, than they are of little green men from another galaxy. I’ve chased UFO stories as a reporter and found the bottom line was somebody saw something but only God knows what it was.”

I wouldn’t have mentioned this last paragraph, except it does provide a bit of a clue as to Day’s attitude about this, which is basically even a crummy explanation is better than no explanation. But really, I just wanted to note that he probably meant another solar system rather than galaxy.