UFO/Alien Chronological Thread Directory. - Page 26

jamesc · 03-05-2012, 06:30 PM

Just a wee heads up here aimed at those who are maybe still unfamiliar with the primary investigators or sources who have brought "UFOLOGY" to the forefront of public perceptions in other words Get to know UFOlogy's Founders.

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quote;
"Dr. James McDonald brought more depth science and more intensity to the work than any other human. As he was an atmospheric physicist of some repute, he had both skill and contacts to lay to rest many, many erroneous "explanations" for cases"

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Aristotle told his impatient student, Alexander the Great, "There is no 'Royal Road' to Geometry." There isn't one to UFOlogy either. I can promise you that if you are not extremely perceptive [and a bit lucky], you cannot get an accurate picture of what's known vs. what's responsibly guessed vs. what's full-of-errors vs. what's full-of-worse by merely scavenging about on the internet.

The only Road to actually knowing something about this field is to lean heavily on its founders--that means to learn its history. This post is in aid of that. It is lightyears from sufficient, obviously, but it may serve someone as a door. The downside of this is that if one really wanted to know anything about this field, one would have to be willing to put in some real time and some real work [that much anyone can decide to do on their own], but also to have the resources available to them to do so [and that few people, unfortunately have].

In my viewing of the web, the status of UFO information resident here is not quite yet at the level which would support a dedicated "student" in the quest. This is because, even if a report is available in full here and there [as they are for USAF's Project Blue Book on Footnote. com] a relative "rookie" does not have the "historical context" to aid in the interpretation of that report. It is advantageous to be able to read what the past giants had to say about the period, the USAF handling, the "similar cases" to get perspective.

This is not to say that the giants were perfect. All of them were/are human and had strengths and weaknesses. But understood as a whole, their cumulative insights and facts are the beginnings of a good guide. This post is one guy's [mine] foggy view on these founders and what they gave to us. It's no history. We can't dedicate 600 pages for that. It's just a window from which to describe [a little] and give praise [a lot] to some folks who made a difference.

Don Keyhoe is, in this person's opinion, the most important person in UFO history. Fiery and adamantly insistent, Keyhoe carried the field through a sustained flak attack from the Air Force, aimed a destroying it. At our distance from him, what we should do for our own benefit is to read his first two books: Flying Saucers Are Real and Flying Saucers From Outer Space. These things are important to the field because Keyhoe had many contacts inside the military and the vast majority of the factual things transmitted to him turned out to be real. A good number of the speculations did not.

Reading the whole of the founders makes distinguishing between these two elements fairly easy. As Keyhoe went forward leading NICAP, he wrote other books. The further they get to modern times, the less reliable are his sources, except when he is depending on NICAP's own case files. By the time Aliens From Space shows up, it's caveat emptor. The only way to protect yourself in this is to be a historian. ----------------------------

The next guy in the collage is Dr. Hynek. His whole life was a puzzlement with the phenomenon that apes his expression in the picture. But regardless of what some may wish to think [negatively] about him, he was the second most important person in the field. This is because Hynek was on the "inside", albeit on the outer, naive layer of that "Inside". As scientific consultant to the Project, he watched the circus that was Blue Book across the years, and later gave us his all-to-rare first-hand look. Hynek's critique of USAF handling of UFOs is, taken in whole, devastating. One shouldn't undervalue the importance of obliterating the idea that the military did anything like a solid and honest job. Conspiracy commentary is useless. Facts, such as Hynek gives, are Truth. Then, in the more admirable part of his UFO involvements, [when he no longer hoped that his role with the Air Force would produce real results], Hynek, perhaps more by accident but at least somewhat by design, created many UFOlogically-important things. His two books, The UFO Experience [ the closest thing the field has to a textbook] and The Hynek UFO Report [another invaluable historical insight into military malfunction as well as key cases], should be on must-read lists. He also created CUFOS and a fine magazine [IUR] and a few high-quality symposia and a soft network [the "Invisible College"] of scientists, and generally pointed the way to where we had to go if we were ever to be a real field of study. We, of course, never made the effort. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The third guy in that collage is Edward Ruppelt. Captain Ruppelt was the project head on Blue Book during late 1951 through early 1953. He therefore was "on seat" during the great wave of 1952, a coincidence for which we should be grateful. We should be grateful because Ed Ruppelt wanted to write up his experiences [and others', as he heard of them ] in the UFO field from the government side of the mirror. His terrific book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, was the result. This thing should be read by everyone really interested in UFOs.

Ruppelt undoubtedly wrote the book to make some extra money as he began his civilian life [a not uncommon practice ] but that doesn't mean it's not accurate. The great UFO icon, James McDonald, constantly referred to it in his research, and said that his later research into Blue Book records surprised him constantly about Ruppelt's straightforward reporting of the case data as he knew it. But this isn't the whole story on why Ruppelt is important. What Ruppelt's book did was to say to the serious readers of works like Keyhoe's, "My goodness, Keyhoe is apparently right about the reality of UFOs."

Even though Ruppelt is astonishingly careful about his own opinions, they don't make any difference in the end. [some have tried to make this a big deal; whether he "really believed" in UFOs himself]. What did make a difference is how the facts as reported by Ruppelt affected young readers of the subject--we were stunned and pleased and captivated--some of us for life. I have met more life-time UFOlogists of my generation who were turned into that by Ruppelt than any other source. It's Ruppelt's inside information AND his unintended "children" that are his contribution to the field.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ted Bloecher. What can you say about Ted Bloecher that isn't good UFOlogically? Ted would probably insist that his great colleagues, Isabel Davis and Alexander Mebane, from the early CSI-NY be with him on this Hall-Of-Fame stage, and I'd not balk at that--they were probably the greatest team of researchers that we've had. Sadly, if you have no access to the CSI newsletters nor their files and correspondence, you'll never know much about Isabel nor Lex. Access to Ted's production isn't much better, alas, but there are a few monographs [like his 1947 wave collection, and his breakout "little people" publication on Kelly/Hopkinsville's case (with Isabel) ] and some articles [like the New Berlin "landing" case in Flying Saucer Review] , but it is his beginning of the Humanoid Study Group which had the biggest impact. The HSG collected the "forbidden" occupant cases from all over the world [work done with Dave Webb] and led to this aspect of UFOlogy emerging from the darkness and ultimately to the HUMCAT catalog [and massive listings like that of Albert Rosales on the web today]. Many of the cases are bunk, and others probably have nothing to do with UFOs, but the philosophy here, at these early stages, was to collect everything that was not a hoax and begin to sift from there. Part of the "sifting" led to the emergence of Budd Hopkins as a colleague of Ted's, and ultimately [amazingly quickly actually] to Missing Time and the whole of modern CE4 ideas. Ted throughout this was the model of discipline and restraint, even in the face of an unmanageable torrent of information.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Beside Ted on the collage is UFOlogy's scientific volcano, Dr. James McDonald. Big Mac brought more depth science and more intensity to the work than any other human. As he was an atmospheric physicist of some repute, he had both skill and contacts to lay to rest many, many erroneous "explanations" for cases [particularly involving radar but many others as well] which had been floated by the deliberate debunking of the Air Force or Uber-debunker Donald Menzel. McDonald was able to show that such debunks were at best overstated, and usually completely wrong to the point that you wondered about intellectual dishonesty by their creators. McDonald's works are also hard to come by since he never wrote a book. Trickles of his analyses appear in Flying Saucer Review or Astronautics and Aeronautics [the AAIA journal] and in the famous House [of Representatives} Symposium on UFOs. Once a collection of his privately-published [often as lecture handouts] papers was made available by the Fund For UFO Research. McDonald destroyed Menzel's dishonest debunkings. McDonald scathingly criticized and cleansed the Colorado "Scientific" Study. His fire also caused a few problems for the field, but on balance he stands like a scientific mountain.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dick Hall. Talk about being there consistently for the long trek. We just lost him so his active trek is over, but prior to that, Dick ran NICAP for most of its existence, helped originate the UFO Research Coalition and The Fund For UFO Research, made the MUFON Journal, for a while, a respectable, accurate purveyor of, particularly, good non-American case reports..and a lot of else. Fortunately for us Dick DID write books, and they should be read.

I recommend NICAP's assault weapon to Congress, The UFO Evidence, and his much-later follow-up, The UFO Evidence Two, and his third case book, Uninvited Guests. Frankly, anything you can read of his will advance your understanding of the field.-------------------------

Coral Lorenzen, the pretty lady with the no-nonsense brain, who founded APRO way back in 1952, and carried it forward until it and she died together. Coral was a tough cookie who held her organizational power a bit too tightly as the years went by [why APRO didn't survive her] but in her early years refused to cave in to others opinions, whether those of the military [who DID visit her] or other elements in UFOlogy, who thought certain types of cases weren't worth taking seriously.

For that we owe Coral what early awareness that we have concerning "occupant" reports and her opening up of the rest of the world's cases [particularly those of South America] for U.S. consideration. Coral, sometimes with her husband Jim, wrote a bunch of books. As with Keyhoe, the earlier the book the better.[try the poorly-named The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, as an example of one her better ones].

Coral's true "best" comes in her APRO Bulletin, where the UFOlogy experience of the world is often displayed. As a side-effect, the "war" that occurred between her and Walt Andrus in the late 1970's led to the growth of MUFON as a national rather than a regional UFO organization

Aime Michel. Smart. Clear. Intellectually-adept and extremely well educated. Impressive here across-the-pond by us Yanks. I'll leave it to our French brothers to correct our distant impression of Michel's worthiness, but to us he seems a giant indeed. He came into French UFOlogy behind the interesting Jimmy Guieu and between them give the english-reading person a rather full appreciation for the famous [and wild] 1954 European wave from the French perspective. Read Michel's The Truth About Flying Saucers. He also came up with a bold and creative concept which, if true, would clinch not only the reality and intelligent-activity of the phenomenon,but also part of the agenda.

I believe, like most of my colleagues, that this brilliant idea turns out to NOT match the facts in the end, but it is none less praiseworthy as a great try. The book incorporating the idea has many useful facts even if the over-all theory is not supported by later analysis. Flying Saucers and the Straight-line Mystery is still a good book and we owe the English versions of both of these to CSI-NY , especially Isabel Davis, and most especially Lex Mebane. Michel wrote many intelligent things for FSR and they stand today as some of the brightest writings anywhere.

As a historical aside, Michel's case files blew Allen Hynek away when he visited him in France while still working for the Air Force. And Michel was formative in Jacques Vallee's development, and in his contacting Hynek about him, leading to their collaboration and all that entailed.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jacques Vallee. The UFO master when it comes to grass-roots science in the field. [ I use this phrase with some thought. Jacques applied statistical analysis to the great pile of individual anecdotes, attempting to squeeze out of them "universal" patterns. If, in my view, the agents behind the phenomenon were not so careful to not allow such universal patterns, in the interest of their desire to remain culturally-covert, Jacques would have found them. This is the application of the beginnings of the scientific methodology--the discovery from raw facts of the behavior of any new phenomenon--i.e. the "How" of nature. ] His work, based in his own attitude towards the value of statistics and some inspiration by David Saunders, led to his two great books, Challenge to Science and Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which can be argued as the two most consistently written scientific books on the subject. Vallee wrote many other increasingly-controversial books, all of which are creative attempts to unlock the ultimate mystery, since he became convinced that science could not do so. My personal opinion is that these theories, while bright and honest, do not explain the mystery, particularly in its majority. But the wonderful Passport to Magonia does, for me, point to a minor fraction of it, and for that guide I am grateful to Jacques. All of his books are interesting, but if you can only read a bit, make it Challenge and Anatomy, and give a peek at Magonia.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Last man standing, or in this case sitting on his couch with his buddy Gordon Creighton, is Charles Bowen. Bowen did not found Flying Saucer Review but he did upgrade it to the flagship journal of the field. FSR did not intend to be an academic journal, but an information-sharing one. If anyone was hoping to learn what was going on with the phenomenon, they had better read FSR. The strength of the journal was its worldwide coverage.

Creighton, as an almost universal translator, was mainly responsible for this, while Bowen, as Editor-in-chief exercised an admirable touch---allowing speculation within reason while not succumbing to the temptation to go wildly "native", as the Brits would say. Anyone who does not have access to FSR, and can balance it with the Halls, Hyneks, and McDonalds of U.S. UFOlogy will probably play hob trying to get a proper grip on what has happened in the field.

There are a few other great references of course not directly associated with these ten giants. David Jacobs' UFO Controversy in America is one. Jerry Clark's UFO Encyclopedia is another. Barry Greenwood and Larry Fawcett's Clear Intent is a third. I'll stop there. If your own favorite wasn't mentioned, I apologize. This is just a blog afterall. Peace.

Labels: UFO history; UFO references; UFO researchers: UFO Hall of Fame; Don Keyhoe; Allen Hynek; James McDonald; Ed Ruppelt; Ted Bloecher; Dick Hall; Coral Lorenzen; Aime Michel; Jacques Vallee; Charles Bowen

link; http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/...t-to-know.html

jamesc · 03-05-2012, 09:52 PM

Very interesting article looking deeper at the grass roots of governmental intelligences manipulating scientific investigation's into the UFO enigmas.Here we hear first hand of possible manipulative disinformation being masked by a scientific based publication that is read by the scientific community and by those who influence the media's perception of UFOs. This publication is called the "Skeptical Enquirer".

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A reminder below of the basics of the scientific interpretations of science its self and what it serves to accomplish and by what scientific methods, agendas and protocols it endorses and SHOULD adhere to in any serious investigation"s of UFOs and its finale conclusions.

Disclosure Conference, National Press Club, 27 September 2010 (extended version, English subtitles) - YouTube

Sincere but Uninformed Skeptics Have Been Duped by Skeptical Inquirer Magazine;

quote;
" In this fourth and final installment of my article regarding scientific ignorance and presumption about the UFO phenomenon, I discuss the intriguing, almost completely unpublicized connections between the leading organization of UFO “skeptics” and the U.S. government.

Because this group, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, has had significant influence on scientists’ attitudes toward UFOs over the years—by constantly promoting the idea that there is nothing worthwhile to study—a closer examination of its role in debunking the phenomenon is warranted.

Those who missed Parts 1, 2 and/or 3—including physicist Dr. James E. McDonald’s Prepared Statement before the U.S. Congress
http://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/mcdonald.html
, in which he summarized his UFO research and asserted his position that UFOs are probably extraterrestrial craft—may read those here:

Part 1—The Condon Committee Con Job;
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2012...he-condon.html

Part 2—Occam’s Rusty Razor;
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2012...ams-rusty.html

Part 3—Deep Denial Disguised as Rational Skepticism;
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2012...ep-denial.html

So, who am I and what do I bring to the table? On September 27, 2010, I co-sponsored the “UFOs and Nukes” press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., during which seven U.S. Air Force (USAF) veterans spoke about their UFO encounters at nuclear weapons sites, including incidents involving large numbers of ICBMs mysteriously malfunctioning at a time when disc-shaped craft were observed silently hovering near their launch facilities by Air Force Security Police.

CNN streamed the ground-breaking press conference live and the full-length video of it may be viewed below:

My co-sponsor for the event, former USAF Captain Robert Salas, was directly involved in one such missile-shutdown incident, at Malmstrom AFB, Montana, on March 24, 1967, a fact now verified on audio tape (see below) by his missile commander that day, retired Col. Frederick Meiwald. The tape recorded statements of a third former missile launch officer, retired Col. Walter Figel, regarding another such incident at Malmstrom eight days earlier, may be heard here. Although I have roughly three hours of audio taped comments by Figel, he chose not to participate in the press conference.

(UFO debunker James Carlson’s many falsehoods about Figel and Meiwald’s confirmatory statements are thoroughly exposed in these tape recordings. No wonder Carlson tries so hard to refute them on countless blogs, going so far as to claim that I doctored the tapes. A fuller discussion of this pathetic sideshow may be read here: The Echo/Oscar Witch Hunt).

In any case, the press event, which was covered worldwide by media organizations large and small, was the very satisfying outcome of my nearly four-decade-long research career. I began seeking out and interviewing U.S. military veterans in 1973, to attempt to learn more about UFOs’ apparent interest in our nukes. My fascination with this intriguing topic was sparked in March 1967, when UFOs were rumored to be hovering near some of Malmstrom AFB’s ICBM sites—something now confirmed by Salas, Meiwald, Figel and other veterans involved in the incidents.

At that time, my father, SMSgt. Robert E. Hastings, was stationed at the base and worked in the SAGE building, which housed one component of the world’s most sophisticated radar network, designed to detect Soviet bombers in North American airspace in time of war.

During the same period, I was a high school junior who worked three nights-a-week as a janitor at Malmstrom’s air traffic control tower. Long story short, my father and I independently learned of the UFO presence around the vicinity of the base, as confirmed by two different radar systems.

By 1981, after numerous interviews with former/retired USAF personnel, I believed that I had enough solid testimony about all of this to take the subject of UFOs and Nukes public. Consequently, I ventured out on the American college lecture circuit in September of that year. That was over 500 lectures ago; I have also appeared at England’s Oxford University.

Simply put, my opinion is that the U.S. government does not have the right to keep the American people and the rest of humanity in the dark, decade after decade, about the UFO reality and the now well-documented interest on the part of their pilots in our nuclear weapons. (Soviet Army veterans have reported UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites in the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. Now-available documents from the KGB and Soviet Ministry of Defense support some of those revelations.)

Skeptics or Disinformation Agents?

Over the years, I have found that a great many of the debunkers in my lecture audiences had one thing in common: They had read one or more of the supposedly objective articles on UFOs which routinely appear in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP)—which has now renamed itself the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

Although most of the debunkers I encounter tout Skeptical Inquirer as a source of credible, scientific information on UFOs—which it is not—when I question them, I find that virtually none of these UFO critics know anything about those responsible for publishing this “skeptical” magazine. I, on the other hand, made it my business long ago to find out exactly who was so intent on fervently debunking UFOs, year after year, decade after decade. I must say, what I discovered surprised me. At the same time, I was not at all surprised.

The Executive Editor of Skeptical Inquirer is Kendrick C. Frazier. Many years ago, I discovered that Frazier was in fact employed, beginning in the early 1980s, as a Public Relations Specialist at Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yes, the same Sandia Labs that has been instrumental to the success of America’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s, through its “ordinance engineering” of components for bomb and missile warhead systems.

In my opinion, Frazier’s affiliation with Sandia Labs—he is now retired, after working there for over two decades—is highly significant, given the hundreds of references in declassified government documents, and in the many statements by former military personnel, which address ongoing UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites over the past six decades.

Considering these disclosures—which clearly establish a link between UFOs and nukes—I find it interesting, to say the least, that the longtime editor of the leading debunking magazine—whose pages routinely feature articles discrediting UFOs and those who report them—worked for over 20 years as a public relations spokesman for one of the leading nuclear weapons labs in the United States.

Interestingly, Skeptical Inquirer’s publisher’s statement, or “masthead”, which appears at the beginning of each issue, never once mentioned Frazier’s employment at the highly-secretive, government-funded laboratory. Instead, the magazine merely listed, and continues to list, his profession as “science writer”—a reference to his having written several books and articles on various scientific subjects. Also curious is the fact that a number of online biographies on Frazier—including one written by him—also fail to mention his two-decade tenure at Sandia Labs.1 An odd omission indeed.

Over the years, Frazier has been quick to dismiss the astonishing revelations about UFOs contained in government documents declassified via the Freedom of Information Act. He claims that researchers who have accessed thousands of U.S. Air Force, CIA, and FBI files have consistently misrepresented their contents. In one interview he stated, “The UFO believers don’t give you a clear and true idea of what these government documents reveal. They exaggerate the idea that there is a big UFO cover-up.”2

Just as Frazier strives to minimize the significance of the declassified revelations about UFOs, it is likely he will also attempt to downplay the relevancy of his former employment with one of the U.S. government’s top nuclear weapons labs, as it pertained to his magazine’s relentless debunking of UFOs. He will presumably assert that his skeptical views on the subject are personal and sincere, and were in no way related to, or influenced by, his public relations position at Sandia National Laboratories.

However, regardless of his response, I believe that Frazier’s long-term employment at Sandia is very relevant, and raises questions about his impartiality, if nothing else, given his long track-record of publishing stridently anti-UFO articles in Skeptical Inquirer.

Furthermore, the “skeptical” organization’s connection with nukes does not end with Kendrick Frazier. James Oberg, one of CSI’s leading UFO debunkers, once did classified work relating to nuclear weapons at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, located at Kirtland AFB, just down the road from Sandia Labs, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

From 1970-72, Oberg was an Air Force officer whose assignments with the Battle Environments Branch at the weapons lab involved the development and utilization of computer codes related to the modeling of laser and nuclear weapons. Oberg also served as a “Security Officer” while at the weapons lab and was, therefore, responsible for monitoring the security procedures used to safeguard the classified documents generated by his group.

After former USAF Lt. (now Dr.) Bob Jacobs went public with the still-classified, nuclear weapons-related case known as the Big Sur UFO Incident—during which a domed, disc-shaped craft was inadvertently filmed as it circled a dummy nuclear warhead in flight, subsequently disabling it with four beams of light—Oberg wrote to him, chastising Jacobs for revealing “top secret” information.

In his 1989 MUFON UFO Journal article, Jacobs wrote that after he had broken his silence, “I was contacted by a variety of investigators, buffs, cranks, proponents and detractors alike. James Oberg, a frequent ‘mouthpiece’ for certain NASA projects and self-styled UFO Debunker wrote to disparage my story and to ask provocatively, ‘Since you obviously feel free to discuss top secret UFO data, what would you be willing to say about other top secret aspects of the Atlas warhead which you alluded to briefly?’”3

Despite Oberg’s charge, Jacobs has correctly noted that because the USAF officer who had shown him the film of the UFO encounter, Major Florenze J. Mansmann, subsequently told him with a figurative-wink that the incident had “never happened”—not that it was Top Secret—Jacobs had no personal knowledge of the classification-level attached to the incident. In any case, it is almost certain that Oberg would not have criticized Dr. Jacobs for exposing “top secret UFO data” had he known that Jacobs would subsequently publish his private remark.

So, cutting to the chase, here we have one of CSI’s leading UFO debunkers—whose public stance is that UFOs don’t even exist—angrily asking Jacobs in a private letter whether he would also openly discuss “other” top secret aspects of the missile test.

Even though Oberg also disparaged Jacobs’ story in his letter—perhaps hoping that Jacobs would recant it under pressure—his remark, “Since you obviously feel free to discuss top secret UFO data” appears to be a very odd and startling departure from Oberg's public persona as a debunker on UFOs.

I have no doubt that Oberg will claim that I have misinterpreted his remark, just as he will probably attempt to debunk the many credible statements by my ex-military sources regarding other nuclear weapons-related UFO incidents. Nevertheless, I view Oberg’s letter to Jacobs as a rare, unguarded moment when he fleetingly revealed something other than his self-professed skepticism about UFOs.

To me, it seems that Oberg, the former Security Officer at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, was simply unable to stifle his strong indignation over Jacobs’ disclosure of what Oberg considered to be top secret information about the UFO incident. Once a security officer, always a security officer, I guess.

Efforts by Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier to debunk the Big Sur case, using demonstrably bogus information supplied by one of Jacobs’ former colleagues, engineer Kingston George, were later exposed in my linked-article above. (George's motives remain unclear, however, he repeatedly misrepresented the facts of the case in two separate articles published by Frazier and has failed to respond to my latest exposé on his attempted sleights-of-hand.)

For his part, CSICOP/CSI’s chief UFO-debunker, the late Philip J. Klass, aggressively hounded Dr. Jacobs after he published the Big Sur UFO story, going so far as to write a derisive letter to Jacobs’ department chairman—Dr. R. Steven Craig, Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, University of Maine—in which Klass accusingly questioned professor Jacobs’ fitness as a representative of the academic community.

Jacobs’ understandably indignant response to Klass, entitled, Low Klass: A Rejoinder, may be found online.4 It is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the behind-the-scenes battle that ensued after Jacobs went public with the UFO incident.

Among other subjects, the rejoinder touches on acrimonious correspondence between Jacobs and Klass. At one point, after Dr. Jacobs ignored Klass’ repeated demands that he respond to the debunker’s charges, Klass offered character references, citing Admiral Bobby R. Inman (USN Ret.)—the former Director of the National Security Agency, who also held Deputy Director positions at both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency—and Lt.

General Daniel O. Graham (USA Ret.), the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Klass not only provided Jacobs with their names, but home addresses as well, and told him, “Both men have worked with me and gotten to know me in my [journalistic] efforts for Aviation Week.”

The character references provided by Klass are certainly interesting, given his stock response over the years to those who questioned his motives. Whenever he was confronted with the charge that he was not really a UFO skeptic, but a disinformation agent for the U.S. government, Klass would always recoil indignantly and ridicule the notion. Nevertheless, out of public view, in a private letter to Dr. Jacobs, who does Klass choose to present as character references? Why, two of the top intelligence officers in the U.S. government!

Hmmmmm...

Journalist Terry Hansen has investigated CSICOP, before it became CSI, and offers the very plausible theory that the skeptical organization was infiltrated early on by a small but determined group of U.S. government-affiliated operatives, whose true motives have far more to do with disinformation than skepticism.

He writes, “[The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal] is an organization of people who oppose what they contend is pseudo-science...CSICOP, contrary to its impressive-sounding title, does not sponsor scientific research. On the contrary, its main function has been to oppose scientific research, especially in areas such as psychic phenomena and UFOs, two topics that, coincidentally or not, have been of demonstrated interest to the U.S. intelligence community over the decades. Instead, CSICOP devotes nearly all of its resources to influencing the American public via the mass media.”5

Hansen continues, “CSICOP can accurately be described as a propaganda organization because it does not take anything approaching an objective position regarding UFOs. The organization’s stance is militantly anti-UFO research and it works hard to see that the news media broadcast its views whenever possible. When the subject of UFOs surfaces, either in the news media or any other public forum, CSICOP members turn out rapidly to add their own spin to whatever is being said.

Through its ‘Council for Media Integrity’ CSICOP maintains close ties with the editorial staffs of such influential science publications as Scientific American, Nature, and New Scientist. Consequently, it’s not too hard to understand why balanced UFO articles seldom appear in those [magazines].”6

For whatever reason, CSICOP/CSI’s chief representatives have been intent on claiming that there are no UFOs and, therefore, no U.S. government cover-up of them. In view of their rather interesting affiliations, I merely ask:

Wouldn’t Kendrick Frazier’s statements be more credible had he not spent his career doing public relations work for the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program—especially in light of the many declassified documents related to UFO activity at nukes sites?

Shouldn’t Philip Klass—having worked for more than two decades as a journalist for one of the U.S. intelligence community’s most valued media conduits—Aviation Week magazine—been more carefully scrutinized by fellow journalists, for a conflict of interest, when he tirelessly insisted that there is no government UFO cover-up?

Even James Oberg’s own classified nuclear weapons-related work while with the Air Force, as well as his later involvement with the U.S. government’s space program, seems to fit this pattern of direct or indirect governmental ties on the part of those who ostensibly dismiss UFOs on purely scientific grounds, but who seem arguably more intent on dismissing the notion that there is an official UFO cover-up.

(Yes, admittedly, almost all of my own sources have military backgrounds too. Importantly, however, unlike the highly-vocal UFO debunkers at CSICOP/CSI, most of them have divulged their UFO-related secrets only reluctantly, when persuaded by myself or other researchers to do so. Therefore, as a rule, they have very cautiously presented their insiders’ perspective on national security-related UFO activity.

This is entirely dissimilar in approach to the relentless, high-profile, anti-UFO public relations campaign undertaken by CSICOP/CSI’s debunkers over the years. I might also add that my own ex-military sources present their accounts in a simple, straightforward manner—and rarely insist that anyone believe them—whereas the ongoing UFO-debunking pronouncements by the CSICOPers are routinely jam-packed with classic propaganda devices, obviously designed to influence public and scientific opinion.)

In any case, the question being asked here is whether or not CSICOP/CSI has had within its ranks a few persons who have a hidden agenda on UFOs, which has nothing to do with genuine scientific skepticism. While I don’t know the answer to this question, given the extreme, unscientific anti-UFO track-record of the organization, I think it needs to be asked.

Regardless, whatever these debunkers’ affiliations and motives may be, the reader doesn’t need what they have to offer unless, of course, you actually enjoy being misled by pseudoscientific propaganda, government-inspired or not.

It goes without saying that the statements above do not apply to the CSICOP/CSI membership in general. It’s only natural and to be expected that an organization which bills itself as “skeptical” in orientation will attract persons with a similar philosophical outlook. CSICOP/CSI counts among its membership many world-renowned scientists and other respected intellectuals. There is no question that a great many of these persons share a sincerely incredulous outlook on various subjects classified as “paranormal”, including UFOs.

Therefore, the fact that many of CSICOP/CSI’s members have rejected the validity of the UFO phenomenon—a subject about which they know little or nothing, and are not qualified to discuss authoritatively—certainly does not mean that they are secretly working for the CIA. Bias and presumption, rather than ulterior motives, account for these self-appointed UFO experts’ flawed perspective on the phenomenon. Consequently, if they have been misled by CSICOP’s (now CSI’s) top UFO debunkers, they have no one to blame but themselves.

I’ll conclude by simply saying that if one is seeking an objective, unbiased scientific assessment of the UFO phenomenon, one should bypass the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious misinformation (disinformation?) foisted on us all by Klass, Oberg, Frazier, and other debunkers affiliated with CSICOP/CSI.

Instead, one would do well to read anything ever written on the subject by Dr. James McDonald or Dr. J. Allen Hynek—at least, anything written by Hynek during his post-Project Blue Book period, when his scientific investigation of UFOs was not hampered by the official restrictions under which he labored while affiliated with the U.S. Air Force.

Astronomer Dr. Bernard Haisch—who advocates a comprehensive, unbiased investigation the UFO phenomenon—has defined a Skeptic as;

“One who practices the method of suspended judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity.”7

Perhaps I am being overly optimistic but, who knows, once acquainted with some legitimate data on the UFO phenomenon—including that gathered decades ago by McDonald and Hynek—a few of the scientific skeptics reading this article might actually begin practicing their profession, when addressing the subject of UFOs, instead of just offering lip-service to that practice.

References:
1. http://www.annonline.com/interviews/...biography.html

2. Critical Eye: “Aliens”. Discovery Communications, Inc., 2002.

3. http://www.nicap.org/bigsur2.htm

4. http://www.nicap.org/reports/bigsurrej.htm

5. Hansen, Terry. The Missing Times: News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up,

Xlibris Corp., 2000, p. 228.
6. Ibid., pp. 228-29
7. ufoskeptic.org

jamesc · 04-05-2012, 11:36 AM

This section of posts will concentrate on those UFO cases that remain unsolved due to the high levels of "high strangeness" that have occurred in them.These are the cases that continue to dumbfound all scientific investigation's into them a provide a strong case for non human origins and in some cases technological capabilities that defy current understanding.

************************************************** *************

CASE ONE;
Colares, 1977;

General area where the incidents and sightings are alleged to occurred.

These events were part of the “Colares flap,” which was, we believe, part of a much larger UFO wave that took place over a vast stretch of northern Brazil for more than twenty months in 1977 and 1978.

However, the Air Force investigation was centered on hundreds of sightings around Colares and more than two dozen other villages less than sixty miles from the major seaport city of Belém on Marajó Bay. Belém is the capital of the state of Pará and the home of about two million people.

It was a terrifying time for the several thousand inhabitants of the Colares area because there were nights when rays of light beamed from UFOs paralyzed and burned dozens of people, and at least two of them died.

The intelligence agents – six sergeants and one officer – spent most of October, November and December 1977 and January 1978 in Colares and other villages interviewing hundreds of people who had encounters or sightings. During the investigation, the agents also had more than two hundred sightings of their own.

The three of us spent the first two weeks of September 1999 re-visiting Colares and other villages in an effort to better understand what happened there twenty-two years earlier. Despite the passage of time, we were able to locate and interview twenty people who had participated in the investigation, or had sightings or encounters, or had direct knowledge of the flap.

The last three months of 1977 were particularly dreadful for people living in the Colares area.

“I’ll never forget it,” said Ana Célia Oliveira (below), a schoolteacher who was six years old at the time. “People and animals were attacked. There was no food. Terrible lack of food. No one was fishing. People would not go out to their vegetable gardens for crops.

In 1977, the Brazilian island of Colares was visited by flying objects of an unknown nature. Nearly all kinds of UFOs were seen; some big, some small, saucer shaped, cigar shaped, luminous or not. They arrived from the North every day, from the sky and also sometimes from underwater, and it lasted for months.
Regularly, some Island inhabitants were targeted by the objects, sending strange rays to them, and many were badly hurt, with two reported dead. The Army intervenes, the press follows. 35 people were hurt by the strange rays, and many fled from the Island.

The events mainly concentrated on the city of Colares, about 2,000 inhabitants, on Colares Island, which is in the region of Pará, the delta of the Amazon river on the northeastern coast of Brazil. But the whole region was visited by the same phenomenon.

Beginning in August of 1977, in the island of Colares, a strange phenomenon began to occur, that the Brazilian call Chupa-chupa.

Strange luminous objects appeared over the few towns of the region. These objects were often projecting thin rays, seemingly of light, directed at the people. The touched people fainted and woke up with a strange anemia. They stated that they felt as if some of their blood was removed by the strange rays.

The fisherman Manoel João de Oliveira Filho, aged 44, married and residing at No. 64 rua Carneiro de Mendonça, was strolling towards the beach early one morning with some companions, to spend a day at sea fishing.

Before they had arrived at their boats, they saw - above the Rio Novo beach - an object shaped "like an umbrella" stationary at about 4 meters from the ground. From its under-part came a vivid white light.

No sound was detectable from it from where they were standing. The object then moved away silently towards Machadinho, turning off the light as it went.

A carpenter named João Dias Costa (aged 44) and a fisherman, João da Cruz Silva (aged 54), both of Colares town, saw the notorious "luminous spheres" so greatly feared on account of their "low skimming swoops".

Another man from Colares town, Sr. Zacarias dos Santos Barata (74) saw the glowing balls on two nights. The first time, the object came from the direction of the Bay of Marajó, and rapidly vanished towards the interior of Colares Island.

On the second night another ball, blue in color, flew over the local football field. "It lit up all the trees around the field and then vanished towards the town's center,” said Sr. Zacarias.

Sr. Sebastião Vernek "Zizi" Miranda described his experience as follows:

"I was there with my wife, Palmira, in front of the church on the sea-front, when at about 8.00 pm, we saw an intensely vivid "orangish" light coming in from the sea towards the town. As it approached, it climbed, and then, moving rapidly, vanished towards the inner part of the Island."

The barber Carlos Cardoso de Paula (aged 49), living at Travessa Deodoro da Fonseca No. 231, had a still closer encounter with the "lights", as he himself relates:

"Everybody else was asleep. I was just still having my last smoke when suddenly a ball of fire entered our house up near the ridgepole of the gable. It started shooting round and round the room, and then finally came right close to my hammock.

"It ran up my right leg as far as the knee (without touching my skin). I watched with much curiosity as it then moved across to the other leg. Then I started to feel feeble and sleepy. My cigarette fell from my hand and I came to and let out a yell. The fireball quickly vanished and everybody woke up.

"I think it had been searching for a vein in my body but didn’t manage to do so. As its brightness grew, I felt a sort of heat coming from it."

Worker Raimundo Costa Leite, very well known in the town of Colares for his skill in making and repairing fishing nets, described his own experience:

"At about 4.00 in the early morning, I went with my pal “Baixinho” (Orivaldo Malaquias Pinheiro) to fish off the beach at Cajueiro. As I recall it, Baixinho shouted, 'Look! There it is!' and took to his heels, leaving me alone on the beach.

"The craft was of the size and shape of a helicopter, made no noise, and was flying very high.

"I could have taken a pot-shot at it if I had had a gun with me. I was terrified when the machine shone a sort of searchlight down on the beach. That light was sweeping the ground, illuminating everything! It was a bluish light (sort of ‘cold light’).

"It made it easier for me to see this because the craft had several small reddish lights beneath its front part... The craft seemed to be seeking something on the ground.

"I was scared that it would touch me and, despite my poor physical condition, I managed to run quite a distance, and then Baixinho returned and helped me. The object had come from the direction of the sea and it headed off into the inner part of the Island."

Actually, so many more people reported being attacked by beams of light from small UFOs in this area that only few of them are mentioned here.

On October 20, three women were hit in the breast by the beams of light: "All three were overcome by tremendous nervous tension and an unknown sort of lassitude as though they were receiving constant electric shocks," wrote a newspaper.

On the evening of October 29, Benedito Campos and his seventeen-year-old wife Silvia Mara were at home when "they spotted an oval, silvery object emitting a greenish beam like a searchlight towards the room where they were lying.

"Filled with curiosity, they approached a small window and, as they did so, the beam shot in through it, and made straight for Silvia, throwing her into a sort of benumbed trance-like state."

Silvia, who was pregnant at the time, then fainted, whereupon two entities apparently entered the house carrying something resembling a golden torch and "once again the beam struck Silvia, this time hitting her in the left arm at the level of the wrist.

"Her veins seemed to 'rise up out of the body' so swollen were they by the beam striking them."

Later, while at a neighbour's house, Benedito was also briefly paralyzed by a light beam. Fearing a miscarriage, husband and wife were taken at night by boat to the Mosqueiro Medical Clinic, followed all the way by the UFO, which made no further attempt to harm them.

They remained there for three days while the wife recovered, but Benedito "was in a state of severe depression for some days, his motor functions disturbed and, as his mother reports, weeping frequently."

The UFO activity over Colares Island was so intense that the people began to think the "Chupa-chupas" were trying to make some sort of contact with them. Such was the view expressed by Sr. Raimundo Ferreira "Mimi" Monteiro. He still believes the craft were coming up out of the sea or out of some underwater base located in the Bay of Marajó, possibly in the region of the Caldeirão.

Alfredo Bastos Filho, a former town mayor, confirmed this and said: "Yes, indeed I can tell you, there wasn’t a moment of peace. The populace were terrified by that "Chupa-chupa" affair. I even managed to see one of the injured victims myself - Dona Mirota, a lady who was receiving medical treatment at the Health Clinic."

The locals became so frightened that many of the women and children left town. The men that remained lit bonfires to mount guard at night, letting off fireworks and banging tins whenever they saw the Chupa-chupas approaching.

Others locked themselves in their homes for fear of the phenomenon. It was mentioned later that the more din people made and the more bonfires and fireworks, the closer the craft came.

By November 1977 doctor Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, the physician in charge of the health unit on Colares Island, took care of to some 35 people claiming to have been touched by the strange light.
She took blood samples, and concluded that the victims suffered from generalized hypertermia, superficial chronic headache, burnings, intense heat, nauseas, tremors in the body, giddiness, asthenia and presented very small orifices in the skin where they were hit by the rays.

She wrote: "All of them had suffered lesions to the face or the thoracic area." The lesions, looking like radiation injuries, "began with intense reddening of the skin in the affected area. Later the hair would fall out and the skin would turn black. There was no pain, only a slight warmth. One also noticed small puncture marks in the skin. The victims were men and women of varying ages, without any pattern."

In describing their experiences with these light beams, most victims claimed that "They were immediately immobilized, as if a heavy weight pushed against their chest. The beam was about [seven or eight centimetres] in diameter and white in color. It never hunted for them but hit them suddenly.

"When they tried to scream, no sound would come out, but their eyes remained open. The beam felt hot, 'almost as hot as a cigarette burn,' barely tolerable. "After a few minutes the column of light would slowly retract and disappear." Most symptoms usually disappeared after seven days. "

At Agulhas Fincadas, Mrs. Maria Lopes, inhabitant of Vila Gorete, to the margins of Rio Tapajós, in the neighborhoods of Santarém (Pará), tells her case involving "strange devices" that absorb energy from human beings, known as Chupa-Chupa.

"I saw an object to settle quiet in the bushes here close... It had left two men and a woman, who had started to move with two fishing," counts Maria.

Other people in the place had been paralyzed when observing the scene.

Many had hurt themselves when trying to escape one of the strange objects. In many cases, the marks left by the rays on the victims skin were marks that could have up to eight small holes. In these occurrences, the Chupa-Chupa term was proven right as many of them had lost up to approximately 300 ml of blood, from these wounds.

This was the case of Claudomira, resident in the Island of Colares. She claims that her family already did not sleep right with fear of the devices.

"In one of these days, after midnight, I woke up because of a strong flash, a sort of focussed bright green light ray that came down from the top roof to my left chest. I tried to shout, but my voice did not function. I felt an esquisite heat... Later, that beam of light diminished and I saw that I was burnt."

Claudomira told that she sighted a strange object, much similar to an umbrella, from which a being of clear skin, oriental eyes, and great ears.

According to her, the creature was dressed in tight green clothes and had a sort of pistol in the hand, which emitted the luminous beam. At this moment, Claudomira felt perforated as by needles on her breast.

"After this, I felt a migraine headache and a great weakness, that left me collapsed for several days."

The next day, she had been directed to the Sanitary Unit of the town, where she was taken care of by Doctor Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, who sent her to the Medical Institute Renato Chaves, in Belém, for backup examinations.

Her ill-being and the constant migraines lasted many days, followed by fatigue and weakness. Years later, Claudomira still did not feel cured.

"My health never came back to be the same since that night."

She is not the only one to have passed for such situation. Some estimate that thousands of people, also men, had suffered the attacks of the Chupa-Chupa in the years between 1970 and 1980, and they still occur today, though less frequently.

"Emotional and physical sequels are very common in these cases," affirmed Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, who took care of Claudomira.

Although she was skeptical and she believed that the occurrences of Chupa-Chupa were popular belief or some witchcraft, Dr. Wellaide ended up convinced of the veracity of the cases when she was confronted with their increasing frequency.

"With the increase of hurt people, I started to give more attention each time in the existing injuries. I saw things that do not exist in my medical books," she said.

According to her, the victims of Chupa-Chupa presented strangest burnings, not as those provoked by fire or hot water, as she thought herself, but very similar to ones produced by cobalt irradiation. "

The injuries varied in intensity. First it started with an intense reddishness in the hit area, known as hiperemia. Later, the skin of the affected region started to fall (alopecia) and days later the skin peeled off.

In this period of development, said Wellaide, it was possible to note holes, similar to perforations by needles.

One of the most interesting cases she took care of happened with a lady who had cardiac problems. She arrived at the doctor's office very nervous and immediately she showed her left breast, in which were two strange holes.

She complained of giddiness, shortness of breath, and weakness - characteristic symptoms already known by people hit by the phenomenon. The doctor tried to calm her and she returned to her home.

But at about 03:00 pm, however, Dr. Wellaide was called to the residence of the woman, who had become very sick. Her whole body was still, and she gasped for air, but she did not have fever and did not vomit.

Seeing the seriousness of the situation, the doctor took her to a hospital in Belém.

Hours later, she received the medical papers and the certificate of death forwarded by the Medical Institute Legal Renato Chaves, which stated a heart stroke as cause of the death.

The intriguing fact is that at no time, doctors in Belém had mentioned something about the injuries on her body and did not even say if they had effected backing examinations.

Regarding the possible effects of the UFOs on the supply of electricity, Sr. Geraldo Aranha de Oliveira (aged 37) of the C.E.I.P.A. (Pará Electricity Plant) explained:

"In 1977 the C.E.I.P.A. sub-station consisted of three Scania 125 kw engines supplying light to the city from 6 pm till midnight. I don’t recall having ever seeing a UFO over the plant. I merely remember that, at that period, lots of lightning conductor rods were burnt out and, at times, some fuses too."

COMAR (Comando Aéreo Regional, the Regional Air Command of the Brazilian Air Forces), arrived in Belém, and made a series of researches in the region, under the project name "Operation Plate." (Operation Saucer)

Captain Uyrangê Bolivar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima, head of information office, directed all the operations in the region. During the investigations, the Air Force obtained four films and hundreds of photographs of flying disks in the basin of Marajó.

They also were a great help to the population, providing psychologists assistance, to eliminate the panic that sized the entire region.

The beams of light from the craft were described as being so bright that they resembled those used to illuminate night sporting events. They were "always sharply defined, directed with perfect precision towards any target – houses, people, boats, trees, even the Brazilian Air Force's helicopters deployed over the island during the investigations."

On one occasion, one of these powerful beams is reported to have forced one of the helicopters to land, although the exact technical reason is not given. (Giese, 1996)

According to a statement by Sr. Sebastião V. Miranda, former resident of Colares, "the Brazilian Air Force spent more than 35 days in the town, and installed various devices near the Bacurí beach."

Sra. Alba Câmara Vilhena, a married lady living at 683 rua 15 de Novembro, added: "At the time of the "Chupa-chupa" everybody was scared to sleep at night, and so almost every night we went away to be with relatives. On one occasion some people saw one of the craft. It was round, and all luminous.

"Just at that moment, a helicopter of the F.A.B. (Brazilian Air Force) was flying quite near to our house. Then we saw the UFO direct a very powerful beam on to the helicopter, obliging it to land on the São Pedro Airfield. That happened at about 8.00 pm one evening."

Professor Raimundo Sebastião Aranha said: "At that period I was closely connected with some of the Air Force's enquiries. They were seeking more information about the "Chupa-chupa."

He said the Air Force had with them masses of equipment: cars, helicopters, radio transmitters, cameras, powerful glasses, etc. He recalls that, in addition to the rank and file Air Force recruits, there was a whole group of officers, and he had the impression that there was a foreigner among them.

"The helicopters that appeared from time to time, bringing materials and personnel, attempted to chase the UFOs but without much success. Indeed, on the contrary, it was the UFOs that chased them!"

One night several months later, on May 24 1978, a journalist and photographer, who had been sent to cover the local UFO encounters, were in their car when despite the heavy rain they were woken up "by a powerful beam of light which – however unbelievable, it may seem – passed through the metallic structure of the roof of the vehicle."

Not surprisingly they leapt out of the car to see that "a tube-shaped light beam, about [twenty-five centimetres] in diameter, was coming down from above onto the roof of the car and passing through the metal panelling."

On this and other occasions, they managed to take numerous photographs which they claim that their newspaper later sold to "a North-American group."

On another night while trying to use flash equipment to photograph one of these craft "the UFO emitted such a vivid beam of light that it smashed the windscreen" of their car. (Giese, 1996)

Several newspapers started to write that the alleged UFOs were weather balloons, or secrets satellites, although there was no possible reason to think that. Local authorities were of course extremely angry because of such articles. Elói Santos, councilman of the old Enclosure for bullfighting stated:

"It is not possible to deny that Belém is, today, a frightened city. We are not technicians, and we do not argue with the conclusion of the authorities. But we did surprise them with declarations of the witnesses who saw light crossing their roofs to penetrate in their skin, removing a little of blood and leaving visible marks of needles and burnings on their epidermis."

During the "Chupa-chupa" wave, many new "sighting zones" emerged, such as Pinheiro and São Bento in the State of Maranhão, and Viseu and Bragança in the State of Pará. Some areas indeed reached such a 'level of saturation' that rarely a single night passed without UFO sightings.
One of these "ufological epicentres" was over the bay called the Baía do Sol (Bay of the Sun) and had a direct effect upon the Island of Mosqueiro. Mosqueiro is one of the most important of the islands, and it is the biggest, belonging to the municipality of Belém.

Public concern was immense, all the men banding together at night to organize watches, with bonfires and fireworks, thinking these would deter the craft. But nothing seemed to stop the UFOs, not even the Air Force’s film men and their cameras - and even less the journalists from the Estado do Pará!

There were frequent and regular sightings of mother-ships, probes, and flying saucers, all performing incredible manoeuvers over the Bay.

A 61-year-old widow, Elisa da Silva, residing on rua do Bacari, was one of the witnesses in that year (1977). One night, from her house, she saw a flying saucer appear. Vivid white light came from small windows or apertures on it. Seen from below, she said, it seemed quite dark and quite flat. It vanished towards the South, in total silence.

In the opinion of some of the members of the GUA (Amazonian Ufological Group) based in Belém, there exists, or there did exist for a considerable time, at some point beneath the Baía do Sol ("Bay of the Sun") a concealed base for extraterrestrial probe craft. Such an idea would account for the constant appearances, in recent years, of unidentified flying objects over the region.

In 1981, one woman who had been exposed to the UFO beams in Colares died, although it is not clear that her death was clearly related to the attack.

In 1986, not far from Colares, two persons on Crab Island were discovered "badly decomposed by heat" amid numerous sightings of balls of fire in the sky; cause of death "not known" in either case.

Same area, different time: a "ball of fire" seriously burned three men out cutting wood on Crab Island; one of the woodchoppers died.

One of the two survivors, Edmundo, had a gaping electrical-type burn injury on the side of his chest, an almost perfect replica of the chest burn suffered by Jack Angel in Georgia in 1974.

In 1993, again in Colares, a 32-year-old missionary and a 40-year-old domestic worker died, a month apart, as a result of close encounters with UFO; according to Ufologist Bob Pratt, these women were "both burned on the throat and the chest, as were most of the other people the doctor treated."

Said Pratt: "I know of about ten deaths that have some connection with UFO close encounters."

According to the USAF, there is not one proof of the reality of UFOs, and there is no evidence that they can be a danger. According to the skeptics... According to the skeptics? To tell the truth, skeptics never express anything in such cases. And the majority of the general public does not know about such cases.

LINK; http://www.ufocasebook.com/vid/colaresisland2.html

jamesc · 04-05-2012, 12:09 PM

L a r g e s t a t i o n a r y o b j e c t o v e r M o n t r e a l;1990;

CASE TWO;

"In 1992 GUENETTE, together with Dr. Richard F. HAINES (a well-known ufo researcher and psychologist formerly employed by NASA), published a 25 page report of the sightings. The report concludes that "the evidence for the existence of a highly unusual, hovering, silent large object is indisputable". Basing themselves on the available eyewitness testimonies, they add that "a reasonable lower bound for the angular size of the object's central 'oval body' as seen from the roof of the B(onaventure) H(otel) is 27 degrees arc".

"Having established this angular size, the authors calculate the actual size for the "main body of the object" to have been no less than 1,783 feet (585 m) across if it was at 3,500 feet (1,148 m) altitude, or 4,586 feet (1,504 m) if it was at 9,000 feet (2,953 m).

At 8:20 Officer LIPPE telephones Sergeant MASSON of the MUCP for backup. Overwhelmed by what he sees when he arrives at the 17th floor, the Sergeant calls the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The time is now 8:44. An investigator, Officer Luc MORIN, is assigned to handle the case. The RCMP investigator arrives at the hotel at approximately 9:30 p.m. and informs the other witnesses that contact has been made with the Commander of Military Operations of the country's Department of National Defence.

The latter has assured him that no military operations are being held in the area. Officer LIPPE then calls the MUCP's District Director, who in turn also telephones the RCMP for immediate "in situ assistance".

CASE SUMMARY;
November 7, 1990. It's about 7:15 in the evening. An American woman tourist is swimming in the outdoor rooftop pool on the 17th floor of the International Hilton Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Montreal, when she notices a strange lighted object in the night sky. The object is directly overhead and looks like "an oval shape with a yellowish colour". She notifies the hotel's pool lifeguard, Mrs. L.S.P., who in turn alerts the hotel's security officer, Mr. A.S. Intrigued by the stationary unknown object, the security officer telephones the MUCP (Montreal Urban Community Police) for assistance.

Meanwhile the pool's lifeguard has urged guests to come outside to look at what she herself later described as "a lighted object with six lights on the perimeter of a large circle with a ray of light emitted from each one". Mrs. L.S.P. then notifies La Presse, one of Canada's major newspapers. La Presse takes the story seriously and sends out reporter Marcel LAROCHE to investigate.

Some five minutes before Mr. LAROCHE arrives at the hotel, the object had become brighter, prompting the security officer to contact the police station a second time. Officer François LIPPE of the MUCP is dispatched at 8:07 and arrives at the hotel about five minutes later. In his report, Officer LIPPE describes the object as "three yellowish lights from each of which a single beam of light emanated". He added that "the object itself was luminous and round and did not appear to move".

Meanwhile several other people in and around Montreal are witnessing unusual lights in the sky. Among them is Bernard GUENETTE, a computer graphics expert and member of the then Texas based Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). GUENETTE later compared what he saw to "a small greenish Aurora Borealis-like phenomenon with long streamers extending out from it". The time is circa 7:30 p.m..

He watches the luminous phenomenon for 30 to 60 seconds from a spot in Old Montreal, about a mile ("ten city blocks") east-southeast from the hotel. GUENETTE is accompanied by a second witness. Both men agree that the phenomenon is at a very high altitude and not moving.

Back on the rooftop, Officier LIPPE, the security officer and the pool's lifeguard notice a small private aircraft flying directly beneath the clouds and much farther below the object.

below is six sketches from six witnesses;

Sketch by the hotel's pool lifeguard,
Mrs. L.S.P.

Sketch by the hotel's security officer, Mr. A.S.

jamesc · 04-05-2012, 06:50 PM

Sheriff Blinded by Light from UFO; Minnesota-1979;

CASE SUMMARY;
August 27, 1979-Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson of Marshall County was on duty that night, driving not far from the North Dakota border, when at around 1:40 a.m. he saw a light through his side window. It was obviously not on a road and looked too glaring to be a car headlight.

He first thought it might be a small plane on or very near the ground. He turned left on another road to try to get closer to the light to identify it. Suddenly, the light moved toward him, travelling so fast that it almost instantaneously was upon his car (covering an estimated mile and a half).

Johnson was blinded by the brilliance of the light and heard glass breaking, then lost consciousness.

When he returned to consciousness, the car was stalled and had skidded across the highway. He felt sluggish and shaky. He radioed headquarters, at 2:19 a.m., to request assistance. Soon another deputy arrived, who called an ambulance.

The doctor who examined Johnson found him to be in a mild state of shock.

His eyes were irritated as if Johnson had suffered "mild welder's burns," and Johnson couldn't stand to be exposed to any bright lights.

The patrol car had very peculiar damage. The inside headlight on the driver's side was smashed but not the one to its immediate left. There was a flat-bottomed circular dent on the left side of the front hood, about a half inch in diameter, close to the windshield.

There was a crack in the windshield on the driver's side, that ran from top to bottom, with four apparent impacts. The electric clock was running 14 minutes slow, as was Johnson's wristwatch.

The shaft of the roof antenna was bent over at a 60-degree angle, starting about 6 inches above its base.

The trunk antenna was bent over at 90 degrees, but only near the top. No damage occurred to the car's regular antenna on the front hood. Essentially, all the damage to the car occurred on the left, or driver's side.

Investigations occurred immediately, both by the sheriff's department and by investigators from the Center for UFO Studies. The police determined that Johnson's car traveled about 950 feet after the first damage occurred.

No cause could be found for the event, including collision with another vehicle or a low-flying plane, a hoax on the part of Johnson, or anything else. In addition, experts from Ford Motors (the vehicle was a 1977 Ford LTD) and a team of engineers from Honeywell examined various portions of the damage.

A windshield expert, Meridan French, from Ford, noted after examining the windshield fractures that "Even after several days of reflection on the crack patterns and apparent sequence of fractures, I still have no explanation for what seem to be inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously. I can only [conclude]... that all cracks were from mechanical forces of unknown origin."

No cause could be found for the clock running slow, the peculiar antenna damage, or other physical traces.

Fortunately, Johnson's eyes healed quickly, and he suffered no lasting effect from the close encounter.

Val Johnson's own words...

"This is Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson... I report in connection with an incident which happened August 27th, 1979, at approximately 1:40 a.m., western section of Marshall County, approximately ten miles west of Stephen, Minnesota. This officer was on routine patrol, westbound down Marshall County Road #5.

I got to the intersection of #5 and Minnesota State #220. When I looked down south #220 to check for traffic, I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground.

The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. "

"I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle.

At this point. at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes.

From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren."

"He dispatched an officer from Stephen who came out, ascertained the situation as best he could, called for the Stephen Ambulance to transport me to Warren Hospital for further tests, x-rays and observation.

At the time the officer arrived, I complained about having very sore eyes. At Warren Hospital, it was diagnosed that I had a mild case of welder's burns to my eyes.

My eyes were treated with some salve and adhesive bandages put over and instructed to keep them on for the remainder of the day, or approximately 24 hours. At 11:00 a.m., Sheriff Dennis Breckie, my employer, picked me up at my residence in Oslo, and transported me to an ophthalmologist in Grand Forks, North Dakota."

" He examined my eyes and said I had some irritation to the inner portions of the eye which could have been caused by seeing a bright light after dark. That is all I have to add except to say that my timepiece in the Police vehicle and my mechanical wrist watch were both lacking 14 minutes of time to the minute."

The most complete account of this case is in The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning by Jerome Clark (1998), Omnigraphics. Other references include Allan Hendry "Minnesota CEII: The Val Johnson Story," International UFO Reporter Pt. I, 4 (Sept./Oct. 1979):4-9, and Pt II, 4 (November 1979): 4-10.

Police report;

Map of incident;

More Research Materials on Case:

We were contacted by researcher Guy Westcott, of UFOR, who investigated the Val Johnson case. He worked for NOAP and CCUFOS at the time of the incident, and has been kind enough to send us some great material pertaining to the case, and we offer him much thanks for this. All of the material below came from him.

COVER LETTER;

Antenna Damage;

CAR DAMAGE;

Johnson Report 1;

Johnson Report 2;

Johnson Report 3;

Johnson Report 4;

jamesc · 05-05-2012, 03:22 PM

Here is an outstanding case that contains levels of very high strangeness and involved Washington officials demanding answers from the scientific academics on the USAF UFO investigation panel called PROTECT BLUE BOOK.That this case was given an EIGHT out of ten in the table of "high strangeness" that was used by the scientific academics who investigated this case is of paramount importance.The below snippet from this report tells its own story.

"In 1957, between the late evening hours of November 2 and the early morning hours of the 3rd, seven independent witnesses near Levelland, Texas saw an oval shaped ball of light approach their vehicles causing their engines to stop and headlights to shut. The sightings took place in a 2.5 hour period (from 10:50 PM until 1:15 AM) and was limited to a 10 mile radius area West, North and East of Levelland. The events lasted from a few seconds to no more than 5 minutes. Once the ball of light left the scene, all witnesses were able to start their automobile engines and their headlights went back to normal operation."

************************************************** *************

The Levelland Sightings Of 1957 byAntonio F. Rullán

October 18, 1999, revised March 26, 2000

Analysis of the Evidence and Evaluation of the Ball Lightning Hypothesis

Introduction
by Mark Cashman;

The following document is the most comprehensive study of the famous Levelland vehicleinterference case ever performed, and took two years to complete. It has undergone peerreview through CUFOS and by some members of Project 1947. Tony Rullán has kindlyallowed me to reproduce this as part of my site. I hope you will find it as interesting andthought-provoking as I have.

Acknowledgments
by Antonio Rullán;

I could not have conducted this study without the great help and previous work of Mark Rodeghier (CUFOS), Jan Aldrich, and Loren Gross. Mark Rodeghier and CUFOS providedme with copies of their extensive file on the Levelland case and all the declassified material from the Air Force Blue Book study of the case. Jan Aldrich provided voluminous amountsof news-clippings from the Southwest for November of 1957 that provided perspective on thecase and details not found anywhere else.

Loren Gross provided his great research summaryon Levelland in his November 1957 books. I also am indebted to Wendy Connors whoprovided support and took time to review the final draft. I also want to thank Newell Wrightand A.J. Fowler who gave their time and attention to discuss and review this case 42 yearsafter their experiences. All errors or faulty logic in this paper are my own.

Table of Contents
;
1 Purpose of Study;

The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate the sightings that took place in Levelland, Texas42 years ago with the benefit of declassified Air Force files, updated knowledge of balllightning, full review of all the literature on this case, and personal interviews with a two of the participants. While this case has been documented in numerous UFO books, a thoroughanalysis of the witnesses, their claims, the investigators, and the pros and cons of the balllighting explanation has not been done. Moreover, the story and claims differ depending onwhich book or newspaper is read.

Thus, there was a need to determine the most reliablesources and the most likely description of events from the night of November 2-3, 1957. Thestudy evaluates the likelihood that ball lightning was the cause for these sightings andsummarizes the reasons for rejecting or accepting that hypothesis. The key issues brought upby the pro-UFO and pro-ball lighting investigators are summarized and discussed.

2
from the Air Force Blue Book study of the case. Jan Aldrich provided voluminous amountsof news-clippings from the Southwest for November of 1957 that provided perspective on thecase and details not found anywhere else. Loren Gross provided his great research summaryon Levelland in his November 1957 books. I also am indebted to Wendy Connors whoprovided support and took time to review the final draft. I also want to thank Newell Wrightand A.J. Fowler who gave their time and attention to discuss and review this case 42 yearsafter their experiences. All errors or faulty logic in this paper are my own.

2 Summary of Levelland Case
In 1957, between the late evening hours of November 2 and the early morning hours of the3rd, seven independent witnesses near Levelland, Texas saw an oval shaped ball of lightapproach their vehicles causing their engines to stop and headlights to shut. The sightingstook place in a 2.5 hour period (from 10:50 PM until 1:15 AM) and was limited to a 10 mileradius area West, North and East of Levelland. The events lasted from a few seconds to nomore than 5 minutes.

Once the ball of light left the scene, all witnesses were able to start theirautomobile engines and their headlights went back to normal operation.Most witnesses were scared about the incident and eventually called the Levelland PoliceDepartment to report the incident. While descriptions of the sighting varied amongst allwitnesses, there was a general consensus that some lighted object was stopping cars andtrucks around Levelland. On the early morning of November 3, there were other witnesseswho saw lights in night sky and flashes of light.

While these sightings added to the confusionand emotion of the evening, they will not be considered in this study. The LevellandSightings are defined in this study as only those seven reports where a bright ball of light was within 500 feet of the witness’ vehicle and led to engine and headlights failure.

On November 4, 1957, the incident at Levelland was reported in most of the newspapersacross the US. Newspapers were dumbfounded as to the nature of the mysterious ball of lightand gave it different names: mysterious object/thing, flying egg, whatnick, and eggnick.

Many newspapers quoted Representative J.T. Rutherford from Odessa, Texas who wanted toknow whether the sightings were the result of an American experiment and sent a telegram toAir Force officials in Washington asking for answers.

It was not until Nov. 5, 1957, that the idea that an extraterrestrial craft caused the Levelland sightings gained publicity in thenewspapers. Most of the newspaper quoted James A. Lee (a NICAP member from Abilene,TX) as the key proponent of this idea. On Nov. 15, 1957, the Air Force issued a summaryreport concluding that the incident was a rare form of lighting called ball lightning.

The AirForce solution to this puzzling case was so controversial that the Air Force had to discuss thecase in a US Congressional briefing on the UFO program on July 15, 1960 . While the casewas solved as far as Blue Book was concerned, for many UFO organizations (NICAP,APRO, CSI) the case was not closed but instead represented one of the best-documentedcases of a UFO.3 Literature Survey page 43.1 Commentary and Analysis from Pro-UFO Authors3.2 Commentary and Analysis from Pro-Ball Lightning Authors.

4
Literature Survey;
Commentary and Analysis from Pro-UFO Authors;

Many UFO researchers have written about the Levelland UFO sightings in one way or another. Most authors write about the standard claim: that 7 witnesses had their auto-mobiles’ engines and headlights shut off by a UFO within a 2.5 hour period and within a small areasurrounding Levelland. Each author gives his reason for the importance and merits of theLevelland case. The section below summarizes what made this case so popular among UFO researchers.According to Donald Keyhoe, Director of the National Investigations Committee on AerialPhenomena (NICAP) from 1957 to 1969, the reason this case became so popular was that toomany newspapers were taking the sighting reports seriously.

The press took the sightingsseriously because five Texas law officers backed the story. Keyhoe believed that had it beenan isolated case, the press would have killed it with ridicule. The press did not kill the storybecause there were too many trained observers on record. Keyhoe, however, did not give thiscase any exalted importance.

He did not believe it was the beginning of the 1957 UFO wavebut the continuation of it. Keyhoe thought the evidence put forward by NICAP was sufficientto conclude that the UFO at Levelland was an extraterrestrial craft. Overall, Keyhoesupported this case as evidence for the extraterrestrial hypothesis because there were multipleindependent witnesses, because the claims were backed up by law officers, and because of the lack of a reasonable explanation for the reported anomalous events.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer and former Project Blue Book scientific consultant, thoughtthe case was significant enough to include it in his book The UFO Experience as the topClose Encounter of the 2nd Kind (CEII) amongst 23 cases listed. Hynek developed aStrangeness-Probability Index for the cases he evaluated in order to determine theirworthiness for study.

The Levelland case had a Strangeness Index of 5 and a Probability
Index of 8. This rating put it at the top of Hynek’s CEII list. Hynek’
s definition of the Strangeness Index is the number of information bits a report contains, each of which isdifficult to explain in common sense terms. For example, in the Levelland case he found 5items that he could not explain using common senses. Unfortunately, he did not list these
items. We could guess at them based on Hynek’s list of items difficult to explain:
1.

weird looking ball of light (BOL)2.

BOL stops car engine3.

BOL shuts off car headlights\ engine and headlights start fine when BOL leaves4.

BOL appears under intelligent control.

Hynek’s probability rating is a function of assessed credibility of the witnesses. He judges this by the following.

(1) internal consistency of the report,

(2) consistency among several reports of same incident

(3) manner in which report was made

(4) conviction of reporter and

(5) subtle judgement of “how it all hangs together”.

Hynek gave the Levelland case a very high probability rating of eight out of ten. He gave such a high rating because of the multipleindependent witnesses in this case.Hynek stated “that all seven cases of separate car
disablement and subsequent rapid, automatic recovery after the passage of the strangeilluminated craft, occurring within about two hours, could be attributed to coincidence is outof the statistical universe if the reports are truly independent”.

As opposed to Keyhoe, Hynek did not conclude that this incident was an extraterrestrial craft.What Hynek concluded was that the Air Force ball lightning explanation for the cause of thesightings was not acceptable. Hynek did not believe the ball lighting explanation for two keyreasons: (1) observers at the time of the incident did not report lightning but overcast andmisty weather (2) there is no evidence that ball lightning can stop cars and put out headlights.These two points are very significant regardless of the number of witnesses who experiencethe phenomenon.

For Hynek, however, the fact that 7 observers reported similar events,brought significant credibility to the observed claim. Hynek did not put a lot of weight on theweird light reports from the 5 law enforcement officers in Levelland because they did notexperience the auto engine and light failure.Dr. Jacques Vallee also wrote about the Levelland case in Anatomy of a Phenomenon.Vallee, however, did not analyze the case in detail nor gave it any special importance. Forhim, it was another case among the wave of sightings in 1957.

He stated that the wave hadbeen going on for a long time and did not start with Levelland or Sputnik II . It did notrepresent anything new to him, since he was very familiar with the UFO landing reports fromFrance in 1954. Vallee, like Hynek, did not believe the ball lighting explanation for the case.

Vallee wrote in 1965: “the official fairy tale concerning the
Levelland case is that thesensational interpretation of the sightings by the press triggered the series of reports now known as the 1957 wave.” In Jan 16, 1964, Vallee and Hynek met with Bluebook Officers-Captain Hector Quintanilla and Sergeant Moody in Chicago to discuss the UFOPhenomenon. In that meeting, Captain Quintanilla and Sergeant Moody agreed that theycould not explain the Levelland case.

An interesting revelation given that Bluebook hadexplained the Levelland sightings seven years earlier as Ball Lightning.Ronald Story also had a high regard for the Levelland case. He called the Levelland case one of the two best cases on record of electromagnetic effects caused by UFO’s. He included the case as one of the 10 most baffling cases on record in his book titled Sightings. Story agreedwith Hynek in rejecting the ball lighting hypothesis as the explanation for the Levellandsightings. Story stated four reasons why the case was so extraordinary and had never beenexplained satisfactorily to him:1.

No evidence that ball lighting stops cars and put out headlights2.

Ball lighting preference for dirt roads and paved highways3.

Ball lightning size of 200 ft is not common4.

Six independent witnesses experienced something similar and extraordinary within a10 mile radius of LevellandRichard Hall included the Levelland case in his book the UFO Evidence as just one morecase in the UFO wave of November 1957. The case was of importance to Hall because it wasthe first series of sightings to be widely publicized in November of 1957 and it had the mostintensive single concentration of UFO sightings.

In the book, Walter Webb gave a goodsummary of the events at Levelland in November 2-3, 1957. While no analysis of the casewas provided in the book, Richard Hall and Walter Webb made several good points:They wondered why should reddish elliptical UFOs, which cause cars to stall, suddenly bereported from one small Texas town.

They pointed out that the witnesses were going about their business when the UFOs intruded upon the scene. There was no evidence that the witnesses were searching the sky or otherwiseexpecting to see anything unusual. Their independent reports told a consistent story.Dr. James E. McDonald was also fascinated by this case.

McDonald added the Levellandcase to his list of UFO Cases of Interest mainly because he had personally checked the caseand saw in it characteristics of special interest. McDonald was very disappointed in theanalysis of the case done by Dr. Menzel and the Air Force who explained away the Levellandsightings as ball lightning and wet ignitions.McDonald checked the weather data for the night and locale in question.

He studied theweather maps and rainfall data and concluded that a large, high-pressure area was movingsouthward over the Texas panhandle. He believed that these weather conditions were notconducive to lightning of any sort. He checked half a dozen stations in the vicinity and foundthat there was not even any rain falling during this period, nor had more than a small amountfallen hours earlier that day when a cold front passed through.

McDonald concluded that theprevailing anticyclonic conditions in Levelland the night of November 2-3, 1957 almostcategorically ruled out ball lightning Thus, McDonald concluded that the Levelland casewas not ball lightning and that it was still an unknown. The key reasons McDonald did notagree with the ball lightning explanation was:1.

He believed that ball lightning had to accompany a thunderstorm, but there was nonereported the night in question2.

He believed that ball lightning seldom exceeds a few feet in diameter, but thedescription of the objects was about 200-ft.McDonald certainly did not believe that ball lightning could form under fair-weatherconditions (free of all thunderstorm activity). He claimed that via some lementarycomputations he could show how quantitatively absurd this claim was. Moreover, McDonaldalso did not like the wet ignition explanation for the failure of the car engines. He pointed outthe fact that the engines could be re-started just as soon as the object darted off was entirelyinconsistent with wet ignition idea.

The Levelland case was also written up in the American edition of Aime Michel’s Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery (Michel, 1958) by Alexander D. Mebane (member of the Civilian Saucer Intelligence group in New York). Mebane used four arguments to acceptthe Levelland sightings as flying saucers:1.

Used the analogy to the French sightings from the Fall of 19542.

Disagreed with the Air Force explanation that rain and storms led to wet electricalcircuits that shut the auto engines.3.

He wrote: “How the circuits happened to dry out instantly when the ball lightning haddeparted was not explained.”
4.

Claimed that there were no thunderstorms in the area during the sightings. He quotesa Levelland weatherman statement in the Levelland Sun-News of November 5, 1957.5.

Complained about the Air Force investigation being too shortOf these four points only point #2 and #3 are valid and will be discussed further in this paper.The Levelland case was also included in the 1981 CUFOS study on UFO reports involvingvehicle interference (Rodeghier). Rodeghier evaluated 481 UFO reports, which involved vehicle interference. Of these 481 reports, eight came from the Levelland case.

In the study,Rodeghier found 35 statistically significant correlations amongst observed properties of theelectromagnetic (EM) UFO events. He grouped these highly correlated properties into threeNexus consisting of 3 to 4 properties each.

In a nexus, the presence of any one characteristic implies that the likelihood of the other three occurring is increased.Nexus I had the following positively correlated characteristics

resence of light beamcontrol of the vehiclephysiological effect on witnesschasing of the vehicleNexus II had the following positively correlated characteristics:metallic appearing UFOUFO that landsdisc-shaped UFOpresence of soundNexus III had the following positively correlated characteristics:

link; http://www.scribd.com/doc/61600516/A...htings-of-1957

jamesc · 09-05-2012, 05:41 PM

Here is one hell of a UFO case that had even the USA defence intelligence agencies saying that this was an out standing case.

The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency describes the case as "An outstanding report. This case is a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon."

Below are the agencies who were the recipients of the report;;

these included the following below;

Chief of Staff of the Air Force,

the Chief of Staff of the Army,

the Central Intelligence Agency,

the National Security Agency,

the Secretary of State,

the Deputy Undersecretary of Defence,

the White House

and the Chief of Naval Operations.

************************************************** *************

THE TEHERAN 1976 CASE:

A declassified document related to the famous Teheran UFO and jet fighter encounter in 1976.

This is a capital case, acknowleged by a US intelligence agency, where a UFO encountered an aircraft, and reacted in a superior ant intelligent manner to the aircraft's interception attempt by shutting down temporarily the aircraft's weapons system.

The DIA evaluation termed this "An outstanding report. This case is a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon." The analysis called the UFO performance "awesome," noting that the objects displayed "an inordinate amount of maneuverability."

REFERENCES:

Title: DIA Defense Information Evaluation Report IR No. 6846013976
To: Censored
Author: Major Roland B. Evans, USAF, Military Capability Analyst.
Date: September 22, 1976
Length: 5 pages.
Classification: Top secret, Declassified
CC: None.

************************************************** *************

Here the official declassified documents on this case;

DOC 1;

DOC 2;

DOC 3;

************************************************** *************

Summary of case;

The 1976 The Tehran, Iran UFO - F-4 Incident; Interview with piolt who witnessed UFO;

quote;
An extremely compelling case of an invading UFO occurred in Tehran, Iran in September of 1976. On the 19th, the Air Force of Iran began receiving calls from local citizens reporting an unusual, unidentifiable object in the skies.

The Air Force duty officer called the Assistant Deputy Commnder of Operations informing him of the situation, and asking for guidance in how to handle the situation. He knew there were no planes flying at the time that could account for the strange reports.

At first Yousefit thought the edgy citizens were seeing just stars or the planet Venus, but after even more inquiries, he decided to look for himself.

As he checked out the unknown object, he knew immediately that it was no star. It was much larger and brighter. He made the decision to scramble an F-4 jet from Shahrokhi Air Force Base to get a closer look at the unusual object. The plane left the runway at approximately 1:30 AM to intercept the UFO.

The plane sped toward the large, bright unknown which lay some 70 miles north of them. About half-way there, the plane began to experience communication problems.

Instrumentation was also faulty, so the pilot dropped off course, heading back to Shahrokhi. As the F-4 changed course, instrumentation and communication was suddenly restored.

Had the UFO compromised the plane's functions as it approached, and then allowed them again as the plane dropped from its course?

Another F-4 left the air base, attempting to identify the UFO. As the second jet approached the UFO, they made radar contact. Crew members stated that the size of the radar return was similar to that of a 707 jet. The actual size of the object was impossible to determine visually because of the brilliance of the glowing object.

The jet drew nearer to the UFO.

For a time, the F-4 bridged the distance between itself and the UFO, but even flying above Mach 1, the UFO suddenly shot away from the F-4. This incredible burst of speed was confirmed by the plane's radar and also visually.

The pilot of the F-4 was not able to gain any ground on the UFO, but managed to pace it as they sped through the skies.

The crew of the plane would later say that the UFO had strobing lights arranged rectangularly. The lights alternated from red, blue, green, and orange in color. The plane's crew was astonished to see another, smaller object emerge from the large UFO. The plane and UFO were now flying south of Tehran.

The smaller object made a bee-line to the F-4 moving at incredible speeds.

Fearing for their very lives, the pilot aimed an AIM-9 missie at the approaching object, but just as he did, the weapons control panel went off line, and he lost all communication. The only course of action left was to dive to try to avoid a collision with the approaching UFO or weapon.

The approaching object followed the plane into its dive briefly, but then tailed off, and returned to the larger UFO. All functions were again on line as the UFO left the jet behind.

There was never an explanation for what two F-4 jets chased over the skies of Tehran.

The crew members stated that the UFO moved at incredible speeds and had the ability to disable the plane's instrumentation. This is one of the best documented UFO / Plane chases on record.

Gen. Parviz Jafari , Ret. @ Nation Press Club UFO meeting - YouTube

audio interview; http://vista.streamguys.com/strieber/102205.wma

here is the FOIA link for the declassified document dealing with this case of extreme strangeness;it is in downloadable pdf format;

http://foia.abovetopsecret.com/ultim...976iranufo.pdf

Report on Sighting of UFO in Iran, Sept, 1976
A report regarding a sighting of a UFO by four witnesses in Iran
Document date: 1976-09-19
Department: USAF?
Author: Not Stated
Document type: report
pages: 3

jamesc · 10-05-2012, 02:19 PM

Here is a wealth of declassified UFO documents that where declassified and released in America by the National Security Agency ,(NSA).Food for thought here and a must for any serious UFO researcher.

************************************************** *************

View and Download the Documents here:
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/ufo/index.shtml

*UFO Documents Index;

The documents listed on this page were located in response to the numerous requests received by NSA on the subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO). In 1980, NSA was involved in Civil Action No. 80-1562, "Citizens Against Unidentified Flying Objects Secrecy v. National Security Agency". Documents related to that ligitation are marked with "*". "XXXXX" has been inserted in a title if a portion of the title has been deleted prior to release.

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_file...vit_yeates.pdf

To select a document click on the document title,and wait for the PDF version to be downloaded to your local viewer. Approximate file sizes are given after each selection for user convenience.

* To view documents stored as Portable Document Format (PDF) files your local computer must have the Adobe Acrobat Reader application or a Web browser plug-in that supports the PDF file format.

Commonly Requested UFO Terms for which No Records Have Been Found;

*Please Note:*
These historical documents are PDF images of formerly classified carbon paper and reports that have been declassified. Due to the age and poor quality of some of the PDF images, a screen reader may not be able to process the images into word documents.

In accordance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, individuals may request that the government provide auxiliary aids or services to ensure effective communication of the substance of the documents. For such requests, please contact the Public Affairs Office at 301-688-6524.

UFO FILES DECLASSIFIED BY THE NSA (24 APRIL 2011) - YouTube

jamesc · 11-05-2012, 04:43 PM

Forget all the dodgy U-TUBE UFO videos on the net

hear is the real deal investigated by credible professional academics.This systematic investigatory PDF document is a must for any serious UFO enthusiast.

************************************************** *************

"Aviation Safety and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Preliminary Study of 600 cases of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Reported by Military and Civilian pilots Dominique F. Weinstein NARCAP International Technical Specialist - France GEIPAN/CNES1 College of experts - France Copyright March 2012 ;

************************************************** *************

Abstract:
quote;
"This report presents the findings of a comprehensive review of 600 cases, over a period of sixty-four years in which pilots have reported the presence of one or more unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) during flight.

In 443 cases (74%) these UAP are described as “objects” (42% circular-shaped) more than as point sources of light.

In 162 cases (27%), the visual observation is confirmed by detection by ground and/or airborne radar. This report focuses more especially on 290 cases (48%) in which UAP have had (or could have had) an impact on flight safety.

In 108 cases (37% of the 290 cases), pilots have estimated that the impact on flight safety was high enough for them to submit an official Airmiss/Airprox report. It was found that the most reported events with potential impact(s) on aviation safety were: “UAP approached aircraft on a collision course” (78 cases) and “UAP circled or maneuvered close to aircraft” (59 cases).

It was found also that in 81 cases (14% of the 600 cases) pilots reported alleged electro-magnetic effects on one or more aircraft systems. Radio and compass systems were the predominant systems affected. Private aircraft were more affected by the E-M effects (alleged caused by UAP), probably due to the fact that their avionics and compasses are less shielded against magnetic/radio frequency interference and ionizing radiation than are commercial or military aircraft. It was found that in four cases military aircraft weapon systems were momentarily ineffective when targeted towards the UAP.

Finally, in 31 cases pilots had to take evasive action to avoid a collision with UAP, injuring several passengers in five cases. These findings are potentially important and deserve further in-depth study and confirmation by obtaining additional high quality aviation reports.

This preliminary study of 600 UAP cases reported by civilian and military pilots has shown a number of key points.

- The distribution of cases comes from the whole Earth (Continental and maritime zones);

- There are slightly more nocturnal cases (54%) than daylight cases;
- Witnesses were two or more in 69% (more than two thirds) of the cases;
- Pilots have officially reported their sightings in 197 cases (33% of the 600 cases);

- Commercial pilots have reported their sightings officially in 35% among 233 cases;

- Most of the sightings occurred during cruise phase of flight (85%);
- Visual sightings are confirmed by radar detection in 27% of the cases;
- More UAP are described as « objects » (74%) than point sources of lights. Circular (disc) is the most reported shape (42%);

- UAP perform maneuvers in more than half of the cases (56%) and their behaviours seem to reflect an interaction with the aircraft in almost 50% (299) of the 600 cases;

- In 48% (almost half) of the 600 cases, UAP have had or could have had an impact on flight safety, including 31 cases in which pilots had to make an evasive action to avoid a collision with UAP;

- Electro-magnetic effects were reported in 14% of the 600 cases, radio and compass systems were the most affected;

- Private aircrafts are more affected by the E-M effects allegedly caused by UAP;

- Weapon systems were momentarily ineffective when targeting UAP;

Most of the results (in percentages) found in this analysis of 600 cases are very close to those obtained in the 300 cases analysis published by the author in 2010-11, indicating that regardless of the total number of cases analyzed more or less the same patterns are found.

This analysis confirms the potential impact on aviation safety and the need for a serious study of these phenomena by governmental aviation departments and the International Civil Aviation Organization of the United Nations. Pilots must be informed about the flight characteristics of these phenomena and motivated to report them on a detailed basis. In too many cases, basic data, such as time of sighting, aircraft-UAP separation distance, altitude, etc., are missing in reports.

Only a systematic collection of detailed testimonies from pilots and crews will enhance the scientific research on these phenomena and will contribute to aviation safety.

************************************************** *************

14;
Project Sphere;
Dr. Richard Haines, Editor in Chief, 2010
http://www.narcap.org/Project_Sphere.html

13
Analysis of Digital Photographs of Commercial Airplane and
Small UAP on November 8, 2009;
http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap_TR-13.pdf

Dr. Richard F. Haines November 27, 2009
12
Small White Ball of Light Flies Near Airliner: Investigation of High
Resolution, Digital, Color Photographs of July 3, 2005 at 2031
Hrs., Palo Alto, California;
http://www.narcap.org/reports/uap_ph...5_PaloAlto.pdf

Dr. Richard F. Haines
11
A Review of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Designs and Operational
Characteristics
Terrell J. Osborn, Ph.D.
http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap_Osborn_UAV_txt.pdf

10
Topical Reviews
Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety
Implications at O'Hare International Airport on November 7, 2006
Dr. Richard Haines, Chief Editor with K. Efishof, D. Ledger, L.Lemke, S. Maranto, W.
http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR10_Case_18a.pdf

Puckett, T. Roe, M. Shough, R. Uriarte, 2007
9
Analysis of Digital Video Aerial Event of October 23, 2004 at
Osaka , Japan
http://www.narcap.org/reports/NARCAP_CASE_16_PART_1.htm

Dr.Richard F. Haines and William Puckett 2007
8
Aviation Safety in America - Under-Reporting Bias of Unidentified
Aerial Phenomena and Recommended Solutions Ted Roe 2004
http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR8Bias1.htm

7
Analysis of a Photograph of a High Speed Ball of Light
. Dr. Richard F. Haines 2002
http://www.narcap.org/reports/tr7-1.htm

6
Radar Catalog (RADCAT) A Review of Twenty One Ground and
Airborne Radar UAP Contact reports Generally Related to
Aviation Safety for the Period October 15, 1948 to September
19, 1976 Martin Shough, United Kingdom 2002
http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap...gh_12-8-02.pdf

5
Aircrew Survey Project
Dr. Richard F. Haines and Ted Roe 2001
http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR5.htm

4
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - Eighty Years of Pilot Sightings:
Catalog of Military, Airliner, Private Pilots sightings from 1916 to
2000 Dominique Weinstein 2001
http://www.narcap.org/reports/emcarm.htm

3
A Preliminary Study of Sixty-four Pilot Sighting Reports Involving
Alleged ElectroMagnetic Effects on Aircraft Systems
Dr. Richard F. Haines and Dominique Weinstein 2001
http://www.narcap.org/reports/emcarm.htm

2
Results of an Informal NARCAP Advisor Survey
Dr. Richard F. Haines., 2001

http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap.survey.pdf

1
Aviation Safety in America – A Previously Neglected Factor
Dr.Richard F. Haines 2000
http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap.TR1.AvSafety.pdf

link for complete pdf files;
http://www.narcap.org/Technical_Reports.html

jamesc · 14-05-2012, 08:09 PM

Here we have a collection stemming from 1946 to the late 1990s.These declassified UFO documents are through the FOIA request laws.There are hundreds to sieve through and are again a must for any serious UFO researcher.

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Here is a collection of documents, some of them were formerly secret or confidential, they were all declassified because of the Freedom Of Information Act.

F.O.I.A:

The Freedom of Information Act (F.O.I.A) is an American law that allows members of the public to obtain copies of classified documents by having all or parts of the documents declassified by order of a federal judge. The judge may refuse the declassification of a document if it is necessary for the document to remain classified because it affects national security. At least, that is in theory.

In practice it has been very unreliable, if one group requests for a set of documents and gets them, it does not necessarily mean that a second group will be able to get them. If the government denies they have got the documents that you are looking for, they may not be telling the truth. It has been known for a government agency to deny that it has ANY documents on an incident yet release it some months later.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ORIGINAL US GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS:

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has placed the full texts of more than 900 recently declassified documents concerning UFO's on line at the CIA's Electronic Documents Release Centre.
http://www.foia.ucia.gov/
Use the "search" page and keywords such as UFO. Thousands of other documents can be obtained more or less easily upon request.
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The National Security Agency (NSA) has placed the full texts of recently declassified documents concerning UFOs online at the National Security Agency's UFO Documents Index. here; http://www.nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/ufo.html

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has placed the full texts of recently declassified documents concerning UFOs in PDF format in the "Unusual Phenomena" section of the FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
here; http://foia.fbi.gov/room.htm

************************************************** *************
Below are a few examples of the declassified UFO documents that have been obtained through the freedom of information act or FOIA.

FOIA DOCUMENTS SAMPLER:

Scandinavian "Ghost Rockets" explained as Russians.1946;
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia02.htm

Ghost rockets again ONI document Scandinavian "Ghost Rocket";1947
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia01.htm

FBI 8 July FBI memo on flying disk recovery in Roswell. 1947
http://ufologie.net/rw/f/fbimemo01.htm

FBI Interview of pilot who saw two UFOs. 1947
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia158.htm

FBI Memo for M. Ladd: FBI wants access to "flying discs".1947
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia26.htm

Routing slip;General Twining's routing slip of UFO observations summaries. 1947;
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia23.htm

Here is the original declassified document below;

This is a secret document, declassified because of the Freedom Of Information Act.

UFO INTEREST 1947:

Routing slip from General Nathan F. Twining , Air Materiel Command (AMC) to General Brentnall, T-3, Engineering, accompanying summaries of flying saucer sightings as reported by Richard Rankin, Kenneth Arnold, and Idaho Forest Rangers.

Shows the early military interest in the "flying saucers" started immediately in 1947 as soon as the designation "flying saucer" was issued by the press.

REFERENCES:

Title: TSEOP Form N.5
To: General Brentnall, T-3, Engineering
Authors: General Nathan F. Twining , Air Materiel Command (AMC)
Date: July 2, 1947
Length: Unknown.
Classification: Unknown
CC: None
THE DOCUMENT:

link; http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/indexe.htm

jamesc · 16-05-2012, 02:22 PM

In these next posts i will post some videos for those that are interested in the UFO subject but are maybe not all that knowledgeable on the subject.If one is new or interested in UFO the topic then these videos and the recommended reading will hopefully lead you to a primary understanding and further your desire to seek out more information on this topic.

Here are the recommended videos to watch;

Project Bluebook Special Report #14

UFO Education - Project Bluebook Special Report #14 - YouTube

The Project Bluebook Unknowns;

UFO Education - Project Blue Book Unknowns - YouTube

The Twining Memo;

UFO Education - The Twining Document - YouTube

Air Force Regulation 200-2;

UFO Education - Air Force Regulation 200-2 - YouTube

Witness Testimony;
UFO Education - Witness Testimony

UFO Education - Witness Testimony - YouTube

Pilot Sightings;

UFO Education - UFOs and Aviation - YouTube

John Podesta's Call for Disclosure;

UFO Education - White House Official Calls for UFO Disclosure - YouTube

A Brief History of UFO's 1/6;

A Brief History of UFOs 1 of 6 - YouTube

jamesc · 16-05-2012, 04:19 PM

Here is part two, the educational side of this topic is just as revealing as any new UFO report that has or shows signs of strangeness.There is a wealth of information out there on this subject some good some not so good but through perseverance one can eventually see those cases that keep this subject up there in the unsolved mysteries of our time.

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UFO Education - The Trouble with the U.S. Air Force, Part One;

UFO Education - The Trouble with the U.S. Air Force, Part One - YouTube

How did UFO Secrecy begin - And Why?! Rare documentary by Yin Gazda. Rare interviews with Lt. Col. Ret. US Airforce, UFO-investigator; Wendelle

How Did UFO Secrecy Begin Part 1 of 6 - YouTube

A Brief History of UFO's 2/6

A Brief History of UFOs 2 of 6 - YouTube

A Brief History of UFO's 3/6

A Brief History of UFOs 3 of 6 - YouTube

A Brief History of UFO's 4/6

A Brief History of UFOs 3 of 6 - YouTube

A Brief History of UFO's 5/6

A Brief History of UFOs 5 of 6 - YouTube

A Brief History of UFO's 6/6

A Brief History of UFOs 6 of 6 - YouTube

Faded Discs Audio Archive of UFO investigation interviewers,blue book ect;
http://www.project1947.com/shg/connors/audiodisc.html

jamesc · 16-05-2012, 04:41 PM

Staying with the "educational" topic of the UFO subject below we have very valuable collections of UFO related interviews ect.Links ect are provided for futher sources of reading ect on an educational perception.Hope these last two posts are helpful to anyone who wants to dig deeper down the rabbit hole.

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NEW - February 8, 2012;

Updated CFI/Research Proposal;

"Several years ago the SyFy Channel, with the aid of John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Clinton, started a campaign to press for the release of government documents dealing with UFOs under the title of the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI)."

CFI solicited proposals from UFO researchers for a list of key UFO documents that might be secured via research or FOIA legal action. The Sign Historical Group produced a proposal which was not accepted within the tight deadline allowed for submissions. However, many of the proposed avenues for research have since produced new information and opened up new research opportunities.

The original proposal with updated findings and potential leads can be read here. http://www.project1947.com/shg/cfi/sfcfiproposal.htm

Dr. Frank B. Salisbury

Frank Boyer Salisbury was born in Utah in 1926. He graduated from the University of Utah with a B.S. (1951) and M.A. (1952) and received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (1955). He served as head of the Department of Plant Science at Utah State University from 1966 to 1970, when he resigned to devote more time to research and textbook writing. He retired in 1997 after leading a project to grow wheat in the Russian space station Mir.

In April 1962 he published an article entitled “Martian Biology” in Science magazine, outlining the possibility of life on Mars He received many letters pointing him towards the growing body of UFO literature. This led Salisbury to consider that if life was likely on other planets, perhaps extraterrestrial visitation was also a possibility.

In January 1967 Salisbury published The Scientist and the UFO in Bioscience. http://www.project1947.com/shg/tom/salisbury_bios.htm

On July 29th, 1968, Salisbury submitted a written statement to the U. S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science and Astronautics Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects.

http://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/salisbury.html

After a talk on the possibility of life on Mars to the Association of Utah Science Teachers, Salisbury was approached by Joseph Junior Hicks, a junior high school science teacher from Roosevelt, Utah. Hicks informed him of his research into a localized UFO wave in the Uintah Basin which further piqued Salisbury's interest in the subject.

In August, 1975, Salibury published another article in Bioscience, Recent Developments in the Study of UFOS; http://www.project1947.com/shg/tom/salisbury_bio_75.htm

We are pleased to present these articles with permission of the author.

The Sign Oral History Project; http://sohp.us/sohp/ has an in-depth interview with Dr. Salisbury:

http://sohp.us/sohp/interview-index/...yer-salisbury/

Julian J. A. Hennessey, British UFO Researcher;

Julian Hennessey's two decades of UFO research in Europe and Great Britain resulted in an impressive network of official contacts, case reports and documents. As chairman of NICAP's European Investigative Subcommittee #1 he instigated contact with airline pilots, agencies, and military personnel which brought to light many UFO reports that otherwise might have remained unknown.

Jan Aldrich presents an overview of Julian's work in this introductionhttp://www.project1947.com/shg/hennessey/index.html; to the previously unpublished essay The U.K. Goverment and UFOs http://www.project1947.com/shg/henne...ennessey.htmin which Julian outlines his dealings with British government officialdom and some significant historical British UFO events during his own involvement with UFO research in the 60s and 70s.

Sign Oral History Project

"Following the UFO History Workshop and the subsequent formation of the Sign Historical Group in 1999, it became evident that one area lacking in the preservation of the history of the UFO phenomenon was the archiving of spoken memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews..."

The Sign Oral History Project began in 1999 to record recollections of UFO witnesses, investigators officials, scientists, and other individuals associated with UFO history. SOHP records interviews with a cross section of individuals involved with UFOs on archives quality video media.

The founder of SOHP, Tom Tulien, has conducted well over 100 interviews with the assistance of a number of UFO historians. A partial list of interviewees is here,http://sohp.us/sohp/interview-index/ and includes witnesses from a number of important UFO cases, former Project Blue Book officials, UFO investigators and aviation and ballooning experts.

Inventory of Material From the Files of Dr. Olavos T. Fontes

Included in the material Dr. Willy Smith recently donated to the Sign Historical Group was his collection of items from the files of the renowned Brazilian UFO researcher, Dr. Olavos T. Fontes. An inventory of this material, along with Fontes-related items provided by other researchers, can be read here. A selection of Internet links referring to Fontes-related cases is also included.

Civilian Saucer Investigation-LA

In late 1951 several scientists, aeronautical engineers and interested persons established a UFO study group in California which they called "Civilian Saucer Investigation-Los Angeles" (CSI-LA).

In just a few years, CSI-LA's dedication and science-based methods of research and investigation attracted the attention of other UFO researchers, mainstream media outlets such as LIFE Magazine, and government organizations ranging from the US Air Force, to the Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) and the CIA.

The Sign Historical Group is pleased to present a collection of items and publications detailing the brief but influential activities of Civilian Saucer Investigation-LA .

— Index of CSI-LA material.

— Introduction and background of CSI-LA by Jan. L. Aldrich.

September 7, 2002
— Introduction and backgroundhttp://www.project1947.com/shg/shgdocs.html by Tom Tulien regarding new Condon-related material on the Sign Historical Group website:

— Politicking and Paradigm Shifting, the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Paul McCarthy.http://www.project1947.com/shg/mccarthy/index.html

— Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, a.k.a. The Condon Report.http://www.project1947.com/shg/condon/index.html

— United States House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Astronautics, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, July 1968. Washington, D.C. http://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/index.html

— A detailed collection of Links and Articles http://www.project1947.com/shg/shglinks.htmlproviding background, critiques and commentary on Dr. Edward U. Condon, the Condon Report, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, July, 1968.

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY UFO COLLECTION
Updated 8 February, 2002; http://www.project1947.com/shg/resource.htm#ohio

The Barry Greenwood Archives; http://www.project1947.com/shg/grnwood.htm

Updated 8 November, 2003

Barry Greenwood's Articles Database;
http://www.project1947.com/shg/bgbib.htm

Updated 8 November, 2003

The Jan Aldrich Archives - UFO File Folder Headings
http://www.project1947.com/shg/janfold.htm

The Ray Fowler Archives;
http://www.project1947.com/shg/fowler/index.html

NEW - 3 March, 2002

The Wendy Connors' Archives;
http://www.project1947.com/shg/connors/index.html

Wendy's extensive Audio Disc and Photo Archive Listings

************************************************** *************

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY UFO COLLECTION;

Thanks to the efforts of PROJECT 1947 archivist Candy Peterson, an alphabetical listing of UFO-related materials donated to Ohio State University (OSU) by William Jones is now available.

The Collection is housed at the OSU Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department. The OSU library provides a secure holding area, national access and complete public services subject to the policies of the Rare Book and Manuscripts Department, (e.g., materials do not circulate; can only be viewed under staff supervision; etc.)

OSU has a particular interest in preserving materials relating to Popular Culture. In the words of Geoffrey Smith, head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, "UFO studies enter all areas of contemporary culture: literature, film, TV, science, religion, etc. which contributes to OSU's interest in maintaining and enriching its UFO Collection."

Contact Details:-

If you have any material you would like to donate to the OSU collection, please contact Tom Tulien - AFSDialog@aol.com

Click here for: Rare Books and Manuscripts - The Ohio State University Libraries; http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/OSU_profile/rarweb/

The OSU collection can be viewed online here.http://www.project1947.com/shg/osunav.htm For browsers with no frames, please click here.http://www.project1947.com/shg/osu_a_f.htm

The OSU listing is also available for download as a plain ascii file - osu2002.zip; http://www.project1947.com/shg/osu2002.zip

These listings reflect the current holdings at OSU and have been recently updated to incorporate new additions.

jamesc · 16-05-2012, 04:50 PM

Some more vids on the theme of educational UFO;

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Astronomers and UFOs;

UFO Education - Astronomers and UFOs - YouTube

The McMinnville Photographs ;

UFO Education - The McMinville Photograph - YouTube

Flying Saucers;

UFO Education - Flying Saucers - YouTube

The Phoenix Lights;

UFO Education - The Phoenix Lights - YouTube

The COMETA Report;

UFO Education - The COMETA Report - YouTube

UFOs and National Security;

UFO Education - UFOs and National Security - YouTube

The Belgian Wave;

UFO Education - The Belgian Wave - YouTube

The CIA and UFOs;

UFO Education - The CIA and UFOs - YouTube

The Levelland Sightings;

UFO Education - The Levelland Sightings - YouTube

The Trouble with the U.S. Air Force, part one;

UFO Education - The Trouble with the U.S. Air Force, Part One - YouTube

Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations, part one;

UFO Education - Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations 1 - YouTube

The Westall School Incident;

UFO Education - The Westall School Incident - YouTube

Unknown: True Stuff About UFOs, parts one and two;

Unknown - True Stuff About UFOs (part 1 and 2) - YouTube

theabbot 7 · 07-06-2012, 03:03 PM

any new news?

indolering · 08-06-2012, 12:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesc

Just a wee heads up here aimed at those who are maybe still unfamiliar with the primary investigators or sources who have brought "UFOLOGY" to the forefront of public perceptions in other words Get to know UFOlogy's Founders.

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quote;
"Dr. James McDonald brought more depth science and more intensity to the work than any other human. As he was an atmospheric physicist of some repute, he had both skill and contacts to lay to rest many, many erroneous "explanations" for cases"

************************************************** **************

Aristotle told his impatient student, Alexander the Great, "There is no 'Royal Road' to Geometry." There isn't one to UFOlogy either. I can promise you that if you are not extremely perceptive [and a bit lucky], you cannot get an accurate picture of what's known vs. what's responsibly guessed vs. what's full-of-errors vs. what's full-of-worse by merely scavenging about on the internet.

The only Road to actually knowing something about this field is to lean heavily on its founders--that means to learn its history. This post is in aid of that. It is lightyears from sufficient, obviously, but it may serve someone as a door. The downside of this is that if one really wanted to know anything about this field, one would have to be willing to put in some real time and some real work [that much anyone can decide to do on their own], but also to have the resources available to them to do so [and that few people, unfortunately have].

In my viewing of the web, the status of UFO information resident here is not quite yet at the level which would support a dedicated "student" in the quest. This is because, even if a report is available in full here and there [as they are for USAF's Project Blue Book on Footnote. com] a relative "rookie" does not have the "historical context" to aid in the interpretation of that report. It is advantageous to be able to read what the past giants had to say about the period, the USAF handling, the "similar cases" to get perspective.

This is not to say that the giants were perfect. All of them were/are human and had strengths and weaknesses. But understood as a whole, their cumulative insights and facts are the beginnings of a good guide. This post is one guy's [mine] foggy view on these founders and what they gave to us. It's no history. We can't dedicate 600 pages for that. It's just a window from which to describe [a little] and give praise [a lot] to some folks who made a difference.

Don Keyhoe is, in this person's opinion, the most important person in UFO history. Fiery and adamantly insistent, Keyhoe carried the field through a sustained flak attack from the Air Force, aimed a destroying it. At our distance from him, what we should do for our own benefit is to read his first two books: Flying Saucers Are Real and Flying Saucers From Outer Space. These things are important to the field because Keyhoe had many contacts inside the military and the vast majority of the factual things transmitted to him turned out to be real. A good number of the speculations did not.

Reading the whole of the founders makes distinguishing between these two elements fairly easy. As Keyhoe went forward leading NICAP, he wrote other books. The further they get to modern times, the less reliable are his sources, except when he is depending on NICAP's own case files. By the time Aliens From Space shows up, it's caveat emptor. The only way to protect yourself in this is to be a historian. ----------------------------

The next guy in the collage is Dr. Hynek. His whole life was a puzzlement with the phenomenon that apes his expression in the picture. But regardless of what some may wish to think [negatively] about him, he was the second most important person in the field. This is because Hynek was on the "inside", albeit on the outer, naive layer of that "Inside". As scientific consultant to the Project, he watched the circus that was Blue Book across the years, and later gave us his all-to-rare first-hand look. Hynek's critique of USAF handling of UFOs is, taken in whole, devastating. One shouldn't undervalue the importance of obliterating the idea that the military did anything like a solid and honest job. Conspiracy commentary is useless. Facts, such as Hynek gives, are Truth. Then, in the more admirable part of his UFO involvements, [when he no longer hoped that his role with the Air Force would produce real results], Hynek, perhaps more by accident but at least somewhat by design, created many UFOlogically-important things. His two books, The UFO Experience [ the closest thing the field has to a textbook] and The Hynek UFO Report [another invaluable historical insight into military malfunction as well as key cases], should be on must-read lists. He also created CUFOS and a fine magazine [IUR] and a few high-quality symposia and a soft network [the "Invisible College"] of scientists, and generally pointed the way to where we had to go if we were ever to be a real field of study. We, of course, never made the effort. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The third guy in that collage is Edward Ruppelt. Captain Ruppelt was the project head on Blue Book during late 1951 through early 1953. He therefore was "on seat" during the great wave of 1952, a coincidence for which we should be grateful. We should be grateful because Ed Ruppelt wanted to write up his experiences [and others', as he heard of them ] in the UFO field from the government side of the mirror. His terrific book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, was the result. This thing should be read by everyone really interested in UFOs.

Ruppelt undoubtedly wrote the book to make some extra money as he began his civilian life [a not uncommon practice ] but that doesn't mean it's not accurate. The great UFO icon, James McDonald, constantly referred to it in his research, and said that his later research into Blue Book records surprised him constantly about Ruppelt's straightforward reporting of the case data as he knew it. But this isn't the whole story on why Ruppelt is important. What Ruppelt's book did was to say to the serious readers of works like Keyhoe's, "My goodness, Keyhoe is apparently right about the reality of UFOs."

Even though Ruppelt is astonishingly careful about his own opinions, they don't make any difference in the end. [some have tried to make this a big deal; whether he "really believed" in UFOs himself]. What did make a difference is how the facts as reported by Ruppelt affected young readers of the subject--we were stunned and pleased and captivated--some of us for life. I have met more life-time UFOlogists of my generation who were turned into that by Ruppelt than any other source. It's Ruppelt's inside information AND his unintended "children" that are his contribution to the field.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ted Bloecher. What can you say about Ted Bloecher that isn't good UFOlogically? Ted would probably insist that his great colleagues, Isabel Davis and Alexander Mebane, from the early CSI-NY be with him on this Hall-Of-Fame stage, and I'd not balk at that--they were probably the greatest team of researchers that we've had. Sadly, if you have no access to the CSI newsletters nor their files and correspondence, you'll never know much about Isabel nor Lex. Access to Ted's production isn't much better, alas, but there are a few monographs [like his 1947 wave collection, and his breakout "little people" publication on Kelly/Hopkinsville's case (with Isabel) ] and some articles [like the New Berlin "landing" case in Flying Saucer Review] , but it is his beginning of the Humanoid Study Group which had the biggest impact. The HSG collected the "forbidden" occupant cases from all over the world [work done with Dave Webb] and led to this aspect of UFOlogy emerging from the darkness and ultimately to the HUMCAT catalog [and massive listings like that of Albert Rosales on the web today]. Many of the cases are bunk, and others probably have nothing to do with UFOs, but the philosophy here, at these early stages, was to collect everything that was not a hoax and begin to sift from there. Part of the "sifting" led to the emergence of Budd Hopkins as a colleague of Ted's, and ultimately [amazingly quickly actually] to Missing Time and the whole of modern CE4 ideas. Ted throughout this was the model of discipline and restraint, even in the face of an unmanageable torrent of information.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Beside Ted on the collage is UFOlogy's scientific volcano, Dr. James McDonald. Big Mac brought more depth science and more intensity to the work than any other human. As he was an atmospheric physicist of some repute, he had both skill and contacts to lay to rest many, many erroneous "explanations" for cases [particularly involving radar but many others as well] which had been floated by the deliberate debunking of the Air Force or Uber-debunker Donald Menzel. McDonald was able to show that such debunks were at best overstated, and usually completely wrong to the point that you wondered about intellectual dishonesty by their creators. McDonald's works are also hard to come by since he never wrote a book. Trickles of his analyses appear in Flying Saucer Review or Astronautics and Aeronautics [the AAIA journal] and in the famous House [of Representatives} Symposium on UFOs. Once a collection of his privately-published [often as lecture handouts] papers was made available by the Fund For UFO Research. McDonald destroyed Menzel's dishonest debunkings. McDonald scathingly criticized and cleansed the Colorado "Scientific" Study. His fire also caused a few problems for the field, but on balance he stands like a scientific mountain.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dick Hall. Talk about being there consistently for the long trek. We just lost him so his active trek is over, but prior to that, Dick ran NICAP for most of its existence, helped originate the UFO Research Coalition and The Fund For UFO Research, made the MUFON Journal, for a while, a respectable, accurate purveyor of, particularly, good non-American case reports..and a lot of else. Fortunately for us Dick DID write books, and they should be read.

I recommend NICAP's assault weapon to Congress, The UFO Evidence, and his much-later follow-up, The UFO Evidence Two, and his third case book, Uninvited Guests. Frankly, anything you can read of his will advance your understanding of the field.-------------------------

Coral Lorenzen, the pretty lady with the no-nonsense brain, who founded APRO way back in 1952, and carried it forward until it and she died together. Coral was a tough cookie who held her organizational power a bit too tightly as the years went by [why APRO didn't survive her] but in her early years refused to cave in to others opinions, whether those of the military [who DID visit her] or other elements in UFOlogy, who thought certain types of cases weren't worth taking seriously.

For that we owe Coral what early awareness that we have concerning "occupant" reports and her opening up of the rest of the world's cases [particularly those of South America] for U.S. consideration. Coral, sometimes with her husband Jim, wrote a bunch of books. As with Keyhoe, the earlier the book the better.[try the poorly-named The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, as an example of one her better ones].

Coral's true "best" comes in her APRO Bulletin, where the UFOlogy experience of the world is often displayed. As a side-effect, the "war" that occurred between her and Walt Andrus in the late 1970's led to the growth of MUFON as a national rather than a regional UFO organization

Aime Michel. Smart. Clear. Intellectually-adept and extremely well educated. Impressive here across-the-pond by us Yanks. I'll leave it to our French brothers to correct our distant impression of Michel's worthiness, but to us he seems a giant indeed. He came into French UFOlogy behind the interesting Jimmy Guieu and between them give the english-reading person a rather full appreciation for the famous [and wild] 1954 European wave from the French perspective. Read Michel's The Truth About Flying Saucers. He also came up with a bold and creative concept which, if true, would clinch not only the reality and intelligent-activity of the phenomenon,but also part of the agenda.

I believe, like most of my colleagues, that this brilliant idea turns out to NOT match the facts in the end, but it is none less praiseworthy as a great try. The book incorporating the idea has many useful facts even if the over-all theory is not supported by later analysis. Flying Saucers and the Straight-line Mystery is still a good book and we owe the English versions of both of these to CSI-NY , especially Isabel Davis, and most especially Lex Mebane. Michel wrote many intelligent things for FSR and they stand today as some of the brightest writings anywhere.

As a historical aside, Michel's case files blew Allen Hynek away when he visited him in France while still working for the Air Force. And Michel was formative in Jacques Vallee's development, and in his contacting Hynek about him, leading to their collaboration and all that entailed.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jacques Vallee. The UFO master when it comes to grass-roots science in the field. [ I use this phrase with some thought. Jacques applied statistical analysis to the great pile of individual anecdotes, attempting to squeeze out of them "universal" patterns. If, in my view, the agents behind the phenomenon were not so careful to not allow such universal patterns, in the interest of their desire to remain culturally-covert, Jacques would have found them. This is the application of the beginnings of the scientific methodology--the discovery from raw facts of the behavior of any new phenomenon--i.e. the "How" of nature. ] His work, based in his own attitude towards the value of statistics and some inspiration by David Saunders, led to his two great books, Challenge to Science and Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which can be argued as the two most consistently written scientific books on the subject. Vallee wrote many other increasingly-controversial books, all of which are creative attempts to unlock the ultimate mystery, since he became convinced that science could not do so. My personal opinion is that these theories, while bright and honest, do not explain the mystery, particularly in its majority. But the wonderful Passport to Magonia does, for me, point to a minor fraction of it, and for that guide I am grateful to Jacques. All of his books are interesting, but if you can only read a bit, make it Challenge and Anatomy, and give a peek at Magonia.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Last man standing, or in this case sitting on his couch with his buddy Gordon Creighton, is Charles Bowen. Bowen did not found Flying Saucer Review but he did upgrade it to the flagship journal of the field. FSR did not intend to be an academic journal, but an information-sharing one. If anyone was hoping to learn what was going on with the phenomenon, they had better read FSR. The strength of the journal was its worldwide coverage.

Creighton, as an almost universal translator, was mainly responsible for this, while Bowen, as Editor-in-chief exercised an admirable touch---allowing speculation within reason while not succumbing to the temptation to go wildly "native", as the Brits would say. Anyone who does not have access to FSR, and can balance it with the Halls, Hyneks, and McDonalds of U.S. UFOlogy will probably play hob trying to get a proper grip on what has happened in the field.

There are a few other great references of course not directly associated with these ten giants. David Jacobs' UFO Controversy in America is one. Jerry Clark's UFO Encyclopedia is another. Barry Greenwood and Larry Fawcett's Clear Intent is a third. I'll stop there. If your own favorite wasn't mentioned, I apologize. This is just a blog afterall. Peace.

Labels: UFO history; UFO references; UFO researchers: UFO Hall of Fame; Don Keyhoe; Allen Hynek; James McDonald; Ed Ruppelt; Ted Bloecher; Dick Hall; Coral Lorenzen; Aime Michel; Jacques Vallee; Charles Bowen

link; http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/...t-to-know.html

Great work, james.

One of the best threads on the DI forum.

jamesc · 15-06-2012, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theabbot 7

any new news?

There is a thread dictated to any recent UFO sightings called "UFO REPORTS" which i admit deals mainly with lots of posts pertaining to u-tube videos of latest UFO sightings and do not go into any great detail but the aim of this thread is in the title of this thread which is called "UFO/Alien Chronological Thread Directory"

My aim and intention of this thread was to list historical UFO cases ect with a purpose of feeding all the information ect i could possibly list on various UFO cases from the 40s onwards, my other aim was to create a sort of information highway with follow up links for those regarding this subject as serious enough to do a bit of their own follow ups and research .

jamesc · 15-06-2012, 06:14 PM

Thought this case was worth including and is one that has raised a few questions of what actually was observed by an RAF pilot and also picked up on radar.

************************************************** *************

The UFO sighting that convinced a Government minister; 1952;

quote;
"One of the most tantalising ever accounts of an apparent encounter with a UFO – deemed so credible it apparently convinced a British minister – can be told for the first time".

After the sighting, Hughes – who was known as Sam, after a character created by Stanley Holloway, the actor and comedian – was nicknamed 'Saucer Sam' by colleagues, who painted a cartoon of a flying saucer on his jet.

The RAF logbook of Flight Sergeant Roland Hughes;

It is one of the most tantalising ever official accounts of an encounter with a UFO – deemed so credible it even convinced the government minister who investigated it.

Now, for the first time, the sighting of a flying saucer by an RAF fighter pilot and the subsequent high level inquiry it prompted can be revealed.
The sighting occurred in 30 July 1952, when Flight Sergeant Roland Hughes was on a training flight over West Germany in a de Havilland Vampire FB9.
As he was returning to base, he reported being intercepted by a "gleaming silver, metallic disc" which flew alongside his aircraft before speeding off.

The mystery object was also detected by RAF radars on the ground, which recorded it travelling at speeds far in excess of any known aircraft.
Hughes reported the sighting to his senior officers who sent him to see Duncan Sandys, the then aviation minister, to brief him personally.

Following the meeting, Sandys went on to tell senior civil servants he was convinced by the airman's story.

The UFO sighting is not only one of the most detailed by a serving member of the armed forces but also shows how seriously such reports were taken by the authorities. British governments have historically downplayed the suggestion that such sightings have been investigated.

The existence of the sighting has emerged in papers released by the Churchill Archive, at Cambridge University. The centre contains the papers of Sir Winston Churchill, as well as Sandys, who married the former prime minister's daughter, Diana.

In one document – written a few days after the interview with the 23-year-old Hughes – Sandys tells the government's chief scientist, Lord Cherwell, about the meeting and states that he found the airman's account and the supporting evidence from radar "convincing".

The sighting came shortly after a number of similar "flying saucer" reports from US airmen and Sandys added: "I have no doubt at all that (Hughes) saw a phenomenon similar to that described by numerous observers in the United States."

Lord Cherwell had dismissed the US sightings as "mass psychology", but in his memo Sandys takes him to task for this attitude and makes clear his position on the existence of UFOs.

The minister, who was later promoted to Defence Secretary, went on: "Until some satisfactory scientific explanation can be provided, it would be most unwise to accept without further question the view that 'flying saucers' can be dismissed as 'a mild form of hysteria'." Sandys also wrote that there was "ample evidence of some unfamiliar and unexplained phenomenon".
The documents are among thousands released by the archive in recent years.

Their disclosures were uncovered by David Clarke, a Sheffield Hallam
University academic, while he was conducting research for a new edition of a book he has written on UFO sightings for the National Archives.
By chance, shortly after his discovery, Dr Clarke was contacted by the fighter pilot's son, who had read the earlier edition and wanted to share information about his father's sighting.

Roland Hughes had died in 2009, aged 79, but had recounted his version of events to his son, Brian, who passed on the account to Dr Clarke, as well as his father's log book, in which he had noted the sighting and subsequent meeting with Sandys.

The incident will now feature in the latest edition of the book, to be released in September, following the release this summer of more government UFO files from the National Archives.

In the airman's account, relayed via his son, he was in one of four aircraft from No. 20 Squadron, of the RAF's 2nd Tactical Air Force, returning to RAF Oldenburg, in northern West Germany, flying in formation at high altitude in clear visibility.

He reported seeing a sudden flash of "silver light" in they sky high above him which rapidly descended towards him until he could see that it was a "gleaming silver-metallic disc".

The airman said its surface was shiny, "like tin foil", and "without a single crease or crinkle in it". He could see, with "astonishing clarity", the aircraft's "highly reflective and absolutely seamless metallic-looking surface". He estimated its size at 100ft across – "about the wingspan of a Lancaster bomber".

It flew alongside him for several seconds before flying off at great speed.
None of the other three pilots saw the object – it is thought because they were all executing a "banking turn" at the time and would not have been looking in the right direction – but radar on the ground had picked it up.
Six days later, Hughes – who later worked as a commercial airline pilot – was sent to RAF Fassberg, another base in northern West Germany, to give his account to senior RAF officers and Sandys himself, who was visiting. The minister's first question to Hughes was how many beers he had had the night before.

After the sighting, Hughes – who was known as Sam, after a character created by Stanley Holloway, the actor and comedian – was nicknamed "Saucer Sam" by colleagues, who painted a cartoon of a flying saucer on his jet.

Brian Hughes, 45, a Ministry of Defence civil servant based at Bovington Camp, in Dorset, said: "We knew about the sighting in the family when we were growing up but my father didn't talk about it a lot. We learned about it more from prompting him.

"He was very matter-of-fact about what he saw, just describing the details. He never did any research into UFO or flying saucers and didn't have any interest in the supernatural of science fiction.

"If it was someone other than my father who had told this story, I would be sceptical. He once said to me 'People think you're mad if you say you've seen a flying saucer – I've only ever seen one once; I've never seen one since.'"

Dr Clarke, who is sceptic on UFO issues, said: "There is absolutely no doubt that something was seen by Hughes. He is not making this up. But the only honest position to take is that we don't know what it was. But there could be some sort of scientific explanation, before you start jumping to conclusions about alien visitors."

link; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-minister.html

jamesc · 17-06-2012, 08:00 PM

The Brazilian military authorities were one of the first countries to start releasing declassified UFO documents and i regard this as a very significant step in the road towards possible full scale disclosure.The below text makes some very interesting reading given the fact that these revelations are coming from credible military sources who after investigation's on UFOs reported in Brazil are treating this subject very seriously indeed.

************************************************** *************

Confirmation That UFOs Are Solid and Under Intelligent Control - Claims Brazilian Military. October 26, 2009;

summary;
A. J. Gevaerd studied Chemistry in several universities in Brazil. In 1986, he quit his carrier as a Chemistry teacher to research flying saucers full time. A. J. is the founder and editor of the Brazilian UFO Magazine. He is also founder and director of the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research, the largest organization of its type in South America, with over 1,200 members. For the past 19 years has been the only full time UFO researcher in Brazil.

In 1983, he was appointed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek to be the representative of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Brazil. A. J. is the creator of the group UFOs: Freedom of Information Now. He heads this Brazilian Committee of UFO researchers, that has recently examined secret UFO docs in Brazil's official military UFO disclosure.

quote;

"As I have informed before, the Brazilian Government declassified a few weeks ago a new set of previously secret UFO documents, covering the 80s. I also informed you that we already had disclosures covering the 50s, 60s and 70s. They have been doing the releases by decade. So far over 4,000 pages and 300 photos have been disclosed. This time declassification, the 80s, is composed of some 800 pages and is very powerful."

Among the documents released are the reports of UFOs on May 19, 1986, considered the 'Official UFO Night in Brazil', when 21 spherical objects, estimated 100 meters in diameter - according to military sources - literally jammed air traffic over the major Braziian Airports, when several Mirage and F5 jets were scrambled to pursue them for ours.

As most of you already know, at that time the Air Force minister Octavio Moreira Lima went public on national TV networks about it the other morning. The pilots and their commanders also spoke freely about the pursuits, which occurred over several hours. This was a major thing in Brazil.

Now, when on TV to the whole Nation, the Moreira Lima promised that a full report would be issued about the events, considering the air-air and air-land radar detections and the pilot pursuing, and it would be available in 30 days. And as most of the things that happen in my country, when governmental promises are involved, this so expected document was never known.

Now we know why!

Among the important files just released in the 80s package, there it is a certain ‘Occurrence Report’, dated June 02, 1986, just a few days after the ‘invasion’ by 21 UFOs of the most developed areas in the country. It has 8 pages and is signed by Air Brigadier Jose Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, acting commander of the Brazilian Air Command of Air Defense (COMDA). Now, what this report contains is very interesting, and I quote its Final Considerations part:

1. Based on the analysis of above-reported events, it is this Command’s opinion that, according to the information from the controllers, pilots and previously elaborated reports from I Cindacta (Air Traffic Control and Aerial Defense Center), that there are some points of coincidence regarding radar echoes, accelerations, illumination, velocities and behavior, either by technical detection or by visual contact.

2. Some of those coinciding points that we can name are those phenomena which exhibited certain constant characteristics, as follows:

a. Produced radar echoes, not only on the Air Defense System, but also on the intercepting airplanes simultaneously, with visual comparisons by the pilots.

b. Change in velocity, from subsonic to supersonic, besides hovering capability.

c. Varied altitude, from below FL-050 to altitudes above FL-400.

d. Occasionally seen as white, green and yellow lights, and sometimes no luminous indication.

e. Sudden acceleration and deceleration.

And there is more. In the Item 3 of the Final Considerations part, the Occurrence Report says clearly that ‘the phenomenon (UFOs) is solid and reflects intelligence’. See it in full:

3. As a conclusion of the observed constant facts in almost all presentations, it is the opinion of this Command that the phenomenon is solid and reflects intelligence by its capacity to follow and sustain distance from the observers, as well as to fly in formation, and are not necessarily manned craft.

I have asked our volunteers Edison Hashida, Simon Levy and Marcos Malvezzi to translate the material and I have it for you for download. You can have both the full original document, in Portuguese, as well as the English version, both in PDF format at:

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/night

Occurrence Report - Original.pdf
Occurrence Report - Translated.pdf

I believe that this is one of the most powerful existing documents revealing the reality of the UFO phenomena, now fully admitted by our military authorities. We are now working to have more than 600 pages translated, and next Sunday I will interview the former Air Force minister Socrates Monteiro, another authority and officer in Brazil that decided to come public about what he knows and accept to receive me. He was the commander of the Air Traffic Control and Aerial Defense Center (Cindacta).

This is all a direct result of the campaign UFOs: Freedom Of Information Now, promoted since 2004 by the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers. All thousands of pages and hundreds of photos since the 50s given to the Committee are available for download in the Brazilian UFO Magazine website as well as physically at the National Archives, in Brasilia.

In late July, hundreds of papers from the Brazilian Air Force's official System for the Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (SIOANI) have demonstrated how the nation's military authorities dealt with the UFO Phenomena in the 60s and 70s.

The Brazilian UFO Magazine website - www.ufo.com.br - has over 1,600 pages of documents, 200 photos for download of SIOANI's activities and Operation Saucer, carried out in the Amazonian region in 1977. Along with documents received by the Committee from other military sources.

Included in the recently revealed documents are the detailed research proceedings carried out in dozens of UFO-related incidents which had not been made public previously. Some of the colored sketches of UFO incidents investigated by SIOANI are here:

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/sioani/
www.ufo.com.br/documentos/prato/
www.ufo.com.br/documentos/extra/
www.ufo.com.br/documentos/geral/
www.ufo.com.br/documentos/anos_80/
www.ufo.com.br/documentos/novos/

Please note: Download, print, publicize and otherwise share these documents, but please do not fail to mention the source, Brazilian UFO Magazine, and emphasize that this material is public thanks to the efforts of the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers (CBU).

By closing, let me tell you all, as previously posted here, that the recent disclosures proves that Brazil was the first country in the world ever to officially and publicly admit the reality of the UFO Phenomena, and the first one to investigate it openly, in a not secret manner.

link source; http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1009/i...nt-control.php

jamesc · 23-06-2012, 03:13 PM

When not only the general public but occasionally the scientific community hear of a UFO report that is causing a stir due to either credible witnesses ect bearing witnessed to it through the main stream media it is generally pushed aside or dismissed by the scientific academic community, (who through a highly successful debunking campaign that was the USAF UFO investigation projects named,"BLUE BOOK, "PROJECT GRUDGE" AND "THE CONDON REPORT").

This debunking campaign under the three main governmental UFO investigation's that where carried out in the 50s/60s was to have a major say and impact on any real scientific academics putting time and effort into this subject.In short this campaign ended any real seriousness or advancements of understandings in those UFO reports that to this day defy any real mundane or known explanations.

Below is some information on the very important points raised on this official debunking campaign and not a lot of people ,(be they sceptics,debunkers, ridiculer"s or even believers), know of the official behind scenes UFO debunking campaign that was presented to the public and scientific community, hopefully this post can shed or even encourage some light on this very highly important historical situation that was to influence and shape any future scientific research or the public's perception that was and still is heavily influenced by the style of the main stream media's reporting.

************************************************** *************

SCIENCE and the UFO CONTROVERSY;

"Mainstream science has not satisfactorily engaged with the UFO mystery. The disappointing history of that engagement will be discussed here and what can be done and should be done will be covered here."

quote;
"43 years ago the controversy plagued Colorado University Condon committee scientific study of UFOs was released – the result of a two year US Air Force half a million dollar funded investigation. It concluded “that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of the UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”

The US Air force used the report to end its public bondage to the UFO problem. The notorious Project Blue Book was terminated and publicly at least the Air Force were out of the UFO business. This was the “fix” that was intended all along. The Condon report has since been used as the basis of continuing mainstream scientific and sceptical rejection of the reality of UFOs.

Just how credible was the Condon report and its conclusions? The National Academy of Sciences endorsed the study. Much of the media uncritically embraced the report. UFOs were dead and buried. However no one informed the UFO corpse. In 1973 UFOs were back with a vengeance in the one of the biggest UFO waves the US had ever experienced. UFOs have refused to be put down and they continue to be reported and continue to be marginalised by science.

The spectre of Charles Fort’s “procession of the damned” has been played out. “By the damned, (Fort meant) the excluded.” He wrote in his classic narrative engagement with the unknown and the unidentified, “The Book of the Damned,” “We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.”

When it comes to credibility as a scientific report the Condon Report is hugely controversial. The problems and dubious background of the study have been widely reported. For example “the inside story by an ex-member of the official study group” appeared in book form just before the Condon Report was finally published. “UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee went Wrong” by David Saunders and R. Harkins revealed the tumultuous history of the Condon UFO project.

Its internal problems during the course of the study had also been aired in spectacular fashion in Look magazine in May of 1968, when journalist John Fuller wrote “Colorado UFO Fiasco” which leaked the notorious Low “trick” memo, in which Robert Low, who would be the study coordinator under Professor Edward Condon the project head. Low wrote, “The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.

One way to do this would be to stress investigation, not of the physical phenomena, but rather of the people who do the observing – the psychology and sociology of the persons and groups who report seeing UFO’s. If the emphasis were put here, rather than on examination of the old question of the physical reality of the saucer, I think the scientific community would quickly get the message.”

"Professor Condon played that game throughout the study and was over the top with his lack of objectivity and his focus on the obviously dubious side of the subject – the contactees and the silly stories, that didn’t require any scientific investigation to show them up as nothing of merit. His biases were revealed in his “Conclusions and Recommendations” in the final report. Stanford University astrophysicist Peter Sturrock examined the report in close detail, something the National Academy of Sciences review panel and the media failed to do. Professor Sturrock found what I found as a budding researcher reading the Condon Report in detail.

There was a huge disconnection between Condon’s conclusions, report summaries and the detail of the actual report and studies of the scientists who did the actual investigations and research. Sturrock’s analysis revealed Condon’s summaries variously misleading, false or inaccurate. For example Condon indicated that the project’s investigator/photoanalyst Dr. Hartmann had solved all the UFO photographic cases. Hartmann’s conclusion for the famous 1950 McMinnville photos in the Condon Report:

“This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of metres in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within the sight of two witnesses.”

This was one of the more obvious contradictions between Dr. Condon’s conclusions and summaries and the actual substance of the report itself. There are certainly others, sufficient to question why the National Academy of Science endorsed the report. Professor Sturrock would later direct a major review of the physical evidence for UFOs.

While it didn’t prove that UFOs were alien for example, it certainly endorsed the need for further serious and well funded scientific study. Sturrock’s review was published as the first major scientific inquiry since the Condon report, “The UFO Enigma” (1999). It is an excellent review of the physical evidence for UFOs. Read in conjunction with Richard Hall’s excellent 30 year review sequel to his classic 1964 “UFO evidence”, the year 2000 Volume 11 of “The UFO Evidence” you have a compelling case for the validity of the UFO subject.

And yet very few sceptics, few scientists and certainly few media commentators are aware of either study. They trot out the Condon Report as if it is a credible study. When pressed they haven’t read it or they have only bothered with the disconnected “conclusions and recommendations” of Dr. Condon. They haven’t properly evaluated the Condon Report and they haven’t even examined any of the controversy and debate about the report.

Few if any realised that other scientists also examined the Condon Report and came to different conclusions and also saw the obvious disconnections between Condon’s own conclusions and recommendations, and the body of the report. An extraordinary example of this situation can be found in Dr. Claude Poher’s response to the Condon Report. He was with the French equivalent to NASA – CNES. Examining the Condon Report in detail he found that contrary to Condon, the report substantiated that there was a real UFO problem. An examination of the report indicates that about a third of the cases examined for the Condon Report were unexplained. What did Poher do? Well he would eventually win support for the establishment of GEPAN – a UFO study group within CNES, which went on to do some excellent research, some of which went a long way to supporting a UFO reality, not the least being the Trans-en Provence case of 1981, in which a UFO landed and left behind compelling physical evidence – a ground trace that yielded fascinating data. If many of the thousands of the worldwide physical trace cases received similar attention as the Trans-en Provence case we would have a compelling body of physical evidence data. Instead we have thousands of lost opportunities – a huge measure of the failure of mainstream science to properly examine a real UFO phenomenon.

Roy Craig was a major field investigator for the Condon study. As a physical chemist like myself I found some affinity for his memoir published in 1995 as “UFOs – An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence.” Craig felt the American public got a “good” report out of the Condon report
His memoir gave this take, “Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote.

that the American public did not understand the importance in our society of the “no-business meeting,” that is, a meeting whose purpose was not to conduct business, but to give the impression that business was being conducted. Bob Low’s indiscreet paragraph in his office memorandum suggested the Colorado Study would be a “no-business” investigation. Dogmatic views like that of Condon … would fit a situation in which a “no-business” non-investigation would be appropriate.

The contents of (Craig’s memoir), however, as well as the full contents of the Condon Report, show that the American public got a real “business” investigation in the Colorado Project, regardless of the implications of the Low’s office memorandum, regardless of the possible appropriateness of a non-investigation, and regardless of the campaign of magazines and newspapers to convince the public otherwise.”

Despite Craig’s somewhat myopic and limited take on his time as a key player in the controversial Condon UFO study, there are still some matters emerging that seem to substantiate the severe credibility problems it had, and it was Roy Craig who had an indirect role, albeit after his death.

It is important to note that despite the damage done and the massive misdirection that occurred with the mainstream scientific community and the media, there were some positive outgrowths of the notorious Condon committee report. David Saunders and Roger Harkins in their 1969 book “UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee went wrong” tried to spell out the problem at the time but were largely ignored in the tidal wave of myopic mainstream acceptance of the Condon report.

Roy Craig’s own 1995 book “UFOs – An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence” has some insights but it was from within his personal papers and documents that the “smoking gun” of deception and misdirection may have emerged. We have seen in a positive sense the published Condon report made some scientist realise that there was a real UFO problem worthy of scientific attention, despite Edward Condon’s negative conclusions to the contrary.

Dr. Claude Poher, of the French equivalent to NASA read the report in depth and saw the huge disconnection between Condon’s conclusion and the full report itself. As I showed, this led Poher to work towards getting GEPAN formed. Gildas Bourdais provides an excellent summary of GEPAN’s history in the International UFO Reporter (IUR) Volume 31 Number 2 (June 2007): "The Death and Rebirth of official French UFO Studies"). GEPAN and its variations had to also run a difficult course through politics, mainstream scientific scepticism and clandestine militarism but much good work was achieved.

Of possible critical significance is the emergence in 2009 of documented evidence that confirms the dubious nature of the 1969 Condon report that has so sidetracked the interest of mainstream science in UFOs. Documents found in the papers of the late Roy Craig, confirm that the report chairman Dr. Edward Condon had drafted his negative conclusions about the UFO subject “without benefit of prior reading of the other sections of the report which were by (then) near completion.”

The Craig papers also reveal that despite publicly reporting over 30 % “unknowns” in the final report (and astonishingly reporting that there was nothing of scientific worth to the UFO subject) the reality was that more than 50% were “unknown.”

A confidential 3 page memo to Condon dated 5 September 1968 from Joseph Rush, a National Centre for Atmospheric Research physicist and Condon UFO project investigator revealed that despite growing more sceptical in the Condon study environment, the irony was so many of their investigations had ended up as unexplained cases. Rush wrote, “This may seem an anomalous conclusion, since more of the C-cases (Colorado University cases) are unexplained than explained.”

Most UFO researchers who have examined the controversy in detail, particularly the “devil in the detail” behind the Condon report are hardly surprised by such revelations. Dr. Michael Swords, who wrote an excellent review of the Condon study in the CUFOS Journal of UFO Studies Volume 6, 1995/1996, and who has undertaken a detailed study of Roy Craig’s papers is not surprised. He told me the Condon report was a “political and sociological response” to the USAF’s UFO “problem.”

As such it was an effective response providing the Air Force with an “escape clause” from its UFO nightmare. Well, the nightmare continues and the UFO “corpse” is alive and well. UFOs relentlessly continue their march of the “damned” and still await the serious open and scientific attention they deserve.

link; http://scienceandtheufocontroversy.blogspot.com.es/

03-05-2012, 06:30 PM	#501
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	'Want to understand UFOs?' Get to know UFOlogy's Just a wee heads up here aimed at those who are maybe still unfamiliar with the primary investigators or sources who have brought "UFOLOGY" to the forefront of public perceptions in other words Get to know UFOlogy's Founders. ************************************************ ********* quote; "Dr. James McDonald brought more depth science and more intensity to the work than any other human. As he was an atmospheric physicist of some repute, he had both skill and contacts to lay to rest many, many erroneous "explanations" for cases" ********************************************** ************ Aristotle told his impatient student, Alexander the Great, "There is no 'Royal Road' to Geometry." There isn't one to UFOlogy either. I can promise you that if you are not extremely perceptive [and a bit lucky], you cannot get an accurate picture of what's known vs. what's responsibly guessed vs. what's full-of-errors vs. what's full-of-worse by merely scavenging about on the internet. The only Road to actually knowing something about this field is to lean heavily on its founders--that means to learn its history. This post is in aid of that. It is lightyears from sufficient, obviously, but it may serve someone as a door. The downside of this is that if one really wanted to know anything about this field, one would have to be willing to put in some real time and some real work [that much anyone can decide to do on their own], but also to have the resources available to them to do so [and that few people, unfortunately have]. In my viewing of the web, the status of UFO information resident here is not quite yet at the level which would support a dedicated "student" in the quest. This is because, even if a report is available in full here and there [as they are for USAF's Project Blue Book on Footnote. com] a relative "rookie" does not have the "historical context" to aid in the interpretation of that report. It is advantageous to be able to read what the past giants had to say about the period, the USAF handling, the "similar cases" to get perspective. This is not to say that the giants were perfect. All of them were/are human and had strengths and weaknesses. But understood as a whole, their cumulative insights and facts are the beginnings of a good guide. This post is one guy's [mine] foggy view on these founders and what they gave to us. It's no history. We can't dedicate 600 pages for that. It's just a window from which to describe [a little] and give praise [a lot] to some folks who made a difference. Don Keyhoe is, in this person's opinion, the most important person in UFO history. Fiery and adamantly insistent, Keyhoe carried the field through a sustained flak attack from the Air Force, aimed a destroying it. At our distance from him, what we should do for our own benefit is to read his first two books: Flying Saucers Are Real and Flying Saucers From Outer Space. These things are important to the field because Keyhoe had many contacts inside the military and the vast majority of the factual things transmitted to him turned out to be real. A good number of the speculations did not. Reading the whole of the founders makes distinguishing between these two elements fairly easy. As Keyhoe went forward leading NICAP, he wrote other books. The further they get to modern times, the less reliable are his sources, except when he is depending on NICAP's own case files. By the time Aliens From Space shows up, it's caveat emptor. The only way to protect yourself in this is to be a historian. ---------------------------- The next guy in the collage is Dr. Hynek. His whole life was a puzzlement with the phenomenon that apes his expression in the picture. But regardless of what some may wish to think [negatively] about him, he was the second most important person in the field. This is because Hynek was on the "inside", albeit on the outer, naive layer of that "Inside". As scientific consultant to the Project, he watched the circus that was Blue Book across the years, and later gave us his all-to-rare first-hand look. Hynek's critique of USAF handling of UFOs is, taken in whole, devastating. One shouldn't undervalue the importance of obliterating the idea that the military did anything like a solid and honest job. Conspiracy commentary is useless. Facts, such as Hynek gives, are Truth. Then, in the more admirable part of his UFO involvements, [when he no longer hoped that his role with the Air Force would produce real results], Hynek, perhaps more by accident but at least somewhat by design, created many UFOlogically-important things. His two books, The UFO Experience [ the closest thing the field has to a textbook] and The Hynek UFO Report [another invaluable historical insight into military malfunction as well as key cases], should be on must-read lists. He also created CUFOS and a fine magazine [IUR] and a few high-quality symposia and a soft network [the "Invisible College"] of scientists, and generally pointed the way to where we had to go if we were ever to be a real field of study. We, of course, never made the effort. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The third guy in that collage is Edward Ruppelt. Captain Ruppelt was the project head on Blue Book during late 1951 through early 1953. He therefore was "on seat" during the great wave of 1952, a coincidence for which we should be grateful. We should be grateful because Ed Ruppelt wanted to write up his experiences [and others', as he heard of them ] in the UFO field from the government side of the mirror. His terrific book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, was the result. This thing should be read by everyone really interested in UFOs. Ruppelt undoubtedly wrote the book to make some extra money as he began his civilian life [a not uncommon practice ] but that doesn't mean it's not accurate. The great UFO icon, James McDonald, constantly referred to it in his research, and said that his later research into Blue Book records surprised him constantly about Ruppelt's straightforward reporting of the case data as he knew it. But this isn't the whole story on why Ruppelt is important. What Ruppelt's book did was to say to the serious readers of works like Keyhoe's, "My goodness, Keyhoe is apparently right about the reality of UFOs." Even though Ruppelt is astonishingly careful about his own opinions, they don't make any difference in the end. [some have tried to make this a big deal; whether he "really believed" in UFOs himself]. What did make a difference is how the facts as reported by Ruppelt affected young readers of the subject--we were stunned and pleased and captivated--some of us for life. I have met more life-time UFOlogists of my generation who were turned into that by Ruppelt than any other source. It's Ruppelt's inside information AND his unintended "children" that are his contribution to the field.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ted Bloecher. What can you say about Ted Bloecher that isn't good UFOlogically? Ted would probably insist that his great colleagues, Isabel Davis and Alexander Mebane, from the early CSI-NY be with him on this Hall-Of-Fame stage, and I'd not balk at that--they were probably the greatest team of researchers that we've had. Sadly, if you have no access to the CSI newsletters nor their files and correspondence, you'll never know much about Isabel nor Lex. Access to Ted's production isn't much better, alas, but there are a few monographs [like his 1947 wave collection, and his breakout "little people" publication on Kelly/Hopkinsville's case (with Isabel) ] and some articles [like the New Berlin "landing" case in Flying Saucer Review] , but it is his beginning of the Humanoid Study Group which had the biggest impact. The HSG collected the "forbidden" occupant cases from all over the world [work done with Dave Webb] and led to this aspect of UFOlogy emerging from the darkness and ultimately to the HUMCAT catalog [and massive listings like that of Albert Rosales on the web today]. Many of the cases are bunk, and others probably have nothing to do with UFOs, but the philosophy here, at these early stages, was to collect everything that was not a hoax and begin to sift from there. Part of the "sifting" led to the emergence of Budd Hopkins as a colleague of Ted's, and ultimately [amazingly quickly actually] to Missing Time and the whole of modern CE4 ideas. Ted throughout this was the model of discipline and restraint, even in the face of an unmanageable torrent of information.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Beside Ted on the collage is UFOlogy's scientific volcano, Dr. James McDonald. Big Mac brought more depth science and more intensity to the work than any other human. As he was an atmospheric physicist of some repute, he had both skill and contacts to lay to rest many, many erroneous "explanations" for cases [particularly involving radar but many others as well] which had been floated by the deliberate debunking of the Air Force or Uber-debunker Donald Menzel. McDonald was able to show that such debunks were at best overstated, and usually completely wrong to the point that you wondered about intellectual dishonesty by their creators. McDonald's works are also hard to come by since he never wrote a book. Trickles of his analyses appear in Flying Saucer Review or Astronautics and Aeronautics [the AAIA journal] and in the famous House [of Representatives} Symposium on UFOs. Once a collection of his privately-published [often as lecture handouts] papers was made available by the Fund For UFO Research. McDonald destroyed Menzel's dishonest debunkings. McDonald scathingly criticized and cleansed the Colorado "Scientific" Study. His fire also caused a few problems for the field, but on balance he stands like a scientific mountain.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dick Hall. Talk about being there consistently for the long trek. We just lost him so his active trek is over, but prior to that, Dick ran NICAP for most of its existence, helped originate the UFO Research Coalition and The Fund For UFO Research, made the MUFON Journal, for a while, a respectable, accurate purveyor of, particularly, good non-American case reports..and a lot of else. Fortunately for us Dick DID write books, and they should be read. I recommend NICAP's assault weapon to Congress, The UFO Evidence, and his much-later follow-up, The UFO Evidence Two, and his third case book, Uninvited Guests. Frankly, anything you can read of his will advance your understanding of the field.------------------------- Coral Lorenzen, the pretty lady with the no-nonsense brain, who founded APRO way back in 1952, and carried it forward until it and she died together. Coral was a tough cookie who held her organizational power a bit too tightly as the years went by [why APRO didn't survive her] but in her early years refused to cave in to others opinions, whether those of the military [who DID visit her] or other elements in UFOlogy, who thought certain types of cases weren't worth taking seriously. For that we owe Coral what early awareness that we have concerning "occupant" reports and her opening up of the rest of the world's cases [particularly those of South America] for U.S. consideration. Coral, sometimes with her husband Jim, wrote a bunch of books. As with Keyhoe, the earlier the book the better.[try the poorly-named The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, as an example of one her better ones]. Coral's true "best" comes in her APRO Bulletin, where the UFOlogy experience of the world is often displayed. As a side-effect, the "war" that occurred between her and Walt Andrus in the late 1970's led to the growth of MUFON as a national rather than a regional UFO organization Aime Michel. Smart. Clear. Intellectually-adept and extremely well educated. Impressive here across-the-pond by us Yanks. I'll leave it to our French brothers to correct our distant impression of Michel's worthiness, but to us he seems a giant indeed. He came into French UFOlogy behind the interesting Jimmy Guieu and between them give the english-reading person a rather full appreciation for the famous [and wild] 1954 European wave from the French perspective. Read Michel's The Truth About Flying Saucers. He also came up with a bold and creative concept which, if true, would clinch not only the reality and intelligent-activity of the phenomenon,but also part of the agenda. I believe, like most of my colleagues, that this brilliant idea turns out to NOT match the facts in the end, but it is none less praiseworthy as a great try. The book incorporating the idea has many useful facts even if the over-all theory is not supported by later analysis. Flying Saucers and the Straight-line Mystery is still a good book and we owe the English versions of both of these to CSI-NY , especially Isabel Davis, and most especially Lex Mebane. Michel wrote many intelligent things for FSR and they stand today as some of the brightest writings anywhere. As a historical aside, Michel's case files blew Allen Hynek away when he visited him in France while still working for the Air Force. And Michel was formative in Jacques Vallee's development, and in his contacting Hynek about him, leading to their collaboration and all that entailed.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jacques Vallee. The UFO master when it comes to grass-roots science in the field. [ I use this phrase with some thought. Jacques applied statistical analysis to the great pile of individual anecdotes, attempting to squeeze out of them "universal" patterns. If, in my view, the agents behind the phenomenon were not so careful to not allow such universal patterns, in the interest of their desire to remain culturally-covert, Jacques would have found them. This is the application of the beginnings of the scientific methodology--the discovery from raw facts of the behavior of any new phenomenon--i.e. the "How" of nature. ] His work, based in his own attitude towards the value of statistics and some inspiration by David Saunders, led to his two great books, Challenge to Science and Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which can be argued as the two most consistently written scientific books on the subject. Vallee wrote many other increasingly-controversial books, all of which are creative attempts to unlock the ultimate mystery, since he became convinced that science could not do so. My personal opinion is that these theories, while bright and honest, do not explain the mystery, particularly in its majority. But the wonderful Passport to Magonia does, for me, point to a minor fraction of it, and for that guide I am grateful to Jacques. All of his books are interesting, but if you can only read a bit, make it Challenge and Anatomy, and give a peek at Magonia.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Last man standing, or in this case sitting on his couch with his buddy Gordon Creighton, is Charles Bowen. Bowen did not found Flying Saucer Review but he did upgrade it to the flagship journal of the field. FSR did not intend to be an academic journal, but an information-sharing one. If anyone was hoping to learn what was going on with the phenomenon, they had better read FSR. The strength of the journal was its worldwide coverage. Creighton, as an almost universal translator, was mainly responsible for this, while Bowen, as Editor-in-chief exercised an admirable touch---allowing speculation within reason while not succumbing to the temptation to go wildly "native", as the Brits would say. Anyone who does not have access to FSR, and can balance it with the Halls, Hyneks, and McDonalds of U.S. UFOlogy will probably play hob trying to get a proper grip on what has happened in the field. There are a few other great references of course not directly associated with these ten giants. David Jacobs' UFO Controversy in America is one. Jerry Clark's UFO Encyclopedia is another. Barry Greenwood and Larry Fawcett's Clear Intent is a third. I'll stop there. If your own favorite wasn't mentioned, I apologize. This is just a blog afterall. Peace. Labels: UFO history; UFO references; UFO researchers: UFO Hall of Fame; Don Keyhoe; Allen Hynek; James McDonald; Ed Ruppelt; Ted Bloecher; Dick Hall; Coral Lorenzen; Aime Michel; Jacques Vallee; Charles Bowen link; http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/...t-to-know.html __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

04-05-2012, 11:36 AM	#503
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	HIGH STRANGENESS UFO CASES.Brazil 1977; This section of posts will concentrate on those UFO cases that remain unsolved due to the high levels of "high strangeness" that have occurred in them.These are the cases that continue to dumbfound all scientific investigation's into them a provide a strong case for non human origins and in some cases technological capabilities that defy current understanding. ************************************************ *********** CASE ONE; Colares, 1977; General area where the incidents and sightings are alleged to occurred. These events were part of the “Colares flap,” which was, we believe, part of a much larger UFO wave that took place over a vast stretch of northern Brazil for more than twenty months in 1977 and 1978. However, the Air Force investigation was centered on hundreds of sightings around Colares and more than two dozen other villages less than sixty miles from the major seaport city of Belém on Marajó Bay. Belém is the capital of the state of Pará and the home of about two million people. It was a terrifying time for the several thousand inhabitants of the Colares area because there were nights when rays of light beamed from UFOs paralyzed and burned dozens of people, and at least two of them died. The intelligence agents – six sergeants and one officer – spent most of October, November and December 1977 and January 1978 in Colares and other villages interviewing hundreds of people who had encounters or sightings. During the investigation, the agents also had more than two hundred sightings of their own. The three of us spent the first two weeks of September 1999 re-visiting Colares and other villages in an effort to better understand what happened there twenty-two years earlier. Despite the passage of time, we were able to locate and interview twenty people who had participated in the investigation, or had sightings or encounters, or had direct knowledge of the flap. The last three months of 1977 were particularly dreadful for people living in the Colares area. “I’ll never forget it,” said Ana Célia Oliveira (below), a schoolteacher who was six years old at the time. “People and animals were attacked. There was no food. Terrible lack of food. No one was fishing. People would not go out to their vegetable gardens for crops. In 1977, the Brazilian island of Colares was visited by flying objects of an unknown nature. Nearly all kinds of UFOs were seen; some big, some small, saucer shaped, cigar shaped, luminous or not. They arrived from the North every day, from the sky and also sometimes from underwater, and it lasted for months. Regularly, some Island inhabitants were targeted by the objects, sending strange rays to them, and many were badly hurt, with two reported dead. The Army intervenes, the press follows. 35 people were hurt by the strange rays, and many fled from the Island. The events mainly concentrated on the city of Colares, about 2,000 inhabitants, on Colares Island, which is in the region of Pará, the delta of the Amazon river on the northeastern coast of Brazil. But the whole region was visited by the same phenomenon. Beginning in August of 1977, in the island of Colares, a strange phenomenon began to occur, that the Brazilian call Chupa-chupa. Strange luminous objects appeared over the few towns of the region. These objects were often projecting thin rays, seemingly of light, directed at the people. The touched people fainted and woke up with a strange anemia. They stated that they felt as if some of their blood was removed by the strange rays. The fisherman Manoel João de Oliveira Filho, aged 44, married and residing at No. 64 rua Carneiro de Mendonça, was strolling towards the beach early one morning with some companions, to spend a day at sea fishing. Before they had arrived at their boats, they saw - above the Rio Novo beach - an object shaped "like an umbrella" stationary at about 4 meters from the ground. From its under-part came a vivid white light. No sound was detectable from it from where they were standing. The object then moved away silently towards Machadinho, turning off the light as it went. A carpenter named João Dias Costa (aged 44) and a fisherman, João da Cruz Silva (aged 54), both of Colares town, saw the notorious "luminous spheres" so greatly feared on account of their "low skimming swoops". Another man from Colares town, Sr. Zacarias dos Santos Barata (74) saw the glowing balls on two nights. The first time, the object came from the direction of the Bay of Marajó, and rapidly vanished towards the interior of Colares Island. On the second night another ball, blue in color, flew over the local football field. "It lit up all the trees around the field and then vanished towards the town's center,” said Sr. Zacarias. Sr. Sebastião Vernek "Zizi" Miranda described his experience as follows: "I was there with my wife, Palmira, in front of the church on the sea-front, when at about 8.00 pm, we saw an intensely vivid "orangish" light coming in from the sea towards the town. As it approached, it climbed, and then, moving rapidly, vanished towards the inner part of the Island." The barber Carlos Cardoso de Paula (aged 49), living at Travessa Deodoro da Fonseca No. 231, had a still closer encounter with the "lights", as he himself relates: "Everybody else was asleep. I was just still having my last smoke when suddenly a ball of fire entered our house up near the ridgepole of the gable. It started shooting round and round the room, and then finally came right close to my hammock. "It ran up my right leg as far as the knee (without touching my skin). I watched with much curiosity as it then moved across to the other leg. Then I started to feel feeble and sleepy. My cigarette fell from my hand and I came to and let out a yell. The fireball quickly vanished and everybody woke up. "I think it had been searching for a vein in my body but didn’t manage to do so. As its brightness grew, I felt a sort of heat coming from it." Worker Raimundo Costa Leite, very well known in the town of Colares for his skill in making and repairing fishing nets, described his own experience: "At about 4.00 in the early morning, I went with my pal “Baixinho” (Orivaldo Malaquias Pinheiro) to fish off the beach at Cajueiro. As I recall it, Baixinho shouted, 'Look! There it is!' and took to his heels, leaving me alone on the beach. "The craft was of the size and shape of a helicopter, made no noise, and was flying very high. "I could have taken a pot-shot at it if I had had a gun with me. I was terrified when the machine shone a sort of searchlight down on the beach. That light was sweeping the ground, illuminating everything! It was a bluish light (sort of ‘cold light’). "It made it easier for me to see this because the craft had several small reddish lights beneath its front part... The craft seemed to be seeking something on the ground. "I was scared that it would touch me and, despite my poor physical condition, I managed to run quite a distance, and then Baixinho returned and helped me. The object had come from the direction of the sea and it headed off into the inner part of the Island." Actually, so many more people reported being attacked by beams of light from small UFOs in this area that only few of them are mentioned here. On October 20, three women were hit in the breast by the beams of light: "All three were overcome by tremendous nervous tension and an unknown sort of lassitude as though they were receiving constant electric shocks," wrote a newspaper. On the evening of October 29, Benedito Campos and his seventeen-year-old wife Silvia Mara were at home when "they spotted an oval, silvery object emitting a greenish beam like a searchlight towards the room where they were lying. "Filled with curiosity, they approached a small window and, as they did so, the beam shot in through it, and made straight for Silvia, throwing her into a sort of benumbed trance-like state." Silvia, who was pregnant at the time, then fainted, whereupon two entities apparently entered the house carrying something resembling a golden torch and "once again the beam struck Silvia, this time hitting her in the left arm at the level of the wrist. "Her veins seemed to 'rise up out of the body' so swollen were they by the beam striking them." Later, while at a neighbour's house, Benedito was also briefly paralyzed by a light beam. Fearing a miscarriage, husband and wife were taken at night by boat to the Mosqueiro Medical Clinic, followed all the way by the UFO, which made no further attempt to harm them. They remained there for three days while the wife recovered, but Benedito "was in a state of severe depression for some days, his motor functions disturbed and, as his mother reports, weeping frequently." The UFO activity over Colares Island was so intense that the people began to think the "Chupa-chupas" were trying to make some sort of contact with them. Such was the view expressed by Sr. Raimundo Ferreira "Mimi" Monteiro. He still believes the craft were coming up out of the sea or out of some underwater base located in the Bay of Marajó, possibly in the region of the Caldeirão. Alfredo Bastos Filho, a former town mayor, confirmed this and said: "Yes, indeed I can tell you, there wasn’t a moment of peace. The populace were terrified by that "Chupa-chupa" affair. I even managed to see one of the injured victims myself - Dona Mirota, a lady who was receiving medical treatment at the Health Clinic." The locals became so frightened that many of the women and children left town. The men that remained lit bonfires to mount guard at night, letting off fireworks and banging tins whenever they saw the Chupa-chupas approaching. Others locked themselves in their homes for fear of the phenomenon. It was mentioned later that the more din people made and the more bonfires and fireworks, the closer the craft came. By November 1977 doctor Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, the physician in charge of the health unit on Colares Island, took care of to some 35 people claiming to have been touched by the strange light. She took blood samples, and concluded that the victims suffered from generalized hypertermia, superficial chronic headache, burnings, intense heat, nauseas, tremors in the body, giddiness, asthenia and presented very small orifices in the skin where they were hit by the rays. She wrote: "All of them had suffered lesions to the face or the thoracic area." The lesions, looking like radiation injuries, "began with intense reddening of the skin in the affected area. Later the hair would fall out and the skin would turn black. There was no pain, only a slight warmth. One also noticed small puncture marks in the skin. The victims were men and women of varying ages, without any pattern." In describing their experiences with these light beams, most victims claimed that "They were immediately immobilized, as if a heavy weight pushed against their chest. The beam was about [seven or eight centimetres] in diameter and white in color. It never hunted for them but hit them suddenly. "When they tried to scream, no sound would come out, but their eyes remained open. The beam felt hot, 'almost as hot as a cigarette burn,' barely tolerable. "After a few minutes the column of light would slowly retract and disappear." Most symptoms usually disappeared after seven days. " At Agulhas Fincadas, Mrs. Maria Lopes, inhabitant of Vila Gorete, to the margins of Rio Tapajós, in the neighborhoods of Santarém (Pará), tells her case involving "strange devices" that absorb energy from human beings, known as Chupa-Chupa. "I saw an object to settle quiet in the bushes here close... It had left two men and a woman, who had started to move with two fishing," counts Maria. Other people in the place had been paralyzed when observing the scene. Many had hurt themselves when trying to escape one of the strange objects. In many cases, the marks left by the rays on the victims skin were marks that could have up to eight small holes. In these occurrences, the Chupa-Chupa term was proven right as many of them had lost up to approximately 300 ml of blood, from these wounds. This was the case of Claudomira, resident in the Island of Colares. She claims that her family already did not sleep right with fear of the devices. "In one of these days, after midnight, I woke up because of a strong flash, a sort of focussed bright green light ray that came down from the top roof to my left chest. I tried to shout, but my voice did not function. I felt an esquisite heat... Later, that beam of light diminished and I saw that I was burnt." Claudomira told that she sighted a strange object, much similar to an umbrella, from which a being of clear skin, oriental eyes, and great ears. According to her, the creature was dressed in tight green clothes and had a sort of pistol in the hand, which emitted the luminous beam. At this moment, Claudomira felt perforated as by needles on her breast. "After this, I felt a migraine headache and a great weakness, that left me collapsed for several days." The next day, she had been directed to the Sanitary Unit of the town, where she was taken care of by Doctor Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, who sent her to the Medical Institute Renato Chaves, in Belém, for backup examinations. Her ill-being and the constant migraines lasted many days, followed by fatigue and weakness. Years later, Claudomira still did not feel cured. "My health never came back to be the same since that night." She is not the only one to have passed for such situation. Some estimate that thousands of people, also men, had suffered the attacks of the Chupa-Chupa in the years between 1970 and 1980, and they still occur today, though less frequently. "Emotional and physical sequels are very common in these cases," affirmed Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, who took care of Claudomira. Although she was skeptical and she believed that the occurrences of Chupa-Chupa were popular belief or some witchcraft, Dr. Wellaide ended up convinced of the veracity of the cases when she was confronted with their increasing frequency. "With the increase of hurt people, I started to give more attention each time in the existing injuries. I saw things that do not exist in my medical books," she said. According to her, the victims of Chupa-Chupa presented strangest burnings, not as those provoked by fire or hot water, as she thought herself, but very similar to ones produced by cobalt irradiation. " The injuries varied in intensity. First it started with an intense reddishness in the hit area, known as hiperemia. Later, the skin of the affected region started to fall (alopecia) and days later the skin peeled off. In this period of development, said Wellaide, it was possible to note holes, similar to perforations by needles. One of the most interesting cases she took care of happened with a lady who had cardiac problems. She arrived at the doctor's office very nervous and immediately she showed her left breast, in which were two strange holes. She complained of giddiness, shortness of breath, and weakness - characteristic symptoms already known by people hit by the phenomenon. The doctor tried to calm her and she returned to her home. But at about 03:00 pm, however, Dr. Wellaide was called to the residence of the woman, who had become very sick. Her whole body was still, and she gasped for air, but she did not have fever and did not vomit. Seeing the seriousness of the situation, the doctor took her to a hospital in Belém. Hours later, she received the medical papers and the certificate of death forwarded by the Medical Institute Legal Renato Chaves, which stated a heart stroke as cause of the death. The intriguing fact is that at no time, doctors in Belém had mentioned something about the injuries on her body and did not even say if they had effected backing examinations. Regarding the possible effects of the UFOs on the supply of electricity, Sr. Geraldo Aranha de Oliveira (aged 37) of the C.E.I.P.A. (Pará Electricity Plant) explained: "In 1977 the C.E.I.P.A. sub-station consisted of three Scania 125 kw engines supplying light to the city from 6 pm till midnight. I don’t recall having ever seeing a UFO over the plant. I merely remember that, at that period, lots of lightning conductor rods were burnt out and, at times, some fuses too." COMAR (Comando Aéreo Regional, the Regional Air Command of the Brazilian Air Forces), arrived in Belém, and made a series of researches in the region, under the project name "Operation Plate." (Operation Saucer) Captain Uyrangê Bolivar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima, head of information office, directed all the operations in the region. During the investigations, the Air Force obtained four films and hundreds of photographs of flying disks in the basin of Marajó. They also were a great help to the population, providing psychologists assistance, to eliminate the panic that sized the entire region. The beams of light from the craft were described as being so bright that they resembled those used to illuminate night sporting events. They were "always sharply defined, directed with perfect precision towards any target – houses, people, boats, trees, even the Brazilian Air Force's helicopters deployed over the island during the investigations." On one occasion, one of these powerful beams is reported to have forced one of the helicopters to land, although the exact technical reason is not given. (Giese, 1996) According to a statement by Sr. Sebastião V. Miranda, former resident of Colares, "the Brazilian Air Force spent more than 35 days in the town, and installed various devices near the Bacurí beach." Sra. Alba Câmara Vilhena, a married lady living at 683 rua 15 de Novembro, added: "At the time of the "Chupa-chupa" everybody was scared to sleep at night, and so almost every night we went away to be with relatives. On one occasion some people saw one of the craft. It was round, and all luminous. "Just at that moment, a helicopter of the F.A.B. (Brazilian Air Force) was flying quite near to our house. Then we saw the UFO direct a very powerful beam on to the helicopter, obliging it to land on the São Pedro Airfield. That happened at about 8.00 pm one evening." Professor Raimundo Sebastião Aranha said: "At that period I was closely connected with some of the Air Force's enquiries. They were seeking more information about the "Chupa-chupa." He said the Air Force had with them masses of equipment: cars, helicopters, radio transmitters, cameras, powerful glasses, etc. He recalls that, in addition to the rank and file Air Force recruits, there was a whole group of officers, and he had the impression that there was a foreigner among them. "The helicopters that appeared from time to time, bringing materials and personnel, attempted to chase the UFOs but without much success. Indeed, on the contrary, it was the UFOs that chased them!" One night several months later, on May 24 1978, a journalist and photographer, who had been sent to cover the local UFO encounters, were in their car when despite the heavy rain they were woken up "by a powerful beam of light which – however unbelievable, it may seem – passed through the metallic structure of the roof of the vehicle." Not surprisingly they leapt out of the car to see that "a tube-shaped light beam, about [twenty-five centimetres] in diameter, was coming down from above onto the roof of the car and passing through the metal panelling." On this and other occasions, they managed to take numerous photographs which they claim that their newspaper later sold to "a North-American group." On another night while trying to use flash equipment to photograph one of these craft "the UFO emitted such a vivid beam of light that it smashed the windscreen" of their car. (Giese, 1996) Several newspapers started to write that the alleged UFOs were weather balloons, or secrets satellites, although there was no possible reason to think that. Local authorities were of course extremely angry because of such articles. Elói Santos, councilman of the old Enclosure for bullfighting stated: "It is not possible to deny that Belém is, today, a frightened city. We are not technicians, and we do not argue with the conclusion of the authorities. But we did surprise them with declarations of the witnesses who saw light crossing their roofs to penetrate in their skin, removing a little of blood and leaving visible marks of needles and burnings on their epidermis." During the "Chupa-chupa" wave, many new "sighting zones" emerged, such as Pinheiro and São Bento in the State of Maranhão, and Viseu and Bragança in the State of Pará. Some areas indeed reached such a 'level of saturation' that rarely a single night passed without UFO sightings. One of these "ufological epicentres" was over the bay called the Baía do Sol (Bay of the Sun) and had a direct effect upon the Island of Mosqueiro. Mosqueiro is one of the most important of the islands, and it is the biggest, belonging to the municipality of Belém. Public concern was immense, all the men banding together at night to organize watches, with bonfires and fireworks, thinking these would deter the craft. But nothing seemed to stop the UFOs, not even the Air Force’s film men and their cameras - and even less the journalists from the Estado do Pará! There were frequent and regular sightings of mother-ships, probes, and flying saucers, all performing incredible manoeuvers over the Bay. A 61-year-old widow, Elisa da Silva, residing on rua do Bacari, was one of the witnesses in that year (1977). One night, from her house, she saw a flying saucer appear. Vivid white light came from small windows or apertures on it. Seen from below, she said, it seemed quite dark and quite flat. It vanished towards the South, in total silence. In the opinion of some of the members of the GUA (Amazonian Ufological Group) based in Belém, there exists, or there did exist for a considerable time, at some point beneath the Baía do Sol ("Bay of the Sun") a concealed base for extraterrestrial probe craft. Such an idea would account for the constant appearances, in recent years, of unidentified flying objects over the region. In 1981, one woman who had been exposed to the UFO beams in Colares died, although it is not clear that her death was clearly related to the attack. In 1986, not far from Colares, two persons on Crab Island were discovered "badly decomposed by heat" amid numerous sightings of balls of fire in the sky; cause of death "not known" in either case. Same area, different time: a "ball of fire" seriously burned three men out cutting wood on Crab Island; one of the woodchoppers died. One of the two survivors, Edmundo, had a gaping electrical-type burn injury on the side of his chest, an almost perfect replica of the chest burn suffered by Jack Angel in Georgia in 1974. In 1993, again in Colares, a 32-year-old missionary and a 40-year-old domestic worker died, a month apart, as a result of close encounters with UFO; according to Ufologist Bob Pratt, these women were "both burned on the throat and the chest, as were most of the other people the doctor treated." Said Pratt: "I know of about ten deaths that have some connection with UFO close encounters." According to the USAF, there is not one proof of the reality of UFOs, and there is no evidence that they can be a danger. According to the skeptics... According to the skeptics? To tell the truth, skeptics never express anything in such cases. And the majority of the general public does not know about such cases. LINK; http://www.ufocasebook.com/vid/colaresisland2.html __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

04-05-2012, 12:09 PM	#504
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	HIGH STRANGENESS UFO CASES;M o n t r e a l;1990; L a r g e s t a t i o n a r y o b j e c t o v e r M o n t r e a l;1990; CASE TWO; "In 1992 GUENETTE, together with Dr. Richard F. HAINES (a well-known ufo researcher and psychologist formerly employed by NASA), published a 25 page report of the sightings. The report concludes that "the evidence for the existence of a highly unusual, hovering, silent large object is indisputable". Basing themselves on the available eyewitness testimonies, they add that "a reasonable lower bound for the angular size of the object's central 'oval body' as seen from the roof of the B(onaventure) H(otel) is 27 degrees arc". "Having established this angular size, the authors calculate the actual size for the "main body of the object" to have been no less than 1,783 feet (585 m) across if it was at 3,500 feet (1,148 m) altitude, or 4,586 feet (1,504 m) if it was at 9,000 feet (2,953 m). At 8:20 Officer LIPPE telephones Sergeant MASSON of the MUCP for backup. Overwhelmed by what he sees when he arrives at the 17th floor, the Sergeant calls the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The time is now 8:44. An investigator, Officer Luc MORIN, is assigned to handle the case. The RCMP investigator arrives at the hotel at approximately 9:30 p.m. and informs the other witnesses that contact has been made with the Commander of Military Operations of the country's Department of National Defence. The latter has assured him that no military operations are being held in the area. Officer LIPPE then calls the MUCP's District Director, who in turn also telephones the RCMP for immediate "in situ assistance". CASE SUMMARY; November 7, 1990. It's about 7:15 in the evening. An American woman tourist is swimming in the outdoor rooftop pool on the 17th floor of the International Hilton Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Montreal, when she notices a strange lighted object in the night sky. The object is directly overhead and looks like "an oval shape with a yellowish colour". She notifies the hotel's pool lifeguard, Mrs. L.S.P., who in turn alerts the hotel's security officer, Mr. A.S. Intrigued by the stationary unknown object, the security officer telephones the MUCP (Montreal Urban Community Police) for assistance. Meanwhile the pool's lifeguard has urged guests to come outside to look at what she herself later described as "a lighted object with six lights on the perimeter of a large circle with a ray of light emitted from each one". Mrs. L.S.P. then notifies La Presse, one of Canada's major newspapers. La Presse takes the story seriously and sends out reporter Marcel LAROCHE to investigate. Some five minutes before Mr. LAROCHE arrives at the hotel, the object had become brighter, prompting the security officer to contact the police station a second time. Officer François LIPPE of the MUCP is dispatched at 8:07 and arrives at the hotel about five minutes later. In his report, Officer LIPPE describes the object as "three yellowish lights from each of which a single beam of light emanated". He added that "the object itself was luminous and round and did not appear to move". Meanwhile several other people in and around Montreal are witnessing unusual lights in the sky. Among them is Bernard GUENETTE, a computer graphics expert and member of the then Texas based Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). GUENETTE later compared what he saw to "a small greenish Aurora Borealis-like phenomenon with long streamers extending out from it". The time is circa 7:30 p.m.. He watches the luminous phenomenon for 30 to 60 seconds from a spot in Old Montreal, about a mile ("ten city blocks") east-southeast from the hotel. GUENETTE is accompanied by a second witness. Both men agree that the phenomenon is at a very high altitude and not moving. Back on the rooftop, Officier LIPPE, the security officer and the pool's lifeguard notice a small private aircraft flying directly beneath the clouds and much farther below the object. below is six sketches from six witnesses; Sketch by the hotel's pool lifeguard, Mrs. L.S.P. Sketch by the hotel's security officer, Mr. A.S. __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack. Last edited by jamesc; 04-05-2012 at 12:14 PM.

04-05-2012, 06:50 PM	#505
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	UFO; Minnesota-1979;High Strangeness. Sheriff Blinded by Light from UFO; Minnesota-1979; CASE SUMMARY; August 27, 1979-Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson of Marshall County was on duty that night, driving not far from the North Dakota border, when at around 1:40 a.m. he saw a light through his side window. It was obviously not on a road and looked too glaring to be a car headlight. He first thought it might be a small plane on or very near the ground. He turned left on another road to try to get closer to the light to identify it. Suddenly, the light moved toward him, travelling so fast that it almost instantaneously was upon his car (covering an estimated mile and a half). Johnson was blinded by the brilliance of the light and heard glass breaking, then lost consciousness. When he returned to consciousness, the car was stalled and had skidded across the highway. He felt sluggish and shaky. He radioed headquarters, at 2:19 a.m., to request assistance. Soon another deputy arrived, who called an ambulance. The doctor who examined Johnson found him to be in a mild state of shock. His eyes were irritated as if Johnson had suffered "mild welder's burns," and Johnson couldn't stand to be exposed to any bright lights. The patrol car had very peculiar damage. The inside headlight on the driver's side was smashed but not the one to its immediate left. There was a flat-bottomed circular dent on the left side of the front hood, about a half inch in diameter, close to the windshield. There was a crack in the windshield on the driver's side, that ran from top to bottom, with four apparent impacts. The electric clock was running 14 minutes slow, as was Johnson's wristwatch. The shaft of the roof antenna was bent over at a 60-degree angle, starting about 6 inches above its base. The trunk antenna was bent over at 90 degrees, but only near the top. No damage occurred to the car's regular antenna on the front hood. Essentially, all the damage to the car occurred on the left, or driver's side. Investigations occurred immediately, both by the sheriff's department and by investigators from the Center for UFO Studies. The police determined that Johnson's car traveled about 950 feet after the first damage occurred. No cause could be found for the event, including collision with another vehicle or a low-flying plane, a hoax on the part of Johnson, or anything else. In addition, experts from Ford Motors (the vehicle was a 1977 Ford LTD) and a team of engineers from Honeywell examined various portions of the damage. A windshield expert, Meridan French, from Ford, noted after examining the windshield fractures that "Even after several days of reflection on the crack patterns and apparent sequence of fractures, I still have no explanation for what seem to be inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously. I can only [conclude]... that all cracks were from mechanical forces of unknown origin." No cause could be found for the clock running slow, the peculiar antenna damage, or other physical traces. Fortunately, Johnson's eyes healed quickly, and he suffered no lasting effect from the close encounter. Val Johnson's own words... "This is Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson... I report in connection with an incident which happened August 27th, 1979, at approximately 1:40 a.m., western section of Marshall County, approximately ten miles west of Stephen, Minnesota. This officer was on routine patrol, westbound down Marshall County Road #5. I got to the intersection of #5 and Minnesota State #220. When I looked down south #220 to check for traffic, I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. " "I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle. At this point. at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes. From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren." "He dispatched an officer from Stephen who came out, ascertained the situation as best he could, called for the Stephen Ambulance to transport me to Warren Hospital for further tests, x-rays and observation. At the time the officer arrived, I complained about having very sore eyes. At Warren Hospital, it was diagnosed that I had a mild case of welder's burns to my eyes. My eyes were treated with some salve and adhesive bandages put over and instructed to keep them on for the remainder of the day, or approximately 24 hours. At 11:00 a.m., Sheriff Dennis Breckie, my employer, picked me up at my residence in Oslo, and transported me to an ophthalmologist in Grand Forks, North Dakota." " He examined my eyes and said I had some irritation to the inner portions of the eye which could have been caused by seeing a bright light after dark. That is all I have to add except to say that my timepiece in the Police vehicle and my mechanical wrist watch were both lacking 14 minutes of time to the minute." The most complete account of this case is in The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning by Jerome Clark (1998), Omnigraphics. Other references include Allan Hendry "Minnesota CEII: The Val Johnson Story," International UFO Reporter Pt. I, 4 (Sept./Oct. 1979):4-9, and Pt II, 4 (November 1979): 4-10. Police report; Map of incident; More Research Materials on Case: We were contacted by researcher Guy Westcott, of UFOR, who investigated the Val Johnson case. He worked for NOAP and CCUFOS at the time of the incident, and has been kind enough to send us some great material pertaining to the case, and we offer him much thanks for this. All of the material below came from him. COVER LETTER; Antenna Damage; CAR DAMAGE; Johnson Report 1; Johnson Report 2; Johnson Report 3; Johnson Report 4; __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

05-05-2012, 03:22 PM	#506
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	Levelland Sightings Of 1957;High Strangeness. Here is an outstanding case that contains levels of very high strangeness and involved Washington officials demanding answers from the scientific academics on the USAF UFO investigation panel called PROTECT BLUE BOOK.That this case was given an EIGHT out of ten in the table of "high strangeness" that was used by the scientific academics who investigated this case is of paramount importance.The below snippet from this report tells its own story. "In 1957, between the late evening hours of November 2 and the early morning hours of the 3rd, seven independent witnesses near Levelland, Texas saw an oval shaped ball of light approach their vehicles causing their engines to stop and headlights to shut. The sightings took place in a 2.5 hour period (from 10:50 PM until 1:15 AM) and was limited to a 10 mile radius area West, North and East of Levelland. The events lasted from a few seconds to no more than 5 minutes. Once the ball of light left the scene, all witnesses were able to start their automobile engines and their headlights went back to normal operation." ************************************************ *********** The Levelland Sightings Of 1957 byAntonio F. Rullán October 18, 1999, revised March 26, 2000 Analysis of the Evidence and Evaluation of the Ball Lightning Hypothesis Introduction by Mark Cashman; The following document is the most comprehensive study of the famous Levelland vehicleinterference case ever performed, and took two years to complete. It has undergone peerreview through CUFOS and by some members of Project 1947. Tony Rullán has kindlyallowed me to reproduce this as part of my site. I hope you will find it as interesting andthought-provoking as I have. Acknowledgments by Antonio Rullán; I could not have conducted this study without the great help and previous work of Mark Rodeghier (CUFOS), Jan Aldrich, and Loren Gross. Mark Rodeghier and CUFOS providedme with copies of their extensive file on the Levelland case and all the declassified material from the Air Force Blue Book study of the case. Jan Aldrich provided voluminous amountsof news-clippings from the Southwest for November of 1957 that provided perspective on thecase and details not found anywhere else. Loren Gross provided his great research summaryon Levelland in his November 1957 books. I also am indebted to Wendy Connors whoprovided support and took time to review the final draft. I also want to thank Newell Wrightand A.J. Fowler who gave their time and attention to discuss and review this case 42 yearsafter their experiences. All errors or faulty logic in this paper are my own. Table of Contents ; 1 Purpose of Study; The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate the sightings that took place in Levelland, Texas42 years ago with the benefit of declassified Air Force files, updated knowledge of balllightning, full review of all the literature on this case, and personal interviews with a two of the participants. While this case has been documented in numerous UFO books, a thoroughanalysis of the witnesses, their claims, the investigators, and the pros and cons of the balllighting explanation has not been done. Moreover, the story and claims differ depending onwhich book or newspaper is read. Thus, there was a need to determine the most reliablesources and the most likely description of events from the night of November 2-3, 1957. Thestudy evaluates the likelihood that ball lightning was the cause for these sightings andsummarizes the reasons for rejecting or accepting that hypothesis. The key issues brought upby the pro-UFO and pro-ball lighting investigators are summarized and discussed. 2 from the Air Force Blue Book study of the case. Jan Aldrich provided voluminous amountsof news-clippings from the Southwest for November of 1957 that provided perspective on thecase and details not found anywhere else. Loren Gross provided his great research summaryon Levelland in his November 1957 books. I also am indebted to Wendy Connors whoprovided support and took time to review the final draft. I also want to thank Newell Wrightand A.J. Fowler who gave their time and attention to discuss and review this case 42 yearsafter their experiences. All errors or faulty logic in this paper are my own. 2 Summary of Levelland Case In 1957, between the late evening hours of November 2 and the early morning hours of the3rd, seven independent witnesses near Levelland, Texas saw an oval shaped ball of lightapproach their vehicles causing their engines to stop and headlights to shut. The sightingstook place in a 2.5 hour period (from 10:50 PM until 1:15 AM) and was limited to a 10 mileradius area West, North and East of Levelland. The events lasted from a few seconds to nomore than 5 minutes. Once the ball of light left the scene, all witnesses were able to start theirautomobile engines and their headlights went back to normal operation.Most witnesses were scared about the incident and eventually called the Levelland PoliceDepartment to report the incident. While descriptions of the sighting varied amongst allwitnesses, there was a general consensus that some lighted object was stopping cars andtrucks around Levelland. On the early morning of November 3, there were other witnesseswho saw lights in night sky and flashes of light. While these sightings added to the confusionand emotion of the evening, they will not be considered in this study. The LevellandSightings are defined in this study as only those seven reports where a bright ball of light was within 500 feet of the witness’ vehicle and led to engine and headlights failure. On November 4, 1957, the incident at Levelland was reported in most of the newspapersacross the US. Newspapers were dumbfounded as to the nature of the mysterious ball of lightand gave it different names: mysterious object/thing, flying egg, whatnick, and eggnick. Many newspapers quoted Representative J.T. Rutherford from Odessa, Texas who wanted toknow whether the sightings were the result of an American experiment and sent a telegram toAir Force officials in Washington asking for answers. It was not until Nov. 5, 1957, that the idea that an extraterrestrial craft caused the Levelland sightings gained publicity in thenewspapers. Most of the newspaper quoted James A. Lee (a NICAP member from Abilene,TX) as the key proponent of this idea. On Nov. 15, 1957, the Air Force issued a summaryreport concluding that the incident was a rare form of lighting called ball lightning. The AirForce solution to this puzzling case was so controversial that the Air Force had to discuss thecase in a US Congressional briefing on the UFO program on July 15, 1960 . While the casewas solved as far as Blue Book was concerned, for many UFO organizations (NICAP,APRO, CSI) the case was not closed but instead represented one of the best-documentedcases of a UFO.3 Literature Survey page 43.1 Commentary and Analysis from Pro-UFO Authors3.2 Commentary and Analysis from Pro-Ball Lightning Authors. 4 Literature Survey; Commentary and Analysis from Pro-UFO Authors; Many UFO researchers have written about the Levelland UFO sightings in one way or another. Most authors write about the standard claim: that 7 witnesses had their auto-mobiles’ engines and headlights shut off by a UFO within a 2.5 hour period and within a small areasurrounding Levelland. Each author gives his reason for the importance and merits of theLevelland case. The section below summarizes what made this case so popular among UFO researchers.According to Donald Keyhoe, Director of the National Investigations Committee on AerialPhenomena (NICAP) from 1957 to 1969, the reason this case became so popular was that toomany newspapers were taking the sighting reports seriously. The press took the sightingsseriously because five Texas law officers backed the story. Keyhoe believed that had it beenan isolated case, the press would have killed it with ridicule. The press did not kill the storybecause there were too many trained observers on record. Keyhoe, however, did not give thiscase any exalted importance. He did not believe it was the beginning of the 1957 UFO wavebut the continuation of it. Keyhoe thought the evidence put forward by NICAP was sufficientto conclude that the UFO at Levelland was an extraterrestrial craft. Overall, Keyhoesupported this case as evidence for the extraterrestrial hypothesis because there were multipleindependent witnesses, because the claims were backed up by law officers, and because of the lack of a reasonable explanation for the reported anomalous events. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer and former Project Blue Book scientific consultant, thoughtthe case was significant enough to include it in his book The UFO Experience as the topClose Encounter of the 2nd Kind (CEII) amongst 23 cases listed. Hynek developed aStrangeness-Probability Index for the cases he evaluated in order to determine theirworthiness for study. The Levelland case had a Strangeness Index of 5 and a Probability Index of 8. This rating put it at the top of Hynek’s CEII list. Hynek’ s definition of the Strangeness Index is the number of information bits a report contains, each of which isdifficult to explain in common sense terms. For example, in the Levelland case he found 5items that he could not explain using common senses. Unfortunately, he did not list these items. We could guess at them based on Hynek’s list of items difficult to explain: 1. weird looking ball of light (BOL)2. BOL stops car engine3. BOL shuts off car headlights\ engine and headlights start fine when BOL leaves4. BOL appears under intelligent control. Hynek’s probability rating is a function of assessed credibility of the witnesses. He judges this by the following. (1) internal consistency of the report, (2) consistency among several reports of same incident (3) manner in which report was made (4) conviction of reporter and (5) subtle judgement of “how it all hangs together”. Hynek gave the Levelland case a very high probability rating of eight out of ten. He gave such a high rating because of the multipleindependent witnesses in this case.Hynek stated “that all seven cases of separate car disablement and subsequent rapid, automatic recovery after the passage of the strangeilluminated craft, occurring within about two hours, could be attributed to coincidence is outof the statistical universe if the reports are truly independent”. As opposed to Keyhoe, Hynek did not conclude that this incident was an extraterrestrial craft.What Hynek concluded was that the Air Force ball lightning explanation for the cause of thesightings was not acceptable. Hynek did not believe the ball lighting explanation for two keyreasons: (1) observers at the time of the incident did not report lightning but overcast andmisty weather (2) there is no evidence that ball lightning can stop cars and put out headlights.These two points are very significant regardless of the number of witnesses who experiencethe phenomenon. For Hynek, however, the fact that 7 observers reported similar events,brought significant credibility to the observed claim. Hynek did not put a lot of weight on theweird light reports from the 5 law enforcement officers in Levelland because they did notexperience the auto engine and light failure.Dr. Jacques Vallee also wrote about the Levelland case in Anatomy of a Phenomenon.Vallee, however, did not analyze the case in detail nor gave it any special importance. Forhim, it was another case among the wave of sightings in 1957. He stated that the wave hadbeen going on for a long time and did not start with Levelland or Sputnik II . It did notrepresent anything new to him, since he was very familiar with the UFO landing reports fromFrance in 1954. Vallee, like Hynek, did not believe the ball lighting explanation for the case. Vallee wrote in 1965: “the official fairy tale concerning the Levelland case is that thesensational interpretation of the sightings by the press triggered the series of reports now known as the 1957 wave.” In Jan 16, 1964, Vallee and Hynek met with Bluebook Officers-Captain Hector Quintanilla and Sergeant Moody in Chicago to discuss the UFOPhenomenon. In that meeting, Captain Quintanilla and Sergeant Moody agreed that theycould not explain the Levelland case. An interesting revelation given that Bluebook hadexplained the Levelland sightings seven years earlier as Ball Lightning.Ronald Story also had a high regard for the Levelland case. He called the Levelland case one of the two best cases on record of electromagnetic effects caused by UFO’s. He included the case as one of the 10 most baffling cases on record in his book titled Sightings. Story agreedwith Hynek in rejecting the ball lighting hypothesis as the explanation for the Levellandsightings. Story stated four reasons why the case was so extraordinary and had never beenexplained satisfactorily to him:1. No evidence that ball lighting stops cars and put out headlights2. Ball lighting preference for dirt roads and paved highways3. Ball lightning size of 200 ft is not common4. Six independent witnesses experienced something similar and extraordinary within a10 mile radius of LevellandRichard Hall included the Levelland case in his book the UFO Evidence as just one morecase in the UFO wave of November 1957. The case was of importance to Hall because it wasthe first series of sightings to be widely publicized in November of 1957 and it had the mostintensive single concentration of UFO sightings. In the book, Walter Webb gave a goodsummary of the events at Levelland in November 2-3, 1957. While no analysis of the casewas provided in the book, Richard Hall and Walter Webb made several good points:They wondered why should reddish elliptical UFOs, which cause cars to stall, suddenly bereported from one small Texas town. They pointed out that the witnesses were going about their business when the UFOs intruded upon the scene. There was no evidence that the witnesses were searching the sky or otherwiseexpecting to see anything unusual. Their independent reports told a consistent story.Dr. James E. McDonald was also fascinated by this case. McDonald added the Levellandcase to his list of UFO Cases of Interest mainly because he had personally checked the caseand saw in it characteristics of special interest. McDonald was very disappointed in theanalysis of the case done by Dr. Menzel and the Air Force who explained away the Levellandsightings as ball lightning and wet ignitions.McDonald checked the weather data for the night and locale in question. He studied theweather maps and rainfall data and concluded that a large, high-pressure area was movingsouthward over the Texas panhandle. He believed that these weather conditions were notconducive to lightning of any sort. He checked half a dozen stations in the vicinity and foundthat there was not even any rain falling during this period, nor had more than a small amountfallen hours earlier that day when a cold front passed through. McDonald concluded that theprevailing anticyclonic conditions in Levelland the night of November 2-3, 1957 almostcategorically ruled out ball lightning Thus, McDonald concluded that the Levelland casewas not ball lightning and that it was still an unknown. The key reasons McDonald did notagree with the ball lightning explanation was:1. He believed that ball lightning had to accompany a thunderstorm, but there was nonereported the night in question2. He believed that ball lightning seldom exceeds a few feet in diameter, but thedescription of the objects was about 200-ft.McDonald certainly did not believe that ball lightning could form under fair-weatherconditions (free of all thunderstorm activity). He claimed that via some lementarycomputations he could show how quantitatively absurd this claim was. Moreover, McDonaldalso did not like the wet ignition explanation for the failure of the car engines. He pointed outthe fact that the engines could be re-started just as soon as the object darted off was entirelyinconsistent with wet ignition idea. The Levelland case was also written up in the American edition of Aime Michel’s Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery (Michel, 1958) by Alexander D. Mebane (member of the Civilian Saucer Intelligence group in New York). Mebane used four arguments to acceptthe Levelland sightings as flying saucers:1. Used the analogy to the French sightings from the Fall of 19542. Disagreed with the Air Force explanation that rain and storms led to wet electricalcircuits that shut the auto engines.3. He wrote: “How the circuits happened to dry out instantly when the ball lightning haddeparted was not explained.” 4. Claimed that there were no thunderstorms in the area during the sightings. He quotesa Levelland weatherman statement in the Levelland Sun-News of November 5, 1957.5. Complained about the Air Force investigation being too shortOf these four points only point #2 and #3 are valid and will be discussed further in this paper.The Levelland case was also included in the 1981 CUFOS study on UFO reports involvingvehicle interference (Rodeghier). Rodeghier evaluated 481 UFO reports, which involved vehicle interference. Of these 481 reports, eight came from the Levelland case. In the study,Rodeghier found 35 statistically significant correlations amongst observed properties of theelectromagnetic (EM) UFO events. He grouped these highly correlated properties into threeNexus consisting of 3 to 4 properties each. In a nexus, the presence of any one characteristic implies that the likelihood of the other three occurring is increased.Nexus I had the following positively correlated characteristicsresence of light beamcontrol of the vehiclephysiological effect on witnesschasing of the vehicleNexus II had the following positively correlated characteristics:metallic appearing UFOUFO that landsdisc-shaped UFOpresence of soundNexus III had the following positively correlated characteristics: link; http://www.scribd.com/doc/61600516/A...htings-of-1957 __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack. Last edited by jamesc; 05-05-2012 at 03:32 PM.

11-05-2012, 04:43 PM	#509
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	Aviation Safety and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Forget all the dodgy U-TUBE UFO videos on the net hear is the real deal investigated by credible professional academics.This systematic investigatory PDF document is a must for any serious UFO enthusiast. ************************************************ ********* "Aviation Safety and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Preliminary Study of 600 cases of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Reported by Military and Civilian pilots Dominique F. Weinstein NARCAP International Technical Specialist - France GEIPAN/CNES1 College of experts - France Copyright March 2012 ; ********************************************** ********* Abstract: quote; "This report presents the findings of a comprehensive review of 600 cases, over a period of sixty-four years in which pilots have reported the presence of one or more unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) during flight. In 443 cases (74%) these UAP are described as “objects” (42% circular-shaped) more than as point sources of light. In 162 cases (27%), the visual observation is confirmed by detection by ground and/or airborne radar. This report focuses more especially on 290 cases (48%) in which UAP have had (or could have had) an impact on flight safety. In 108 cases (37% of the 290 cases), pilots have estimated that the impact on flight safety was high enough for them to submit an official Airmiss/Airprox report. It was found that the most reported events with potential impact(s) on aviation safety were: “UAP approached aircraft on a collision course” (78 cases) and “UAP circled or maneuvered close to aircraft” (59 cases). It was found also that in 81 cases (14% of the 600 cases) pilots reported alleged electro-magnetic effects on one or more aircraft systems. Radio and compass systems were the predominant systems affected. Private aircraft were more affected by the E-M effects (alleged caused by UAP), probably due to the fact that their avionics and compasses are less shielded against magnetic/radio frequency interference and ionizing radiation than are commercial or military aircraft. It was found that in four cases military aircraft weapon systems were momentarily ineffective when targeted towards the UAP. Finally, in 31 cases pilots had to take evasive action to avoid a collision with UAP, injuring several passengers in five cases. These findings are potentially important and deserve further in-depth study and confirmation by obtaining additional high quality aviation reports. This preliminary study of 600 UAP cases reported by civilian and military pilots has shown a number of key points. - The distribution of cases comes from the whole Earth (Continental and maritime zones); - There are slightly more nocturnal cases (54%) than daylight cases; - Witnesses were two or more in 69% (more than two thirds) of the cases; - Pilots have officially reported their sightings in 197 cases (33% of the 600 cases); - Commercial pilots have reported their sightings officially in 35% among 233 cases; - Most of the sightings occurred during cruise phase of flight (85%); - Visual sightings are confirmed by radar detection in 27% of the cases; - More UAP are described as « objects » (74%) than point sources of lights. Circular (disc) is the most reported shape (42%); - UAP perform maneuvers in more than half of the cases (56%) and their behaviours seem to reflect an interaction with the aircraft in almost 50% (299) of the 600 cases; - In 48% (almost half) of the 600 cases, UAP have had or could have had an impact on flight safety, including 31 cases in which pilots had to make an evasive action to avoid a collision with UAP; - Electro-magnetic effects were reported in 14% of the 600 cases, radio and compass systems were the most affected; - Private aircrafts are more affected by the E-M effects allegedly caused by UAP; - Weapon systems were momentarily ineffective when targeting UAP; Most of the results (in percentages) found in this analysis of 600 cases are very close to those obtained in the 300 cases analysis published by the author in 2010-11, indicating that regardless of the total number of cases analyzed more or less the same patterns are found. This analysis confirms the potential impact on aviation safety and the need for a serious study of these phenomena by governmental aviation departments and the International Civil Aviation Organization of the United Nations. Pilots must be informed about the flight characteristics of these phenomena and motivated to report them on a detailed basis. In too many cases, basic data, such as time of sighting, aircraft-UAP separation distance, altitude, etc., are missing in reports. Only a systematic collection of detailed testimonies from pilots and crews will enhance the scientific research on these phenomena and will contribute to aviation safety. ********************************************** *********** 14; Project Sphere; Dr. Richard Haines, Editor in Chief, 2010 http://www.narcap.org/Project_Sphere.html 13 Analysis of Digital Photographs of Commercial Airplane and Small UAP on November 8, 2009; http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap_TR-13.pdf Dr. Richard F. Haines November 27, 2009 12 Small White Ball of Light Flies Near Airliner: Investigation of High Resolution, Digital, Color Photographs of July 3, 2005 at 2031 Hrs., Palo Alto, California; http://www.narcap.org/reports/uap_ph...5_PaloAlto.pdf Dr. Richard F. Haines 11 A Review of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Designs and Operational Characteristics Terrell J. Osborn, Ph.D. http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap_Osborn_UAV_txt.pdf 10 Topical Reviews Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O'Hare International Airport on November 7, 2006 Dr. Richard Haines, Chief Editor with K. Efishof, D. Ledger, L.Lemke, S. Maranto, W. http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR10_Case_18a.pdf Puckett, T. Roe, M. Shough, R. Uriarte, 2007 9 Analysis of Digital Video Aerial Event of October 23, 2004 at Osaka , Japan http://www.narcap.org/reports/NARCAP_CASE_16_PART_1.htm Dr.Richard F. Haines and William Puckett 2007 8 Aviation Safety in America - Under-Reporting Bias of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Recommended Solutions Ted Roe 2004 http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR8Bias1.htm 7 Analysis of a Photograph of a High Speed Ball of Light . Dr. Richard F. Haines 2002 http://www.narcap.org/reports/tr7-1.htm 6 Radar Catalog (RADCAT) A Review of Twenty One Ground and Airborne Radar UAP Contact reports Generally Related to Aviation Safety for the Period October 15, 1948 to September 19, 1976 Martin Shough, United Kingdom 2002 http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap...gh_12-8-02.pdf 5 Aircrew Survey Project Dr. Richard F. Haines and Ted Roe 2001 http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR5.htm 4 Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - Eighty Years of Pilot Sightings: Catalog of Military, Airliner, Private Pilots sightings from 1916 to 2000 Dominique Weinstein 2001 http://www.narcap.org/reports/emcarm.htm 3 A Preliminary Study of Sixty-four Pilot Sighting Reports Involving Alleged ElectroMagnetic Effects on Aircraft Systems Dr. Richard F. Haines and Dominique Weinstein 2001 http://www.narcap.org/reports/emcarm.htm 2 Results of an Informal NARCAP Advisor Survey Dr. Richard F. Haines., 2001 http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap.survey.pdf 1 Aviation Safety in America – A Previously Neglected Factor Dr.Richard F. Haines 2000 http://www.narcap.org/reports/narcap.TR1.AvSafety.pdf link for complete pdf files; http://www.narcap.org/Technical_Reports.html __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack. Last edited by jamesc; 11-05-2012 at 04:45 PM.

14-05-2012, 08:09 PM	#510
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	UFOs at Close Sight;Declassified UFO Documents; Here we have a collection stemming from 1946 to the late 1990s.These declassified UFO documents are through the FOIA request laws.There are hundreds to sieve through and are again a must for any serious UFO researcher. ************************************************ ********* Here is a collection of documents, some of them were formerly secret or confidential, they were all declassified because of the Freedom Of Information Act. F.O.I.A: The Freedom of Information Act (F.O.I.A) is an American law that allows members of the public to obtain copies of classified documents by having all or parts of the documents declassified by order of a federal judge. The judge may refuse the declassification of a document if it is necessary for the document to remain classified because it affects national security. At least, that is in theory. In practice it has been very unreliable, if one group requests for a set of documents and gets them, it does not necessarily mean that a second group will be able to get them. If the government denies they have got the documents that you are looking for, they may not be telling the truth. It has been known for a government agency to deny that it has ANY documents on an incident yet release it some months later. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ORIGINAL US GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has placed the full texts of more than 900 recently declassified documents concerning UFO's on line at the CIA's Electronic Documents Release Centre. http://www.foia.ucia.gov/ Use the "search" page and keywords such as UFO. Thousands of other documents can be obtained more or less easily upon request. ********************************************** ********* The National Security Agency (NSA) has placed the full texts of recently declassified documents concerning UFOs online at the National Security Agency's UFO Documents Index. here; http://www.nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/ufo.html ********************************************** ********* The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has placed the full texts of recently declassified documents concerning UFOs in PDF format in the "Unusual Phenomena" section of the FOIA Electronic Reading Room. here; http://foia.fbi.gov/room.htm ********************************************** *********** Below are a few examples of the declassified UFO documents that have been obtained through the freedom of information act or FOIA. FOIA DOCUMENTS SAMPLER: Scandinavian "Ghost Rockets" explained as Russians.1946; http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia02.htm Ghost rockets again ONI document Scandinavian "Ghost Rocket";1947 http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia01.htm FBI 8 July FBI memo on flying disk recovery in Roswell. 1947 http://ufologie.net/rw/f/fbimemo01.htm FBI Interview of pilot who saw two UFOs. 1947 http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia158.htm FBI Memo for M. Ladd: FBI wants access to "flying discs".1947 http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia26.htm Routing slip;General Twining's routing slip of UFO observations summaries. 1947; http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/foia23.htm Here is the original declassified document below; This is a secret document, declassified because of the Freedom Of Information Act. UFO INTEREST 1947: Routing slip from General Nathan F. Twining , Air Materiel Command (AMC) to General Brentnall, T-3, Engineering, accompanying summaries of flying saucer sightings as reported by Richard Rankin, Kenneth Arnold, and Idaho Forest Rangers. Shows the early military interest in the "flying saucers" started immediately in 1947 as soon as the designation "flying saucer" was issued by the press. REFERENCES: Title: TSEOP Form N.5 To: General Brentnall, T-3, Engineering Authors: General Nathan F. Twining , Air Materiel Command (AMC) Date: July 2, 1947 Length: Unknown. Classification: Unknown CC: None THE DOCUMENT: link; http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/indexe.htm __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

16-05-2012, 04:41 PM	#513
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	Sign Historical Group;Resources & Projects; Staying with the "educational" topic of the UFO subject below we have very valuable collections of UFO related interviews ect.Links ect are provided for futher sources of reading ect on an educational perception.Hope these last two posts are helpful to anyone who wants to dig deeper down the rabbit hole. ************************************************ ********* NEW - February 8, 2012; Updated CFI/Research Proposal; "Several years ago the SyFy Channel, with the aid of John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Clinton, started a campaign to press for the release of government documents dealing with UFOs under the title of the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI)." CFI solicited proposals from UFO researchers for a list of key UFO documents that might be secured via research or FOIA legal action. The Sign Historical Group produced a proposal which was not accepted within the tight deadline allowed for submissions. However, many of the proposed avenues for research have since produced new information and opened up new research opportunities. The original proposal with updated findings and potential leads can be read here. http://www.project1947.com/shg/cfi/sfcfiproposal.htm Dr. Frank B. Salisbury Frank Boyer Salisbury was born in Utah in 1926. He graduated from the University of Utah with a B.S. (1951) and M.A. (1952) and received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (1955). He served as head of the Department of Plant Science at Utah State University from 1966 to 1970, when he resigned to devote more time to research and textbook writing. He retired in 1997 after leading a project to grow wheat in the Russian space station Mir. In April 1962 he published an article entitled “Martian Biology” in Science magazine, outlining the possibility of life on Mars He received many letters pointing him towards the growing body of UFO literature. This led Salisbury to consider that if life was likely on other planets, perhaps extraterrestrial visitation was also a possibility. In January 1967 Salisbury published The Scientist and the UFO in Bioscience. http://www.project1947.com/shg/tom/salisbury_bios.htm On July 29th, 1968, Salisbury submitted a written statement to the U. S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science and Astronautics Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects. http://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/salisbury.html After a talk on the possibility of life on Mars to the Association of Utah Science Teachers, Salisbury was approached by Joseph Junior Hicks, a junior high school science teacher from Roosevelt, Utah. Hicks informed him of his research into a localized UFO wave in the Uintah Basin which further piqued Salisbury's interest in the subject. In August, 1975, Salibury published another article in Bioscience, Recent Developments in the Study of UFOS; http://www.project1947.com/shg/tom/salisbury_bio_75.htm We are pleased to present these articles with permission of the author. The Sign Oral History Project; http://sohp.us/sohp/ has an in-depth interview with Dr. Salisbury: http://sohp.us/sohp/interview-index/...yer-salisbury/ Julian J. A. Hennessey, British UFO Researcher; Julian Hennessey's two decades of UFO research in Europe and Great Britain resulted in an impressive network of official contacts, case reports and documents. As chairman of NICAP's European Investigative Subcommittee #1 he instigated contact with airline pilots, agencies, and military personnel which brought to light many UFO reports that otherwise might have remained unknown. Jan Aldrich presents an overview of Julian's work in this introductionhttp://www.project1947.com/shg/hennessey/index.html; to the previously unpublished essay The U.K. Goverment and UFOs http://www.project1947.com/shg/henne...ennessey.htmin which Julian outlines his dealings with British government officialdom and some significant historical British UFO events during his own involvement with UFO research in the 60s and 70s. Sign Oral History Project "Following the UFO History Workshop and the subsequent formation of the Sign Historical Group in 1999, it became evident that one area lacking in the preservation of the history of the UFO phenomenon was the archiving of spoken memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews..." The Sign Oral History Project began in 1999 to record recollections of UFO witnesses, investigators officials, scientists, and other individuals associated with UFO history. SOHP records interviews with a cross section of individuals involved with UFOs on archives quality video media. The founder of SOHP, Tom Tulien, has conducted well over 100 interviews with the assistance of a number of UFO historians. A partial list of interviewees is here,http://sohp.us/sohp/interview-index/ and includes witnesses from a number of important UFO cases, former Project Blue Book officials, UFO investigators and aviation and ballooning experts. Inventory of Material From the Files of Dr. Olavos T. Fontes Included in the material Dr. Willy Smith recently donated to the Sign Historical Group was his collection of items from the files of the renowned Brazilian UFO researcher, Dr. Olavos T. Fontes. An inventory of this material, along with Fontes-related items provided by other researchers, can be read here. A selection of Internet links referring to Fontes-related cases is also included. Civilian Saucer Investigation-LA In late 1951 several scientists, aeronautical engineers and interested persons established a UFO study group in California which they called "Civilian Saucer Investigation-Los Angeles" (CSI-LA). In just a few years, CSI-LA's dedication and science-based methods of research and investigation attracted the attention of other UFO researchers, mainstream media outlets such as LIFE Magazine, and government organizations ranging from the US Air Force, to the Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) and the CIA. The Sign Historical Group is pleased to present a collection of items and publications detailing the brief but influential activities of Civilian Saucer Investigation-LA . — Index of CSI-LA material. — Introduction and background of CSI-LA by Jan. L. Aldrich. September 7, 2002 — Introduction and backgroundhttp://www.project1947.com/shg/shgdocs.html by Tom Tulien regarding new Condon-related material on the Sign Historical Group website: — Politicking and Paradigm Shifting, the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Paul McCarthy.http://www.project1947.com/shg/mccarthy/index.html — Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, a.k.a. The Condon Report.http://www.project1947.com/shg/condon/index.html — United States House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Astronautics, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, July 1968. Washington, D.C. http://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/index.html — A detailed collection of Links and Articles http://www.project1947.com/shg/shglinks.htmlproviding background, critiques and commentary on Dr. Edward U. Condon, the Condon Report, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, July, 1968. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY UFO COLLECTION Updated 8 February, 2002; http://www.project1947.com/shg/resource.htm#ohio The Barry Greenwood Archives; http://www.project1947.com/shg/grnwood.htm Updated 8 November, 2003 Barry Greenwood's Articles Database; http://www.project1947.com/shg/bgbib.htm Updated 8 November, 2003 The Jan Aldrich Archives - UFO File Folder Headings http://www.project1947.com/shg/janfold.htm The Ray Fowler Archives; http://www.project1947.com/shg/fowler/index.html NEW - 3 March, 2002 The Wendy Connors' Archives; http://www.project1947.com/shg/connors/index.html Wendy's extensive Audio Disc and Photo Archive Listings ********************************************** *********** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY UFO COLLECTION; Thanks to the efforts of PROJECT 1947 archivist Candy Peterson, an alphabetical listing of UFO-related materials donated to Ohio State University (OSU) by William Jones is now available. The Collection is housed at the OSU Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department. The OSU library provides a secure holding area, national access and complete public services subject to the policies of the Rare Book and Manuscripts Department, (e.g., materials do not circulate; can only be viewed under staff supervision; etc.) OSU has a particular interest in preserving materials relating to Popular Culture. In the words of Geoffrey Smith, head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, "UFO studies enter all areas of contemporary culture: literature, film, TV, science, religion, etc. which contributes to OSU's interest in maintaining and enriching its UFO Collection." Contact Details:- If you have any material you would like to donate to the OSU collection, please contact Tom Tulien - AFSDialog@aol.com Click here for: Rare Books and Manuscripts - The Ohio State University Libraries; http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/OSU_profile/rarweb/ The OSU collection can be viewed online here.http://www.project1947.com/shg/osunav.htm For browsers with no frames, please click here.http://www.project1947.com/shg/osu_a_f.htm The OSU listing is also available for download as a plain ascii file - osu2002.zip; http://www.project1947.com/shg/osu2002.zip These listings reflect the current holdings at OSU and have been recently updated to incorporate new additions. __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

07-06-2012, 03:03 PM	#515
theabbot 7 Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Posts: 1,613	any new news?

15-06-2012, 06:14 PM	#518
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	UFO sighting that convinced a Government minister Thought this case was worth including and is one that has raised a few questions of what actually was observed by an RAF pilot and also picked up on radar. ************************************************ *********** The UFO sighting that convinced a Government minister; 1952; quote; "One of the most tantalising ever accounts of an apparent encounter with a UFO – deemed so credible it apparently convinced a British minister – can be told for the first time". After the sighting, Hughes – who was known as Sam, after a character created by Stanley Holloway, the actor and comedian – was nicknamed 'Saucer Sam' by colleagues, who painted a cartoon of a flying saucer on his jet. The RAF logbook of Flight Sergeant Roland Hughes; It is one of the most tantalising ever official accounts of an encounter with a UFO – deemed so credible it even convinced the government minister who investigated it. Now, for the first time, the sighting of a flying saucer by an RAF fighter pilot and the subsequent high level inquiry it prompted can be revealed. The sighting occurred in 30 July 1952, when Flight Sergeant Roland Hughes was on a training flight over West Germany in a de Havilland Vampire FB9. As he was returning to base, he reported being intercepted by a "gleaming silver, metallic disc" which flew alongside his aircraft before speeding off. The mystery object was also detected by RAF radars on the ground, which recorded it travelling at speeds far in excess of any known aircraft. Hughes reported the sighting to his senior officers who sent him to see Duncan Sandys, the then aviation minister, to brief him personally. Following the meeting, Sandys went on to tell senior civil servants he was convinced by the airman's story. The UFO sighting is not only one of the most detailed by a serving member of the armed forces but also shows how seriously such reports were taken by the authorities. British governments have historically downplayed the suggestion that such sightings have been investigated. The existence of the sighting has emerged in papers released by the Churchill Archive, at Cambridge University. The centre contains the papers of Sir Winston Churchill, as well as Sandys, who married the former prime minister's daughter, Diana. In one document – written a few days after the interview with the 23-year-old Hughes – Sandys tells the government's chief scientist, Lord Cherwell, about the meeting and states that he found the airman's account and the supporting evidence from radar "convincing". The sighting came shortly after a number of similar "flying saucer" reports from US airmen and Sandys added: "I have no doubt at all that (Hughes) saw a phenomenon similar to that described by numerous observers in the United States." Lord Cherwell had dismissed the US sightings as "mass psychology", but in his memo Sandys takes him to task for this attitude and makes clear his position on the existence of UFOs. The minister, who was later promoted to Defence Secretary, went on: "Until some satisfactory scientific explanation can be provided, it would be most unwise to accept without further question the view that 'flying saucers' can be dismissed as 'a mild form of hysteria'." Sandys also wrote that there was "ample evidence of some unfamiliar and unexplained phenomenon". The documents are among thousands released by the archive in recent years. Their disclosures were uncovered by David Clarke, a Sheffield Hallam University academic, while he was conducting research for a new edition of a book he has written on UFO sightings for the National Archives. By chance, shortly after his discovery, Dr Clarke was contacted by the fighter pilot's son, who had read the earlier edition and wanted to share information about his father's sighting. Roland Hughes had died in 2009, aged 79, but had recounted his version of events to his son, Brian, who passed on the account to Dr Clarke, as well as his father's log book, in which he had noted the sighting and subsequent meeting with Sandys. The incident will now feature in the latest edition of the book, to be released in September, following the release this summer of more government UFO files from the National Archives. In the airman's account, relayed via his son, he was in one of four aircraft from No. 20 Squadron, of the RAF's 2nd Tactical Air Force, returning to RAF Oldenburg, in northern West Germany, flying in formation at high altitude in clear visibility. He reported seeing a sudden flash of "silver light" in they sky high above him which rapidly descended towards him until he could see that it was a "gleaming silver-metallic disc". The airman said its surface was shiny, "like tin foil", and "without a single crease or crinkle in it". He could see, with "astonishing clarity", the aircraft's "highly reflective and absolutely seamless metallic-looking surface". He estimated its size at 100ft across – "about the wingspan of a Lancaster bomber". It flew alongside him for several seconds before flying off at great speed. None of the other three pilots saw the object – it is thought because they were all executing a "banking turn" at the time and would not have been looking in the right direction – but radar on the ground had picked it up. Six days later, Hughes – who later worked as a commercial airline pilot – was sent to RAF Fassberg, another base in northern West Germany, to give his account to senior RAF officers and Sandys himself, who was visiting. The minister's first question to Hughes was how many beers he had had the night before. After the sighting, Hughes – who was known as Sam, after a character created by Stanley Holloway, the actor and comedian – was nicknamed "Saucer Sam" by colleagues, who painted a cartoon of a flying saucer on his jet. Brian Hughes, 45, a Ministry of Defence civil servant based at Bovington Camp, in Dorset, said: "We knew about the sighting in the family when we were growing up but my father didn't talk about it a lot. We learned about it more from prompting him. "He was very matter-of-fact about what he saw, just describing the details. He never did any research into UFO or flying saucers and didn't have any interest in the supernatural of science fiction. "If it was someone other than my father who had told this story, I would be sceptical. He once said to me 'People think you're mad if you say you've seen a flying saucer – I've only ever seen one once; I've never seen one since.'" Dr Clarke, who is sceptic on UFO issues, said: "There is absolutely no doubt that something was seen by Hughes. He is not making this up. But the only honest position to take is that we don't know what it was. But there could be some sort of scientific explanation, before you start jumping to conclusions about alien visitors." link; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-minister.html __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

17-06-2012, 08:00 PM	#519
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	UFOs Are Solid and Under Intelligent Control. The Brazilian military authorities were one of the first countries to start releasing declassified UFO documents and i regard this as a very significant step in the road towards possible full scale disclosure.The below text makes some very interesting reading given the fact that these revelations are coming from credible military sources who after investigation's on UFOs reported in Brazil are treating this subject very seriously indeed. ************************************************ *********** Confirmation That UFOs Are Solid and Under Intelligent Control - Claims Brazilian Military. October 26, 2009; summary; A. J. Gevaerd studied Chemistry in several universities in Brazil. In 1986, he quit his carrier as a Chemistry teacher to research flying saucers full time. A. J. is the founder and editor of the Brazilian UFO Magazine. He is also founder and director of the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research, the largest organization of its type in South America, with over 1,200 members. For the past 19 years has been the only full time UFO researcher in Brazil. In 1983, he was appointed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek to be the representative of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Brazil. A. J. is the creator of the group UFOs: Freedom of Information Now. He heads this Brazilian Committee of UFO researchers, that has recently examined secret UFO docs in Brazil's official military UFO disclosure. quote; "As I have informed before, the Brazilian Government declassified a few weeks ago a new set of previously secret UFO documents, covering the 80s. I also informed you that we already had disclosures covering the 50s, 60s and 70s. They have been doing the releases by decade. So far over 4,000 pages and 300 photos have been disclosed. This time declassification, the 80s, is composed of some 800 pages and is very powerful." Among the documents released are the reports of UFOs on May 19, 1986, considered the 'Official UFO Night in Brazil', when 21 spherical objects, estimated 100 meters in diameter - according to military sources - literally jammed air traffic over the major Braziian Airports, when several Mirage and F5 jets were scrambled to pursue them for ours. As most of you already know, at that time the Air Force minister Octavio Moreira Lima went public on national TV networks about it the other morning. The pilots and their commanders also spoke freely about the pursuits, which occurred over several hours. This was a major thing in Brazil. Now, when on TV to the whole Nation, the Moreira Lima promised that a full report would be issued about the events, considering the air-air and air-land radar detections and the pilot pursuing, and it would be available in 30 days. And as most of the things that happen in my country, when governmental promises are involved, this so expected document was never known. Now we know why! Among the important files just released in the 80s package, there it is a certain ‘Occurrence Report’, dated June 02, 1986, just a few days after the ‘invasion’ by 21 UFOs of the most developed areas in the country. It has 8 pages and is signed by Air Brigadier Jose Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, acting commander of the Brazilian Air Command of Air Defense (COMDA). Now, what this report contains is very interesting, and I quote its Final Considerations part: 1. Based on the analysis of above-reported events, it is this Command’s opinion that, according to the information from the controllers, pilots and previously elaborated reports from I Cindacta (Air Traffic Control and Aerial Defense Center), that there are some points of coincidence regarding radar echoes, accelerations, illumination, velocities and behavior, either by technical detection or by visual contact. 2. Some of those coinciding points that we can name are those phenomena which exhibited certain constant characteristics, as follows: a. Produced radar echoes, not only on the Air Defense System, but also on the intercepting airplanes simultaneously, with visual comparisons by the pilots. b. Change in velocity, from subsonic to supersonic, besides hovering capability. c. Varied altitude, from below FL-050 to altitudes above FL-400. d. Occasionally seen as white, green and yellow lights, and sometimes no luminous indication. e. Sudden acceleration and deceleration. And there is more. In the Item 3 of the Final Considerations part, the Occurrence Report says clearly that ‘the phenomenon (UFOs) is solid and reflects intelligence’. See it in full: 3. As a conclusion of the observed constant facts in almost all presentations, it is the opinion of this Command that the phenomenon is solid and reflects intelligence by its capacity to follow and sustain distance from the observers, as well as to fly in formation, and are not necessarily manned craft. I have asked our volunteers Edison Hashida, Simon Levy and Marcos Malvezzi to translate the material and I have it for you for download. You can have both the full original document, in Portuguese, as well as the English version, both in PDF format at: www.ufo.com.br/documentos/night Occurrence Report - Original.pdf Occurrence Report - Translated.pdf I believe that this is one of the most powerful existing documents revealing the reality of the UFO phenomena, now fully admitted by our military authorities. We are now working to have more than 600 pages translated, and next Sunday I will interview the former Air Force minister Socrates Monteiro, another authority and officer in Brazil that decided to come public about what he knows and accept to receive me. He was the commander of the Air Traffic Control and Aerial Defense Center (Cindacta). This is all a direct result of the campaign UFOs: Freedom Of Information Now, promoted since 2004 by the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers. All thousands of pages and hundreds of photos since the 50s given to the Committee are available for download in the Brazilian UFO Magazine website as well as physically at the National Archives, in Brasilia. In late July, hundreds of papers from the Brazilian Air Force's official System for the Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (SIOANI) have demonstrated how the nation's military authorities dealt with the UFO Phenomena in the 60s and 70s. The Brazilian UFO Magazine website - www.ufo.com.br - has over 1,600 pages of documents, 200 photos for download of SIOANI's activities and Operation Saucer, carried out in the Amazonian region in 1977. Along with documents received by the Committee from other military sources. Included in the recently revealed documents are the detailed research proceedings carried out in dozens of UFO-related incidents which had not been made public previously. Some of the colored sketches of UFO incidents investigated by SIOANI are here: www.ufo.com.br/documentos/sioani/ www.ufo.com.br/documentos/prato/ www.ufo.com.br/documentos/extra/ www.ufo.com.br/documentos/geral/ www.ufo.com.br/documentos/anos_80/ www.ufo.com.br/documentos/novos/ Please note: Download, print, publicize and otherwise share these documents, but please do not fail to mention the source, Brazilian UFO Magazine, and emphasize that this material is public thanks to the efforts of the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers (CBU). By closing, let me tell you all, as previously posted here, that the recent disclosures proves that Brazil was the first country in the world ever to officially and publicly admit the reality of the UFO Phenomena, and the first one to investigate it openly, in a not secret manner. link source; http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1009/i...nt-control.php __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

23-06-2012, 03:13 PM	#520
jamesc Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,400	SCIENCE and the UFO CONTROVERSY; When not only the general public but occasionally the scientific community hear of a UFO report that is causing a stir due to either credible witnesses ect bearing witnessed to it through the main stream media it is generally pushed aside or dismissed by the scientific academic community, (who through a highly successful debunking campaign that was the USAF UFO investigation projects named,"BLUE BOOK, "PROJECT GRUDGE" AND "THE CONDON REPORT"). This debunking campaign under the three main governmental UFO investigation's that where carried out in the 50s/60s was to have a major say and impact on any real scientific academics putting time and effort into this subject.In short this campaign ended any real seriousness or advancements of understandings in those UFO reports that to this day defy any real mundane or known explanations. Below is some information on the very important points raised on this official debunking campaign and not a lot of people ,(be they sceptics,debunkers, ridiculer"s or even believers), know of the official behind scenes UFO debunking campaign that was presented to the public and scientific community, hopefully this post can shed or even encourage some light on this very highly important historical situation that was to influence and shape any future scientific research or the public's perception that was and still is heavily influenced by the style of the main stream media's reporting. ************************************************ *********** SCIENCE and the UFO CONTROVERSY; "Mainstream science has not satisfactorily engaged with the UFO mystery. The disappointing history of that engagement will be discussed here and what can be done and should be done will be covered here." quote; "43 years ago the controversy plagued Colorado University Condon committee scientific study of UFOs was released – the result of a two year US Air Force half a million dollar funded investigation. It concluded “that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of the UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” The US Air force used the report to end its public bondage to the UFO problem. The notorious Project Blue Book was terminated and publicly at least the Air Force were out of the UFO business. This was the “fix” that was intended all along. The Condon report has since been used as the basis of continuing mainstream scientific and sceptical rejection of the reality of UFOs. Just how credible was the Condon report and its conclusions? The National Academy of Sciences endorsed the study. Much of the media uncritically embraced the report. UFOs were dead and buried. However no one informed the UFO corpse. In 1973 UFOs were back with a vengeance in the one of the biggest UFO waves the US had ever experienced. UFOs have refused to be put down and they continue to be reported and continue to be marginalised by science. The spectre of Charles Fort’s “procession of the damned” has been played out. “By the damned, (Fort meant) the excluded.” He wrote in his classic narrative engagement with the unknown and the unidentified, “The Book of the Damned,” “We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.” When it comes to credibility as a scientific report the Condon Report is hugely controversial. The problems and dubious background of the study have been widely reported. For example “the inside story by an ex-member of the official study group” appeared in book form just before the Condon Report was finally published. “UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee went Wrong” by David Saunders and R. Harkins revealed the tumultuous history of the Condon UFO project. Its internal problems during the course of the study had also been aired in spectacular fashion in Look magazine in May of 1968, when journalist John Fuller wrote “Colorado UFO Fiasco” which leaked the notorious Low “trick” memo, in which Robert Low, who would be the study coordinator under Professor Edward Condon the project head. Low wrote, “The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer. One way to do this would be to stress investigation, not of the physical phenomena, but rather of the people who do the observing – the psychology and sociology of the persons and groups who report seeing UFO’s. If the emphasis were put here, rather than on examination of the old question of the physical reality of the saucer, I think the scientific community would quickly get the message.” "Professor Condon played that game throughout the study and was over the top with his lack of objectivity and his focus on the obviously dubious side of the subject – the contactees and the silly stories, that didn’t require any scientific investigation to show them up as nothing of merit. His biases were revealed in his “Conclusions and Recommendations” in the final report. Stanford University astrophysicist Peter Sturrock examined the report in close detail, something the National Academy of Sciences review panel and the media failed to do. Professor Sturrock found what I found as a budding researcher reading the Condon Report in detail. There was a huge disconnection between Condon’s conclusions, report summaries and the detail of the actual report and studies of the scientists who did the actual investigations and research. Sturrock’s analysis revealed Condon’s summaries variously misleading, false or inaccurate. For example Condon indicated that the project’s investigator/photoanalyst Dr. Hartmann had solved all the UFO photographic cases. Hartmann’s conclusion for the famous 1950 McMinnville photos in the Condon Report: “This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of metres in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within the sight of two witnesses.” This was one of the more obvious contradictions between Dr. Condon’s conclusions and summaries and the actual substance of the report itself. There are certainly others, sufficient to question why the National Academy of Science endorsed the report. Professor Sturrock would later direct a major review of the physical evidence for UFOs. While it didn’t prove that UFOs were alien for example, it certainly endorsed the need for further serious and well funded scientific study. Sturrock’s review was published as the first major scientific inquiry since the Condon report, “The UFO Enigma” (1999). It is an excellent review of the physical evidence for UFOs. Read in conjunction with Richard Hall’s excellent 30 year review sequel to his classic 1964 “UFO evidence”, the year 2000 Volume 11 of “The UFO Evidence” you have a compelling case for the validity of the UFO subject. And yet very few sceptics, few scientists and certainly few media commentators are aware of either study. They trot out the Condon Report as if it is a credible study. When pressed they haven’t read it or they have only bothered with the disconnected “conclusions and recommendations” of Dr. Condon. They haven’t properly evaluated the Condon Report and they haven’t even examined any of the controversy and debate about the report. Few if any realised that other scientists also examined the Condon Report and came to different conclusions and also saw the obvious disconnections between Condon’s own conclusions and recommendations, and the body of the report. An extraordinary example of this situation can be found in Dr. Claude Poher’s response to the Condon Report. He was with the French equivalent to NASA – CNES. Examining the Condon Report in detail he found that contrary to Condon, the report substantiated that there was a real UFO problem. An examination of the report indicates that about a third of the cases examined for the Condon Report were unexplained. What did Poher do? Well he would eventually win support for the establishment of GEPAN – a UFO study group within CNES, which went on to do some excellent research, some of which went a long way to supporting a UFO reality, not the least being the Trans-en Provence case of 1981, in which a UFO landed and left behind compelling physical evidence – a ground trace that yielded fascinating data. If many of the thousands of the worldwide physical trace cases received similar attention as the Trans-en Provence case we would have a compelling body of physical evidence data. Instead we have thousands of lost opportunities – a huge measure of the failure of mainstream science to properly examine a real UFO phenomenon. Roy Craig was a major field investigator for the Condon study. As a physical chemist like myself I found some affinity for his memoir published in 1995 as “UFOs – An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence.” Craig felt the American public got a “good” report out of the Condon report His memoir gave this take, “Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote. that the American public did not understand the importance in our society of the “no-business meeting,” that is, a meeting whose purpose was not to conduct business, but to give the impression that business was being conducted. Bob Low’s indiscreet paragraph in his office memorandum suggested the Colorado Study would be a “no-business” investigation. Dogmatic views like that of Condon … would fit a situation in which a “no-business” non-investigation would be appropriate. The contents of (Craig’s memoir), however, as well as the full contents of the Condon Report, show that the American public got a real “business” investigation in the Colorado Project, regardless of the implications of the Low’s office memorandum, regardless of the possible appropriateness of a non-investigation, and regardless of the campaign of magazines and newspapers to convince the public otherwise.” Despite Craig’s somewhat myopic and limited take on his time as a key player in the controversial Condon UFO study, there are still some matters emerging that seem to substantiate the severe credibility problems it had, and it was Roy Craig who had an indirect role, albeit after his death. It is important to note that despite the damage done and the massive misdirection that occurred with the mainstream scientific community and the media, there were some positive outgrowths of the notorious Condon committee report. David Saunders and Roger Harkins in their 1969 book “UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee went wrong” tried to spell out the problem at the time but were largely ignored in the tidal wave of myopic mainstream acceptance of the Condon report. Roy Craig’s own 1995 book “UFOs – An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence” has some insights but it was from within his personal papers and documents that the “smoking gun” of deception and misdirection may have emerged. We have seen in a positive sense the published Condon report made some scientist realise that there was a real UFO problem worthy of scientific attention, despite Edward Condon’s negative conclusions to the contrary. Dr. Claude Poher, of the French equivalent to NASA read the report in depth and saw the huge disconnection between Condon’s conclusion and the full report itself. As I showed, this led Poher to work towards getting GEPAN formed. Gildas Bourdais provides an excellent summary of GEPAN’s history in the International UFO Reporter (IUR) Volume 31 Number 2 (June 2007): "The Death and Rebirth of official French UFO Studies"). GEPAN and its variations had to also run a difficult course through politics, mainstream scientific scepticism and clandestine militarism but much good work was achieved. Of possible critical significance is the emergence in 2009 of documented evidence that confirms the dubious nature of the 1969 Condon report that has so sidetracked the interest of mainstream science in UFOs. Documents found in the papers of the late Roy Craig, confirm that the report chairman Dr. Edward Condon had drafted his negative conclusions about the UFO subject “without benefit of prior reading of the other sections of the report which were by (then) near completion.” The Craig papers also reveal that despite publicly reporting over 30 % “unknowns” in the final report (and astonishingly reporting that there was nothing of scientific worth to the UFO subject) the reality was that more than 50% were “unknown.” A confidential 3 page memo to Condon dated 5 September 1968 from Joseph Rush, a National Centre for Atmospheric Research physicist and Condon UFO project investigator revealed that despite growing more sceptical in the Condon study environment, the irony was so many of their investigations had ended up as unexplained cases. Rush wrote, “This may seem an anomalous conclusion, since more of the C-cases (Colorado University cases) are unexplained than explained.” Most UFO researchers who have examined the controversy in detail, particularly the “devil in the detail” behind the Condon report are hardly surprised by such revelations. Dr. Michael Swords, who wrote an excellent review of the Condon study in the CUFOS Journal of UFO Studies Volume 6, 1995/1996, and who has undertaken a detailed study of Roy Craig’s papers is not surprised. He told me the Condon report was a “political and sociological response” to the USAF’s UFO “problem.” As such it was an effective response providing the Air Force with an “escape clause” from its UFO nightmare. Well, the nightmare continues and the UFO “corpse” is alive and well. UFOs relentlessly continue their march of the “damned” and still await the serious open and scientific attention they deserve. link; http://scienceandtheufocontroversy.blogspot.com.es/ __________________ "What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack. Last edited by jamesc; 23-06-2012 at 03:16 PM.