Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2018
UFO INVESTIGATORS AND THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX
by: Steve Erdmann
Stanton Friedman is a nuclear physicist who has worked on a variety of advanced and classified systems for major industrial companies, and has delved into major UFO cases, as told in books such as Flying Saucers and Science and Top Secret//Majic.
Kathleen Marden is a best-selling author, award-winning UFO researcher/lecturer. She has appeared in programs on History, Discovery, National Geographic, and was co-author of Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience, and other books.
(Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers, Stanton T. Friedman, Kathleen Marden, New Page Books, a division of the Career Press, Inc., 12 Parish Drive, Wane, N.J. 07470, www.careerpress.com, 1-800-career-1, 2016, 288 pages, $16.90.)
POWERFUL FOES AND FACTS
UFO investigators face a long list of powerful foes and facts as they sojourn into the world of ufology, mysterious sky objects and bizarre aircraft.
The authors lay out the foremost essentials of the UFO reality: facts of their existence. The Battelle Memorial Institute said in 1955 concerning that the “Project Blue Book Special Report – No. 14” that 21.5 percent of 3,201 reports, or 308, were “excellent cases,” with 35 percent as good “unknowns.” Out of the more than 3,500 UFO observations reported to the Air Force by civilian and military pilots, “unknowns” were considered as “nonconventional aircraft” exhibited by radar and behaviors that normal aircraft from earth could not exhibit. (pp. 11-17.)
Blue Book Special Report 14 from the Battelle Memorial Institute scientists listed 35 percent of their reviewed UFO cases as “unknowns.” (p. 168.) The report contained more than 200 charts, tables, graphs, maps and evaluations.
The National Security Agency (NSA) released before 1985, 156 pages of Top Secret Umbra UFO documents with only one sentence each page as readable, almost everything was blacked out. Unpurged pages were not even allowed to be reviewed (pp.173-174).
Much UFO-related information had a secret level, but many held at Top Secret Codeword. Operation Majestic 12 was discovered in 1984. President Eisenhower participated in the creation of the National Reconnaissance Office in 1960 and the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1962, as well as Operation Solarium. The NSA was created in 1952.
The U.S military budget for 2012, according to the Washington Post, say the authors, was 52.6 billion-dollars, with 10.4 billion going to the NSA, 14.3 billion to the CIA, and 10.2 billion to the NRO. (pp. 241-242.)
Secret programs operated under Need-to-Know, Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, Top Secret Code-Word, Majic, Umbra, and Ultra. (p. 20) The year 1952 was a phenomenal time for strange UFO activity, many being chased over the America’s Capitol by jet aircraft. The Seattle Post Intelligencer highlighted “Air Force Orders Jet Pilots to Shoot down Saucers if they refuse to Land.” The Fall River (Massachusetts) Herald News spotlighted “Jets Told to Shoot down Flying Discs.” An USAF press release quoted General Roger Ramsey as stating that more than 300 planes had been scrambled to investigate UFOs (pp. 202-203).
One sighting that some Battelle Memorial Institute scientists held in high esteem in their Blue Book Special Report 14 report was the July 17, 1957 RB-47 aircraft UFO sighting wherein six trained crew members of the reconnaissance bomber observed a mysterious-acting UFO over the Gulf of Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, visually and on radar, and received signals from the object. (p. 168.)
The RB-47 UFO case centered about a crew on board a high-technology reconnaissance aircraft spotting a bright white object which chased them in the skies of Fort Worth in central Texas for over 600 miles on or about September 19, 1957. The RB-47 was equipped with direction-finding radar and received signals at a frequency of 2,800 megacycles. The object “winked” out and then reappeared. The object actually “circled” the RB-47 while the RB-47 was flying at 575 miles per hour.
Renowned scientist Dr. James E. McDonald heralded the RB-47 UFO case, as he did several noted UFO cases, adding that the RB-47 case involved two-pairs of human eyes, ground radar at Carswell Air Force Base as well as radar at Fort Worth, including directional-finding radar on the RB-47.
This particular UFO case caught the attention of the U.S Intelligence Advisory Committee.
Despite the fact that an early Project Sign, also called Project Saucer, concluded that 243 UFO cases indicated the objects were “probably extraterrestrial craft,” the hidden contingent of government deemed it best to being in censorship and deniability as Project Grudge. (p. 31.)
Brigadier General Carroll Blender included UFO reporting as part of JANAP 146 and Air Force Memo 55-11 (Bolender Memo, October 20, 1969), restricting the channels to report a UFO. Air Force regulation 200-2 allowed only debunking of UFO cases, as of 1953. Janap-146 had a penalty of two years in prison and fines up to $10,000.
This “official” denial led to a whole brand of debunkers, skeptics and cynics.
“Skeptics contend that the subject is not worthy of serious scientific investigation, stating that most reports are anecdotal at best and have no scientific merit,” say the authors. “Fifty years of scientific denial by main stream science, despite the fact that many scientists who had studied the UFO evidence were forced to conclude that they were real.” (p. 226.)
TYPICAL UFO CONFLICTS
The year 1952 was a phenomenal year of UFO reporting with 4,400 UFO reports received at the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC). 1593, or 26.94 percent, were classified as “unknown.” Many UFOs challenged the restricted air space over the Washington, DC capitol. A “flap” began about July 1, 1952 when Jets were scrambled to investigate strange aerial objects. Airline crews reported UFOs on July 10, 13 and 14.
On July 19 radar targets were clocked at 7,000 miles per hour. F-94 jets were dispatched to investigate three targets. On July 25, Major C. P Carlson, post chaplain, saw such UFO activity. Then, on July 26, 1952 radar scopes at the Air Traffic Control Center at Washington National Airport picked up bizarre UFO activity, as well as Approach Control Radar at Andrew Air Force Base radar, with pilots picking up to 12 returns.
About 10:30 p.m. a USAF B-25 jet was vectored to the targets. At 11:00 p.m. two F-94s were scrambled, and according to Major Dewey Fournet and Lieutenant John Holcomb, the UFOs reported were “seven good, solid targets.” A second F-94 jet was scrambled but the UFOs vanished. They came back on July 26 in a “creeping appearance,” but disappeared again upon pursuit by F-94 aircraft. On July 27, the same “solid, metallic objects” appeared.
On July 29, 1952 a press conference was held in which Major General John A. Samford made the classic and now famous comment: “…there have remained a percentage of this total, in the order of twenty percent of the reports that have come from credible observers of relatively incredible things.”
Dr. Donald Howard Menzel, one of the most influential UFO debunkers at Harvard University (having an AB degree in chemistry, an AM in mathematics and astronomy from the University of Denver) pronounced the multiple Washington, D.C. UFO reports as “temperature inversion” reflections1.
The authors point out that Menzel’s UFO related comments were only “proclaimed possible explanation on theoretical possibilities” and that Menzel “rarely talked to witnesses.” They further mention: “He provided an invaluable debunking service to the USAF from 1967 to 1968, as a consultant analyzing UFO reports…even when the solution was untenable.” He was esteemed by the Air Force because he was an outstanding and highly respected astrophysicist and also in the intelligence field.
KLASS ACT
Philip Julian Klass (1919-2005) entered the UFO scene in 1966. Klass likewise had a disdain for UFO phenomena and attacked multiple UFO cases with a religious fanaticism.
Klass was an American journalist and UFO researcher and he has also worked as an engineer in aviation electronics for General Electric, wrote for Aviation Week and Space Technology as a senior editor, and wrote Secret Sentries in Space (1971), UFO Explained (1974), UFOs: The Public Deceived (1983), and several others. Klass searched out major and publicized UFO cases and then whittled away at sore points until he would convince many people that the case should be suspected or dismissed. He used ad hominem attacks without regret. Travis Walton was the focal point of a UFO abduction episode on November 5, 1975 while Walton, foreman Mike Rodgers, and several forestry workers came upon a hovering object in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest as they drove home from work. Walton was the only one brave enough to approach the “golden flattened disk,” as it hovered about 20-feet above the ground, some 30 yards away from Rodger’s International Crew Truck.
The object began to emit high-pitched beeping and low rumbling sounds, wobbled on its axis, and shot out a blue-green beam, knocking Walton into the forest floor. In their panic, the forestry workers sped away, only to come back to search for Walton, who had apparently vanished.
The matter was eventually turned over to Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Chuck Ellison, Sheriff Marlow Gillespie and undersheriff Ken Coplan. Several polygraph tests were administered, once Walton was found enveloped in a phone booth (he attempted to call his sister) and taken safely home.
Walton had a fantastic tale concerning his abduction, which can be found in multiple places under his name.2 Polygraph examiners Duane Kellett, George Pfeiffer, Jr., and C.E. Gilson administered tests on various dates to both Walton and the forestry crew; they all passed and Allen Davis passed as well in 1993. “No sign of deception.” Yet Klass brushed off the whole episode as the crew having actually sighted the planet “Jupiter” and that Walton’s experience was because he injected LSD and PCP. Walton had no puncture marks. (pp. 137-141.) Walton passed the Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) as testing normal, yet Klass, in a fury of ad hominem attacks and malicious gossip, attempted to destroy all witnesses’ characters.
A TURNING POINT
The authors outline a number of UFO cases that were ‘turning points’ in the history of UFOs. One such case the Tremonton, Utah movie of July 2, 1952. This movie was one incident that the Air Force Air Technical Intelligence Center and the Battelle Memorial Institute found interesting in their study of the 20 percent “unknowns” in their January 14, 1953 study.
Navy Warrant Officer Delbert Clement Newhouse and his wife, Norma (along with children Delbert and Anne), spotted strangely maneuvering objects in the sky about 5 miles away and outside of Tremonton, Utah. They appeared to be internally illuminated, and at a closer approximation, appeared to be like two joined saucer-plates. They were completely silent. Newhouse trained his Bell and Howell Auto Master camera (with 3-inch telephoto lens) and took 1200 frames of Daylight Kodachrome film. He changed the iris stop of the camera from f/8 to f/16. He filmed the UFO activity
His film was submitted to the USAF lab at Wright Field and also the U.S Navy’s lab at Ana Costa, Maryland. The authors are quick to point out the official conclusion of the research: “…intelligently controlled vehicles that were not airplanes or birds in flight…defied explanation,”
Dr. Robert M.L Baker, Jr., then of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation had commented: The motion of the objects is not exactly what one could expect from a flock of sparing birds.”
The authors cover a gamut of episodes on how ufology has developed over the years, exploring “debunking organizations,” and also the so-called Condon UFO Investigation headed by Dr. Edward Uhler Condon, or such individuals as Dr. Donald Howard Menzel and Philip Julian Klass and their interactions with UFO history. They explore some of the better UFO cases, highlighting the positive aspects of each. Readers will enjoy some new and refreshing facts on the UFO phenomena that the authors amply reveal.
A typical quote was from Rodrigo Bravo, a Chilean military aviator and correspondent for Brazil’s Revista UFO disclosing comments from the Chilean Army: “There is no longer any need to deny or ignore the UFO situation. They represent a real and very serious threat. Today we are challenged by a complex phenomenon whose characteristics cannot be explained within natural terrestrial confines.” (p. 220) “Chile: Declassification Begins,” Educating Humanity, www.educatinghumanity.com/2011/02/declassifiication-begins-inchileof-ufo.html.
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