NERDGASM | The X-Files

[Thaddeus Smith]

http://www.fox.com/the-x-files/article/the-next-mind-bending-chapter-is-coming

[Schu]

thank you... thank you very much!

[CECAA850]

Clean up on aisle Schu.

[Mallette]

They're BAAACK...

 

Dave

[Schu]

Clean up on aisle Schu.

 

hahaha.... milk hath shot out of thy nostrils.

[Shodrewken]

siiiick!

[wvu80]

I liked the X-files series, but I can't help but notice the amount of UFO sightings is down since they went off the air.  FYI I am not a UFO skeptic, I just don't believe they exist. 

 

Honest question here, do you think a person has to believe or be interested in UFO type things to like this kind of series?

[Fjd]

July 8, 1947

Roswell Daily Record

RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region
No Details of Flying Disk Are Revealed
Roswell Hardware Man and Wife Report Disk Seen

 

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer.

 

According to information released by the department, over authority of Maj. J. A. Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an unidentified rancher had notified sheriff Geo. Wilcox, here, that he had found the instrument on his premises.

 

Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk, it was stated.

 

After the intelligence office here had inspected the instrument it was flown to "higher headquarters".

 

The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer's construction or its appearance had been revealed.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who have seen what they thought was a flying disk.

 

They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. last Wednesday night at about ten minutes before ten o'clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed.

 

Wilmot called Mrs. Wilmot's attention to it and both ran down into the yard to watch. It was in sight less than a minute, perhaps 40 or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated.

 

Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500 feet high and going fast. He estimated between 400 and 500 miles per hour.

 

In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like two oldtype washbowls placed together in the same fashion. The entire body glowed as though light were showing through from inside, though not like it would be if a light were merely underneath.

 

From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked to be about five feet in size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must have been 15 or 20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess.

 

Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs. Wilmot said she heard a swishing sound for a very short time.

 

The object came into view from the southeast and disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity of six mile hill.

 

Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about seeing it. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he had decided to release the details of what he had seen.

[Fjd]

May 7, 1949

Air Force Times

Many Flying Saucers Incidents Remain Unsolved, AF Reports

 

Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio--Preliminary studies made here by the Air Material Command concerning 270 reports of "flying saucers" have not solved the mystery that has fascinated the nation for nearly two years, but they have succeeded in proving most of the incidents involved objects such as weather balloons, flares, flights of birds, and practical jokes.

The airborne disks are not joke to the Air Force, however, and the AMC investigators frankly admin that many cases remain unsolved.


THEY INSIST that exhaustive research has produced "no alarming probabilities such as missiles fired by other nations or from other planets.

The flying saucer researchers studied reports of 240 incidents in this country and 30 overseas. About 30 per cent of them have been dismissed as astronomical phenomena, such as comets or shooting stars, and another 30 per cent have been explained as conventional objects, such as other aircraft, birds, etc.

But the remaining 40 per cent, the report points out, still end in question marks, and solutions of these unsolved cases are still sought by AMC's Intelligence Division.


THE SAUCER scare started June 24, 1947, when a flier near Mt. Rainier, Wash., saw what appeared to be a chain of nine peculiar aircraft.

"They were flap like a pie plan and so shiny they reflected the sun like a mirror," he told investigators.

His story was treated mainly with amusement and disbelief when it broke in the newspapers, but reports of flying discs began to snowball. Several Portland, Ore., policemen said they saw a group which "wobbled, disappeared and reappeared" and resembled "shiny chromium hub caps." Two Alabama pilots reported a huge black object "bigger than a C-54" but without engines or wings which they followed for several minutes until it outran their plane.

A private pilot in Oklahoma City reported what was the largest saucer on record. It was as large as "six B-29s," he said, and flying three times as fast as a jet.

* * *

A TRAGIC development occurred near Godman AFB, Fort Knox, Ky., when three Air National Guard pilots gave chase to an unidentified object that looked like "an ice cream cone topped with red." The flight leader climbed to 20,000 feet, where he apparently blacked out from lack of oxygen. His body was found in the wreckage of his plane.

The investigators took note of reports that the strange objects might be space ships from other planets. Although they conceded such an explanation was possible, they called it very unlikely, calling the odds against it "at lease a thousand to one."

In summing up the evidence that has been collected, the report cites the fact that most of the incidents have been solved, concedes that some remain unanswered, and pledges a continuance of the investigations.

[Fjd]

February 26, 1951

Washington Post

'Saucers' May Be Experiments By Likely Foe, Scientist Says

 

Scituate, Mass (AP) - A former Air Force Scientist today brushed aside the idea that flying saucers are just balloons and urged a full investigation on wht he said may be experiments by "a potential enemy of the United States."

 

Dr. Anthony O. Mirarchi, who was employed by the Air force as an air chemist in its geophysical laboratory, took issue with a recent magazine article written by Dr. Urner LIddel, Navy scientist. Liddel said what people have been seeing are plastic balloons sent in to the upper air for radiation research.

 

Fears "Worse Pearl Harbor"

 

Mirarchi said that if flying saucers are experimental missiles launched by foreign hands they could "lead to a worse Pearl Harbor than we ever experienced."

 

"The Navy report is erroneous, it lulls people into a false sense of security," he said in an interview.

 

He said that as a assistant chief of a branch of the geophysical research organization he conducted an investigation and recommended "considerable appropriation" to press a study of the mysterious phenomena.

 

At Washington , a Air Force spokesman who was asked about Mirarchi's contentions, had this to say:

 

"In over 500 investigations we have made so far we have yet to find one concrete bit of evidence to back up these repots of flying saucers."

 

AF Still Studies Reports

 

However, the spokesman added, the Air Force has not terminated the long study of flying saucer rumors. It is still to be carried
on at the USAF Air Material Command Center at DAyto9n, Ohio with Col Harold E. Watson directing the studies.

 

Dr. Mirarchi said that after studying extensive files of the Office of Strategic Information covering hundreds of eyewitness reports of flying saucers or "fireballs," he concluded the observations were consistent with "a missile programmed in advance."

 

In other words, the objects had "maneuvered motion," as though guided by some mechanism. He said the descriptions of vertical and horizontal motions did not indicate any natural phenomenon like a meteor or the erratic motion of drifting balloons.

 

He remarked that a number of "the fireball observations came from a certain region of the New Mexico which is critical to the national interests." In that region is the Los Alamos atomic installation.

 

Dr. Mirarchi left his Government jot to enter business for himself and now lives in Scituate.

[Fjd]

October 25, 1954

Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica)

Visitors from outer space may be mapping earth

by Ronald Batchelor
Reuters Correspondent

Nairobi - Visitors from outer space are probably observing and mapping the Earth and have directing their recent attentions to East Africa.

That, at any rate, is the considered opinion of one of the leading astronomers in this area, the vice-president of Kenya Astronomical Association, Mr. G. Duncan Fletcher.

He put forward this startling and eerie suggestion after a deluge of reports from scores of observers throughout East Africa, who claim to have seen "flying saucers."

These reports have flooded newspapers offices in the three East African territories of Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika.

Europeans, Asians and Africans claimed to have seen objects in the sky: stationary; zooming over the horizon; changing colour from white to red, blue and green; elliptical in shape and elongated with upright projections at either end.

First reports of "flying saucers" came from Dar-es-Salaam, capital of Tanganyika on the Indian Ocean coast, and were quickly followed by "sightings" at Mombasa, Kampala and this city.

Here, in Nairobi, citizens telephoned local police stations to say that they had spotted "saucers" circling the suburbs. More than one police patrol car, sent to investigate, reported following the course of "mysterious bright objects" in the sky. Two Europeans on duty at the international airport here observed an "aerial object" through bin0culars.

Mr. Fletcher says that he has recently observed something in the sky over Nairobi from his well-equipped observatory here.

"It was about 7:40 p.m. that I had four friends in my observatory," he says. "Very low and towards the east, there was a large light in the sky which had no relationship to anything as- tronomical, to Verey lights or to the aircraft which had just landed at the airport."

The altitude of Mr. Fletcher's "object" was about 2,000 feet, was stationary when first spotted by himself and his four companions and "emmited a bright orange light." This light brightened to a yellowish colour and the object rose, dropped and then rose again, finally disappearing through the clouds, he states.

Mr Fletcher says that he thinks there is no question about the genuineness of reports about "flying saucers," which "have been given by very experienced observers" in all parts of the world.

"Not all the American and British people who have seen these unidentified flying objects have been suffering from hallucinations," he declares.

The most encouraging thing about reports of unidentified flying objects (or U.F.O. as they are labelled officially here), Mr. Fletcher avers, is that "they seemed to be friendly towards the people of this planet."

"From all the information which is available they are steadily mapping every part of our Earth," he concludes

Countless reasons, he believes - and he cites Dr. F. Hoyle, Professor of Astro-Physics at Cambridge and Sir James Jeans - can be offered as to why there should be many more planets, or bodies, in the universe capable of supporting life.

Probably this life would differ enormously from life as known on Earth. "It is possible that whereas we need oxygen and other elements to support life on this planet, entirely different elements may be supporting life on others," Mr. Fletcher declares. "Indeed, the forms of life could be completely different from any that we can imagine."

Whether the beings now visiting the Earth from outer space are short or tall, have blood in their veins, or whether they have veins at all, will have to await their contact with human beings here," he says, inferring that "Outer Space Men" will one day decide to land their "machines" and attempt to communicate with Earth men.

It may be sheer coincidence, Mr. Fletcher says, but he points out that these other beings seem to have been interested in activities on Earth since the time of the first atomic explosion about seven years ago.

"There does not seem to be any doubt that they are miles ahead of us in their methods of propulsion, and reports have been made by observers who have seen these unidentified flying objects over atomic plants, dockyards, airfields, naval bases and some of the larger cities of the world," he says.

"Their approach to us is, I suggest, similar to what our own approach would be if the shoe were on the other foot [illegible word] we were to visit Venus, I don't think until we had made every possible investigation we would land.

The obvious thing is that we should map, photograph if possible and carry out a thorough investigation before we [illegible word] risked life by hasty [illegible word] it is not unreasonable, therefore, that whatever controls the unidentified flying objects is doing exactly that."

Mr. Fletcher is convinced that the objects come from outer space and declares that "their behaviour cannot be mistaken for a meteorite which, on coming into contact with our atmosphere, is pulled at an ever-increasing velocity by gravity towards the earth. The velocity becomes so great that the objects burns up because of the intense heat generated by friction with our atmosphere.

"A meteorite does not turn or hover in the air. Its path is a parabolic curve similar to that of shell fired from a gun. Therefore the things which we have seen are undoubtedly unidentified flying objects."

[Fjd]

April 18, 1966

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio Deputies Chase, Lose Brilliant UFO

by Douglas Bloomfield

RAVENNA--Hundreds of persons in two states reported seeing a "brilliant and shiny" object over eastern Ohio early yesterday. Two Portage County deputies chased it 86 miles.

Portage County Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur said he and his partner, Deputy Sheriff W.H. Neff played tag with the mysterious object from 5 a.m. near Ravenna to 6:30 a.m. on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.

Police Chief Gerald Buchert of Mantua saw the object and photographed it in front of his home. He showed a print of his picture to the Plain Dealer but said the Air Force told him not to release it or permit photographs to be taken.

BUCHERT DESCRIBED it as "round when I looked straight up at it, but when it moved to the left--I feel like an idiot saying this--it looked like a saucer, like two table saucers put together."

The photograph showed an object with a very dark bottom and a very light top. Each half seemed to resemble a saucer seen from the side. The lighter top "saucer" was upside down.

Spaur described the object as about 40 feet wide and 18 feet high. He said he clocked it at speeds up to 103 mph as they chased it from Randolph Township to Conway, Pa.

A BRILLIANT beam of light from the object lit the area. Spaur said, "It was so bright, even with the sun coming out, it stood out. Its lines were very distinct," he said as he used the bell of a flashlight to describe the object.

"We were close, closer than I ever want to be again," he told the Plain Dealer. "I know nobody's going to believe it but its true." Spaur said all his former doubts about UFOs were removed.

"Somebody had control over it. It wasn't just an object floating around. It can maneuver. The only sound was a steady, faint humming like an electrical transformer when we first spotted it," he said. The sound was inaudible as the deputies chased the object, they added.

AT CONWAY, PA., Spaur said the object began hovering and was "going for altitude, straight up." After watching for about 20 minutes, he and the others went inside the police station to telephone U.S. Air Force officials he said, and when they came back outside the object was gone.

The Federal Aviation Agency's Air Traffic Control Centers at Oberlin and Pittsburgh said they spotted no unknown objects on their radar early yesterday.

[Fjd]

October 9, 1966

Cleveland Plain Dealer

He Chased a Flying Saucer, Now His Life is Shattered

by John De Groot

RAVENNA (AP)--In his world of loneliness and twisted nightmares, Dale Spaur wonders if the nightmare will ever end.

It began six months ago with "Seven Steps to Hell" and ended with a flying saucer named Floyd.

In the predawn hours of a gentle April morning, Portage County Sheriff's Deputy Spaur chased a flying saucer 86 miles.

NOW THE STRANGE craft is chasing him. And he is hiding from it, a bearded stranger peering past the limp curtains of a tiny motel room in Solon.

He no longer is a deputy sheriff.

His marriage is shattered.

He has lost 40 pounds.

He lives on one bowl of cereal and a sandwich each day.

He walks three miles to an $80-a-week painters job. His motel room costs $60 a week. The court has ordered him to pay his wife $20 a week for the support of his two children.

That leaves Dale Spaur exactly nothing.

THE FLYING saucer did it.

"If I could change all that I have done in my life," he said, "I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer."

He spit the word out, "Saucer." An obscenity.

Others might understand.

Four other officers took part in the April 17 [1966] drama.

Police Chief Gerald Buchert of Mantua saw the craft and photographed it. The pictures turned out badly, an odd fuzzy white thing suspended in blackness. Today, Chief Buchert laughs nervously when he speaks of that night.

"I'D RATHER NOT talk about it," he says. "It's something that should be forgotten...left alone. I saw something, but I don't know what it was."

Special Deputy W. L. Neff rode with Spaur during the chase.

He won't talk about it.

His wife Jackelyne explains, "I hope I never see him like he was after the chase. He was real white, almost in a state of shock. It was awful."

"And people made fun of him afterwards. He never talks about it anymore. Once he told me, 'If that thing landed in my back yard, I wouldn't tell a soul.' He's been through a wringer."

PATROLMAN Frank Panzenella saw the chase end in Conway, Pa., where he works. He saw the craft.

Now he is silent. Friends say he had his telephone removed because of calls about that April morning.

H. Wayne Huston was a police officer in East Palestine, O. He had worked there seven years. Several months after the saucer passed above him in the night, he resigned...going to Seattle Wash., to drive a bus.

Huston now goes by Harold W. Huston. He tells you," Sure I quit because of that thing. People laughed at me. And there was pressure... You couldn't put your finger on it, but the pressure was there.

The city officials didn't like police officers chasing flying saucers."

SPAUR AND HUSTON have turned in their badges.

Now Spaur hides in Solon, a fugitive from a flying saucer named Floyd. He cannot escape the strange craft.

Spaur and Neff were checking on a car parked alongside U.S. 224 between Randolph and Atwater. The car was filled with radio equipment and had a strange emblem painted on its side, a triangle with a bolt of lightning inside it. Above the emblem was written, "Seven Steps to Hell."

Behind them they heard a strange humming noise and turning, said they saw a huge saucer shaped craft rise out of a woods and hover above them, bathing them in a warm white light.

Then it moved off.

LEAVING THE mystery car behind, never to be seen again, the two deputies hopped into their cruiser and chased the object, sometimes at speeds of more than 100 miles an hour. The chase finally ended when the cruiser ran out of gas near Pittsburgh. They said the craft they chased was about 50 feet across and 15 to 20 feet high with a large dome on its top and an antenna jutted out from the rear of the dome.

After the chase, Spaur's daily routine was washed away in a sea of reporters, television cameramen, Air Force investigators, government officials, strange letters from places like Little Rock, Ark. and Australia that told him what to do if "the little green men" tried to contact him.

"MY ENTIRE LIFE came crashing down around my shoulders," he said.

"Everything changed. I still don't really know what happened. But suddenly, it was as though everybody owned me. And I no longer had anything for myself. My wife, my home, my children. They all seemed to fade away."

Spaur's wife Daneise now is alone with her two children.

She has filed for divorce and is working as a waitress in a bar at Ravenna.

"Something happened to Dale, but I don't know what it was," she says. He came home that day and I never saw him more frightened before. He acted strange, listless. He just sat around. He was very pale."

"THEN LATER, he got real nervous. And he started to run away. He'd just disappear for days and days. I wouldn't see him."

"Our marriage fell apart. All sorts of people came to the house. Investigators. Reporters. They kept him up all night. They kept after him, hounding him. They hounded him right into the ground."

"And he changed."

Then one night, Dale came home very late. He isn't sure what happened. He walked into the living room. There were some other people there. Things were very tense. Very confused.

HE GRABBED his wife and shook her. Hard. He kept shaking her. It left big ugly bruises on her arms. He doesn't know how or why...

That was the end of July. Daneise filed assault and battery charges. Dale was jailed and turned in his badge.

A newspaper printed a story about the deputy who chased the flying saucer being jailed for beating his wife.

When he got out of jail, Dale ran...left town, turned his back on everything.

BUT THE SAUCER followed him, locked in his dreams.

In Ravenna, Daneise can only say, "Dale is a lost soul.

And everything is finished for us."

In Solon, Dale said, "I have become a freak. I'm so damn lonely. Look at me...34 years old and what do I have? Nothing."

"Who knows me? To everyone I'm Dale Spaur, the nut who chased a flying saucer. My father called me several weeks ago.

A long time ago we had a fight. I hadn't heard from him for years. Then he calls me."

"DO YOU THINK he called to ask how I was...To say 'I love you, son... To see if I wanted to go fishing, or something?

Hell, no. He wanted to know if I'd seen any more flying saucers."

"I tried to go to church for help. I went to church and the minister introduced me to the congregation. 'We have the man who chased a flying saucer with us today,' he said."

Dale Spaur wept as he told what the flying saucer named Floyd had done to him.

He calls it Floyd because he saw it once more while he was still working for the sheriff's department.

THE RADIO operators knew civilians were monitoring their broadcasts. So they agreed to use a code name if the flying saucer was seen again. They called it Floyd...Dale Spaur's middle name.

Dale was driving east on Interstate 80-S one night in June [1966]. He looked up. There it was.

"Floyd's here with me," he whispered into the radio.

Then he parked the car and sat there, alone. This time Barney Neff was not with him. Dale did not look out the window. He lit a cigarette and stared at the floor of the cruiser. He sat there for nearly 15 minutes...not looking outside, not wanting to see Floyd.

WHEN HE LOOKED up, Floyd had disappeared.

Yet it still follows him. And it has ruined his life. This he believes.

[Fjd]

December 17, 1966

Saturday Evening Post

Are Flying Saucers Real?

by J. Allen Hynek

For years the Air Force has dismissed them as hoaxes, hallucinations or misidentifications. Now the Air Force's own scientific consultant on unidentified flying objects declares that many of the sightings cannot be so easily explained.

On August 25, 1966, an Air Force officer in charge of a missile crew in North Dakota suddenly found that his radio transmissions was being interrupted by static. At the time, he was sheltered in a concrete capsule 60 feet below the ground. While he was trying to clear up the problem, other Air Force personnel on the surface reported seeing a UFO--an unidentified flying object high in the sky. It had a bright red light, and it appeared to be alternately climbing and descending. Simultaneously, a radar crew on the ground picked up the UFO at 100,000 feet.

So begins a truly puzzling UFO report--one that is not explainable as it now stands by such familiar causes as a balloon, aircraft, satellite or meteor. "When the UFO climbed, the static stopped," stated the report made by the base's director of operations. "The UFO began to swoop and dive. It then appeared to land ten to fifteen miles south of the area. Missile-site control sent a strike team (well-armed Air Force guards) to check. When the team was about ten miles from the landing site, static disrupted radio contact with them. Five to eight minutes later the glow diminished, and the UFO took off. Another UFO was visually sighted and confirmed by radar. The one that was first sighted passed beneath the second. Radar also confirmed this. The first made for altitude toward the north, and the second seemed to disappear with the glow of red."

This incident, which was not picked up by the press, is typical of the puzzling cases that I have studied during the 18 years that I have served as the Air Force's scientific consultant on the problem of UFO's. What makes the report especially arresting is the fact that another incident occurred near the base a few days earlier. A police officer--a reliable man---saw in broad daylight what he called "an object on its edge floating down the side of a hill, wobbling from side to side about ten feet from the ground. When it reached the valley floor, it climbed to about one hundred feet, still tipped on its edge, and moved across the valley to a small reservoir."

The object which was about 30 feet in diameter, next appeared to flatten out, and a small dome became visible on top. It hovered over the water for about a minute, then moved to a small field, where it appeared to be landing. It did not touch the ground, however, but hovered at a height of about 10 feet some 250 feet away from the witness, who was standing by his parked patrol car. The object then tilted up and disappeared rapidly into the clouds. A fantastic story, yet I interviewed the witness in this case and am personally satisfied that he is above reproach.

During the years that I have been its consultant, the Air Force has consistently argued that UFO's were either hoaxes, hallucinations or misinterpretations of natural phenomena. For the most part I would agree with the Air Force. As a professional astronomer--I am chairman of the department of astronomy at Northwestern University--I have had no trouble explaining the vast majority of the reported sightings.

But I cannot explain them all. Of the 15,000 cases that have come to my attention, several hundred are puzzling, and some of the puzzling incidents, perhaps one in 25, are bewildering. I have wanted to learn much more about these cases than I have been able to get from either the reports or the witnesses.

These special cases have been reported by highly respected, intelligent people who often had technical training -- astronomers, airport -tower operators, anthropologists, Air Force officer, FBI personnel, physicians, meteorologists, pilots, radar operators, test pilots and university professors. I have argued for years within the Air Force that these unusual cases needed much more study than they were getting. Now, finally, the Air Force has begun a serious scientific investigation of the UFO phenomena. (J.C. The Colorado, Condon Committee)

The public, I am certain, wants to know what to believe--what can be believed--about the "flying saucer" stories that seem to be growing more sensational all the time. With all loyalty to the Air Force, and with a deep appreciation of its problems, I now feel it my duty to discuss the UFO mystery fully and frankly. I speak as a scientist with unique experience. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only scientist who has spent nearly 20 years monitoring the UFO situation in this and other countries and who has also read many thousands of reports and personally interviewed many sighters of UFO's.

Getting at the truth of "flying saucers" has been extraordinarily difficult because the subject automatically engenders such instantaneous reactions and passionate beliefs. Nearly all of my scientific colleagues, I regret to say, have scoffed at the reports of UFO's as so much balderdash, although this was a most unscientific reaction since virtually none of them had ever studied the evidence. Until recently my friends in the physical sciences wouldn't even discuss UFO's with me. The subject, in fact, rarely came up. My friends were obviously mystified as to how I, a scientist, could have gotten mixed up with "flying saucers" in the first place. It was a little as though I had been an opera singer who had suddenly taken it into his head to perform in a cabaret. It was all too embarrassing to bring up in polite conversation.

While the scientists were chuckling at UFO's, a number of groups of zealous citizens were telling the public that "flying saucers" did indeed exist. The believers in UFO's charged the Air Force with concealing the existence of "flying saucers" to avoid a public panic. Since I was the Air Force's consultant, these groups accused me of selling out as a scientist, because I did not admit that UFO's existed. I was the Air Force's stooge., its tame astronomer, a man more concerned with preserving his consultant's fee than with disclosing the truth to the public.

I received many letters attacking me for not attacking the Air Force. One typical writer pointed out that as a scientist my first allegiance was to "fact." he went on to state, "Any person who has closely followed the UFO story knows that many reports have been 'explained away' in a manner that can only be called ludicrous."

Another typical letter declared: "In spite of the fact that the [Air Force} claims (or is instructed to claim) that UFO's do not exist, I think that common sense tells most of us that they do. There have been too many responsible people through the years that have had terrifying experiences involving UFO's. I think our Government insults the intelligence of our people in keeping information regarding UFO's from them."

The question of UFO's has developed into a battle of faiths. One side, which is dedicated to the Air Force position and backed up by the "scientific establishment," knows that UFO's do not exist; the other side knows that UFO's represent something completely new in human experience. And then we have the rest of the world, the great majority of people who if they think about the subject at all, don't know what to think.

The question of whether or not UFO's exist should not be a battle of faiths. It must be a subject for calm, reasoned, scientific analysis.

In 1948, when I first heard of the UFO's, I though they were sheer nonsense, as any scientist would have. Most of the early reports were quite vague: "I went into the bathroom for a drink of water and looked out of the window and saw a bright light in the sky. It was moving up and down and sideways. When I looked again, it was gone."

At the time, I was director of the observatory at Ohio State University in Columbus. One day I had a visit from several men from the technical center at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, which was only 60 miles away in Dayton. With some obvious embarrassment, the men eventually brought up the subject of "flying saucers" and asked me if I would care to serve as consultant to the Air Force on the matter.

The job didn't seem as though it would take too much time, so I agreed. When I began reviewing cases, I assumed that there was a natural explanation for all of the sighting--or at least there would be if we could find out enough data about the more puzzling incidents. I generally subscribed to the Air Force view that the sightings were the results of misidentification, hoaxes or hallucinations.

During the next few years I had no trouble explaining or discarding most of the cases referred to me, but a few were baffling enough to make me wonder--cases that the Air Force would later carry as "unidentified." Let me emphasize the point that the Air Force made up its own mind on each case; I merely submitted an opinion. I soon found that the Air Force had a tendency to upgrade its preliminary explanations while compiling its yearly summaries; a "possible" aircraft often became a "probable" aircraft. I was reminded of the Greek legend of Procrustes, who tried to fit all men to his single bed. If they were too long, he chopped them off; if they were too short, he stretched them out.

Public statements to the contrary, the Air Force has never really devoted enough money or attention to the problem of UFO's to get to the bottom of the puzzling cases. The Air Force's UFO evaluation program, known as "Project Blue Book," is housed in one room at Wright-Patterson. For most of its history Project Blue Book has been headed by a captain. This fact alone will tell anyone familiar with military procedures the relative position of Project Blue Book on the Air Force's organization chart. The staff, which has usually consisted of two officers and a sergeant, has had to try to decide, on the basis of sketchy statements, the causes of all UFO sightings reported to the Air Force. From 1947 through 1965, Project Blue Book reviewed 10,147 cases. Using the Air Force's criteria, the project identified 9,501, leaving over 600 that were carried as unidentified.

By 1952 my feeling that the Air Force was not investigating the reports seriously enough led me to write a paper suggesting that the subject deserved much closer study. In 1953 the Air Force did give UFO's more attention, although not nearly enough, to my mind. A panel of some of the top scientists in the country was assembled under the direction of Howard P. Robertson, a distinguished physicist from Cal Tech. The Robertson panel discussed UFO's for four days. Most of the cases, incidentally, were not as puzzling as some of the ones we have now. What was more, the panel was given only 15 reports for detailed study out of the several hundred that had been made up to that time, although it did quickly review many others. This was akin to asking Madame Curie to examine a small fraction of the pitchblende she distilled and still expecting her to come out with radium.

I was listed as an associate member of the panel, but my role was really more that of an observer. After completing its brief survey, the panel concluded that "the evidence presented on unidentified flying objects showed no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to the national security," and that "we firmly believe there is no residuum of cases which indicate phenomena which are attributable to foreign artifacts capable of hostile acts, and that there is no evidence that the phenomena indicated a need for revision of current scientific concepts." It is interesting to note the phrase "we firmly believe," a phrase more appropriate to the cloth than to the scientific fraternity.

The Robertson report immediately because the main justification of the Air Force's position--there is nothing to worry about--and it so remains to this day. I was not asked to sign the report, but I would not have signed if I had been asked. I felt that the question was more complicated than the panel believed and that history might look back someday and say that the panel had acted hastily. The men took just four days to make a judgment upon a perplexing subject that I had studied for more than five years without being able to solve to my satisfaction.

In 1953, the year of the Robertson report, there occurred one of the most puzzling cases that I have studied. It was reported first in Black Hawk, S. Dak., and then in Bismarck, N. Dak., during the night of August 5 and the early morning of August 6. A number of persons in Black Hawk reported seeing several strange objects in the sky. What made these reports particularly significant was the fact that these people were trained observers--they were part of the national network of civilians who were keeping watch for enemy bombers.

At approximately the same time, unidentified blips showed up on the radarscope at Ellsworth Air Force Base, which is near Black Hawk. An airborne F-84 fighter was vectored into the area and reported seeing the UFO's. The pilot radioed that one of the objects appeared to be over Piedmont S. Dak., and was moving twice as fast as his jet fighter. It was "brighter than the brightest star" he had ever seen. When the pilot gave chase, the light "just disappeared." Five civilians on the ground, who had watched the jet chase the light, confirmed the pilot's report.

Later a second F-84 was sent aloft and directed toward the UFO, which still showed on ground radar. After several minutes, the pilot reported seeing an object with a light of varying intensity that alternated from white to green. While the pilot was pursuing the UFO, he noted that his gunsight light had flashed on, indicating that his plane's radar was picking up a target. The object was directly ahead of his aircraft but at a slightly greater altitude. It then climbed very rapidly. When the pilot saw he was hopelessly losing ground, he broke off the chase. Radar operators on the ground tracked the fighter coming back from the chase, while the UFO continued on out of range of the scope.

As the object sped off to the north, Ellsworth Air Force Base notified the spotter's control center in Bismarck, 220 miles to the north, where a sergeant then went out on the roof and saw a UFO. The Air Force had no planes in Bismarck that could be sent after the UFO, which finally disappeared later that night.

I investigated this reported sighting myself and was unable to find a satisfactory explanation. In my report, I noted that "the entire incident, in my opinion, has too much of an Alice in Wonderland flavor for comfort."

It was about this time that some firm believers in UFO's became disgusted with the Air Force and decided to take matters into their own hands, much like the vigilantes of the Old West; they organized "to do the job the Air Force was mishandling." These groups composed of people with assorted backgrounds, were often the recipients of intriguing reports that never came to the official attention of Project Blue Book. The first group of this kind in the United States was the APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization), founded in 1952 and still going strong, as is NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) which was organized several years later.

As the years went by, I learned more and more about the global nature of UFO sightings. At first I had assumed that it was a purely American phenomenon, like swallowing goldfish. But reports of sightings kept coming in from around the world until 70 countries were on the list. As a scientist, I naturally was interested in correlating all of the data; a zoologist studying red ants in Utah, say, wants to find out about a new species found along the Amazon. But when I suggested to the Air Force that the air attaches abroad be used to gather reports on foreign sightings, I was turned down. No one in a position of authority seemed to want to take up the time of the officers with such an embarrassing subject.

Gradually, I began to accumulate cases that I really couldn't explain, cases reported by reliable, sincere people whom I often interviewed in person. I found that the persons making these reports were often not acquainted with UFO's before their experience, which baffled and thoroughly frightened them. Fearing ridicule, they were often reluctant to report the sighting and did so only out of a sense of duty and a tremendous desire to get a rational explanation for their irrational experience. One typical letter to me concluded with the sentence: "Hoping you don't think I'm nuts but not caring if you do, Sincerely," . . .

We had many reports from people of good repute, yet we had no scientifically incontrovertible evidence--authenticated movies, spectrograms of reported lights, "hardware"--on which to make a judgment. There are no properly authenticated photographs to match any of the vivid prose descriptions of visual sightings. Some of the purported "photographs" are patent hoaxes. Others show little detail; they could be anything. Some show a considerable amount of detail, but cannot be substantiated.

The evidence for UFO's, then, was entirely without physical proof. But were all of the responsible citizens who made reports mistaken or victims of hallucinations? It was an intriguing scientific question, yet I couldn't find any scientists to discuss it with.

The general view of the scientists was that UFO's couldn't exist, therefore they didn't exist, therefore let's laugh off the idea. This, of course, is a violation of scientific principles, but the history of science is filled with such instances. Some scientists refused to look through Galileo's telescope at sunspots, explaining that "since the sun was perfect, it couldn't have spots, and therefore it was no use looking for them." Other scientists refused to believe in the existence of meteorites; who would be foolish enough to think that a stone could fall from the sky?

>From time to time I would urge the Air Force to make a more thorough study of the phenomenon, but nothing ever came of it. I began to feel a very real sense of frustration. As the years went by, I continued to find cases that puzzled me while I examined reports for Project Blue Book. People who were afraid that the Air Force would scoff at their reports began sending me letters that were often detailed and well written about their experiences. The Air Force never attempted to influence my view on any case, but occasionally the service would disregard my evaluations. What was more, I was not consulted on some key cases. (One of the most recent was the well-publicized incident involving two policemen in Ravenna, Ohio, last spring.)

Then, from 1958 through 1963, the UFO reports began to diminish in quality as well as quantity, and I felt that perhaps the "flying-saucer" era was at last on the wane and would soon vanish. But since 1964 there has been a sharp rally in the number of puzzling sightings. The more impressive cases seem to fit into a pattern. The UFO's had a bright red glow. They hovered a few feet off the ground, emitting a high-pitched whine. Animals in the vicinity were terrified, often before the UFO's became visible to the people who later reported the incident. When the objects at last began to disappear, they vanished in a matter of seconds.

A very real paradox was now beginning to develop. As the Air Force's consultant, I was acquiring a reputation in the public eye of being a debunker of UFO's. Yet, privately, I was becoming more and more concerned over the fact that people with good reputations, who had no possible hope of gain from reporting a UFO, continued to describe "out-of-this-world" incidents.

In July, 1965, I wrote a letter to the Air Force calling again for a systematic study of the phenomenon. "I feel it is my responsibility to point out," I said, "that enough puzzling sightings have been reported by intelligent and often technically competent people to warrant closer attention than Project Blue Book can possible encompass at the present time."

Then, in March of this year, came the reports of the now-celebrated "swamp-gas" sightings in Michigan. On two separate nights, at spots separated by 63 miles, nearly 100 people reported seeing red, yellow, and green lights glowing over swampy areas. When I received the first accounts of the UFO's, I recognized at once that my files held far better, more coherent and more articulate reports than these. Even so, the incident was receiving such great attention in the press that I went to Michigan with the hope that here was a case that I could use to focus scientific attention on the UFO problem. I wanted the scientists to consider the phenomenon.

But when I arrived in Michigan, I soon discovered that the situation was so charged with emotion that it was impossible for me to do any really serious investigation. The Air Force left me almost completely on my own, which meant that I sometimes had to fight my way through the clusters of reporters who were
surrounding the key witnesses whom I had to interview.

The entire region was gripped with near-hysteria. One night at midnight I found myself in a police car racing toward a reported sighting. We had radio contact with other squad cars in the area. "I see it" from one car, "there it is" from another, "it's east of the river near Dexter" from a third. Occasionally even I thought I glimpsed "it."

Finally several squad cars met at an intersection. Men spilled out and pointed excitedly at the sky. "See--there it is! It's moving!"

But it wasn't moving. "It" was the star Arcturus, undeniably identified by its position in relation to the handle of the Big Dipper. A sobering demonstration for me.

In the midst of this confusion, I got a message from the Air Force: There would be a press conference, and I would issue a statement about the cause of the sightings. It did me no good to protest, to say that as yet I had no real idea what had caused the reported sightings in the swamps. I was to have a press conference, ready or not.

Searching for a justifiable explanation of the sightings, I remembered a phone call from a botanist at the University of Michigan, who called to my attention the phenomenon of burning "swamp gas." This gas, caused by decaying vegetation, has been known to ignite spontaneously and to cast a flickering light. The glow is well-known in song and story as "jack-o'-lantern," "fox fire," and "wil-o'-the-wisp." After learning more about swamp gas from other Michigan scientists, I decided that it was a "possible" explanation that I would offer to the reporters.

The press conference, however, turned out to be no place for scholarly discussion: it was a circus. The TV cameramen wanted me in one spot, the newspaper men wanted me in another, and for a while both groups were actually tugging at me. Everyone was clamoring for a single, spectacular explanation of the sightings. They wanted little green men. When I handed out a statement that discussed swamp gas, many of the men simply ignored the fact that I said it was a "possible" reason. I watched with horror as one reported scanned the page, found the phrase "swamp gas," underlined it, and rushed for a telephone.

Too many of the stories the next day not only said that swamp gas was definitely the cause of the Michigan lights but implied that it was the cause of other UFO sightings as well. I got out of town as quickly and as quietly as I could.

I supposed that the swamp-gas incident, which has become a subject fro cartoons that I greatly enjoy, was the low point of my association with UFO's. The experience was very obvious proof that public excitement had mounted to the point that it was ridiculous to expect one professor, working alone in the field, to conduct a scholarly investigation. We had quite clearly reached a new state in the UFO problem.

Three weeks after the Michigan incident I appeared before a hearing into UFO's that was conducted by the House Committee on Armed Services. I pointed out to the committee that I had a dossier of "twenty particularly well-reported UFO cases which, despite the character, technical competence and number of witnesses, I have not been able to explain. Ten of these reports were made by scientists or by highly trained individuals, five were made by members of the armed services or police, and five were made by other reliable people. The committee urged the Air Force to give continued attention to the subject and was assured by Air Secretary Dr. Harold Brown that it would.

A serious inquiry into the nature of UFO's would be justified, in my opinion, just on the basis of the puzzling cases that have been reported during the last two years. It seems to me that there are now four possible explanations for the phenomena:

First, they are utter nonsense, the result of hoaxes or hallucinations. This, of course, is the view that a number of my scientific colleagues have taken. I think that enough evidence has piled up to shift the burden of proof to the critics who cry fraud. And if the UFO's are merely hallucinations, they still deserve intensive study; we need to learn how the minds of so many men so widely separated can be so deluded over so many years.

Second, the UFO's are some kind of military weapon being tested in secret. This theory is easily dispensed with. Secret devices are usually tested in very limited geographical areas. Why should the United States, or any other country, test them in scores of nations? The problem of preventing a security leak would be impossible.

Third, the UFO's are really from outer space. I agree with the Air Force. There is no incontrovertible evidence, as far as I can see, to say that we have strange visitors. But it would be foolish to rule out the possibility absolutely.

Solely for the sake of argument, let me state the case in its most favorable light. We all suffer from cosmic provincialism--the notion that we on this earth are somehow unique. Why should our sun be the only star in the universe to support intelligent life, when the number of stars is a 1 followed by twenty zeros?

Stars are born, grow old and die, and it now seems that the formation of planetary systems is part of this evolutionary process. You would expect to find planets around a star just as you find kittens around a cat or acorns around an oak. Suppose that only one star in 10 is circled by a planetary system that has life; that means that the number of life-supporting stars in the universe would be a 1 followed by 19 zeros.

We also know that some stars are many millions of year older than our sun, which means that life elsewhere in the universe may have evolved many millions of years beyond our present state. That could mean that other planets in other solar systems may have solved the problem of aging, which we are beginning to grapple with even now. If a life span reached 10,000 years, let us say, a space journey of 200 to 300 years would be relatively short. In that time it would be possible to get from some distant planetary systems to ours.

A highly advanced civilization, such as the one I am postulating, would naturally keep an eye on the progress of life elsewhere in its galaxy. Any signs of unusual scientific progress might be reason enough to send a reconnaissance vehicle to find out what was going on. It so happens that in recent years we have made a very important advance of this kind; the development of the use of nuclear energy.

This is still "science fiction," of course, but let me take the story a step further. Some skeptics who scoff at reported UFO sightings often ask why the "flying saucers" don't try to communicate with us. One answer might be; Why should they? We wouldn't try to communicate with a new species of kangaroo we might find in Australia; we would just observe the animals.

Is there any connection between the reported UFO sightings and the scientific probability of life elsewhere in our galaxy? I don't know. I find no compelling evidence for it, but I don't rule it out automatically.

The fourth possible explanation of UFO's is that we are dealing with some kind of natural phenomenon that we as yet cannot explain or even conceive of. Think how our knowledge of the universe has changed in 100 years. In 1866 we not only knew nothing about nuclear energy, we didn't even know that the atom had a nucleus. Who would have dreamed 100 years ago that television would be invented? Who can say what startling facts we will learn about our world in the next 100 years?

All of these possibilities deserve serious consideration and now, at long last, they will get it. In October the Air Force announced that a thorough investigation of UFO's will be conducted at the University of Colorado by a team of distinguished scientists, headed by Dr. Edward Condon, the former director of the National Bureau of Standards.

I cannot help but feel a small sense of personal triumph and vindication. The night the appointment was announced, my wife and I went out and had a few drinks to celebrate.

I am particularly pleased that the Condon committee will have time to work into the problem because I cannot consider anyone qualified to speak authoritatively on the total UFO phenomenon unless he has read at least a few thousand original (not summarized) reports, and is thoroughly acquainted with the global nature of reported UFO sightings. The truly puzzling and outstanding UFO reports are few in number compared to the welter of poor reports.

Recently I had dinner with several members of the Condon committee. What a pleasure it was to sit down with men who were open-minded about UFO's, who did not look at me as though I were a Martian myself. For the first time other scientists, who apparently have been wondering all along, have openly talked about the reports. One leading scientist wrote me the other day: "For some time now I have been convinced of the reality of this phenomenon based on reports in the general news media. It has seemed to me that even with a heavy discount there is a core of reliable observations which we cannot shrug off. Twice in recent weeks I have stated my views on the subject in small conversational groups of respectable, scholarly friends, and found that they were amazed that I should take these matters seriously. So I know that it took some courage for you to speak out."

I would like to suggest two more steps to help solve the UFO problem:

First of all the valuable data that we have accumulated--good reports from all over the world--must be computerized so that we can rapidly compare new sightings with old and trace patterns of UFO behavior.

Second, we need good photographs of UFO's. Although the Air Force has probably spent less on UFO's so far than it has on wastebaskets. I realize that it is impractical to expect the service to set up a costly "flying-saucer" surveillance system across the country. When a UFO is spotted, the terrified witness usually picks up the phone at once and calls the local police, who have missed dozens of opportunities in the past to record the phenomena on film. I recommend that every police chief in the country make sure that at least one of his squad cars carries in its glove compartment a camera loaded with color film. The cameras, which could also be used for regular police work, might be furnished by civic or service groups. (I carry a camera in my briefcase at all times.)

Finally, I would like to emphasize my views on a controversial subject. During all of my years of association with the Air Force, I have never seen any evidence for the charge about UFO's most often leveled against the service: that there is deliberate cover-up of knowledge of space visitors to prevent the public from panicking. The entire history of the Air Force and the UFO's can be understood only if we realize that the Pentagon has never believed that UFO's could be anything novel, and it still doesn't. The working hypothesis of the Air Force has been that the stimulus behind every UFO report (apart from out and out hoaxes and a few hallucinations) is a misidentification of a conventional object or a natural phenomenon. It is just as simple as that.

Now after a delay of 18 years, the Air Force and American science are about to try for the first time, really, to discover what, if anything we can believe about "flying saucers.

[Fjd]

November 4, 1973

Mansfield News Journal

Incident named after pilot

 

CLEVELAND -- Army Reserve helicopter pilot Capt. Lawrence Coyne is a military commander who doesn't believe in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or little green spacemen.

But after a near miss two weeks ago between his helicopter and a "big, gray, metallic-looking" object in the sky over Mansfield, he doesn't know what to think.

"I had to file an official report in detail to the Army on this thing," he said.

"Coyne is a member of the 316th Medical Detachment stationed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. He was returning from Columbus at 11:10 p.m., Oct. 18, when the UFO showed up near where the Air National Guard has a squadron of jet fighters based.

He said a check turned up that none of the unit's F-100 Super Saber Jets were in the air when the UFO appeared.

Coyne said when he first encountered the UFO, his helicopter was cruising at 2,500 feet. He had the controls set for a 20-degree dive, but the craft climbed to 3,500 feet with no power.

"I had made no attempt to pull up," he said. "There was no noise or turbulence, either."

Coyne said a red light appeared on the eastern horizon, and was first spotted by his crew chief, Sgt. Robert Yanacsek.

"The light was traveling in excess of 600 knots," Coyne said. "It came from the horizon to our aircraft in about 10 seconds. We were on a collision course."

The pilot said he put his helicopter into a dive.

"At 1,700 feet I braced myself for the impact with the other craft," he said. "It was coming from our right side. I was scared. There had been so little time to respond. The thing was terrifically fast."

There was no crash.

"We looked up and saw it stopped right over us," Coyne said. "It had a big, gray metallic-looking hull about 60 feet long.

"It was shaped like an airfoil or a streamlined fat cigar. There was a red light on the front. The leading edge glowed red a short distance back from the nose. There was a center dome. A green light at the rear reflected on the hull."

Coyne said the green light swiveled like a spotlight and beamed through the canopy of his craft, bathing the cabin in green light.

He said as he and members of the crew stared at the craft his helicopter began to climb without his guidance.

"I had made no attempt to pull up," he said. "All controls were set for a 20-degree dive. Yet we had climbed from 1,700 to 3,500 feet with no power in a couple of seconds with no g-forces or other noticeable strains."

Coyne said the UFO finally moved off to the west and was gone.

[Fjd]

July 26, 2000

Reuters

U.S. Bill Aims for Order on CIA Declassification

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday said he would push for passage of legislation this year aimed at reducing the burden on CIA declassifiers overwhelmed by numerous special requests from government officials.

Those special requests from administration officials and members of Congress have asked CIA declassifiers to search for documents on everything from UFOs to murdered churchwomen in El Salvador to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, have sponsored legislation to create a nine-member board to prioritize such special requests.

"The purpose of the bill is to bring some order to the chaos," Goss said at a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on the legislation. He said he would seek passage of the legislation this year.

"It's a push and shove, it's who has the sharper elbows," Goss said. Right now, a special request for a search of documents by the person with the most political clout is likely to be put on top of the pile, he added.

Streamline Responses

Such requests at times end up resulting in duplicative work for the CIA declassifiers because they are made by different people at different times, Goss and Moynihan said. The proposed board would aim to reduce repetitive requests and streamline agency responses.

The CIA's 230 to 300 employees at its "declassification factory" are stretched by the sheer amount of records they must review, Moynihan said. The spy agency has in the past said it processes about 8 million pages of classified records a year.

Aside from the special requests, the declassification efforts include a presidential executive order requiring information older than 25 years be declassified unless the government decides it needs to stay secret.

Also the public requests declassification of documents under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.

The CIA budget for declassification efforts itself is classified.

Included with Moynihan's testimony was a letter from CIA's director of congressional affairs, John Moseman, on the impact of special searches and a list detailing the types of searches that have been requested.

The list and letter, dated Oct. 18, 1999, were declassified last Friday, July 21. "In sum, special searches are a growth industry and compete with the mandates of the many existing information review and release programs," Moseman said.

Search For UFOs

From 1993 to September 1999, the CIA conducted nine separate special searches for documents on El Salvador, mainly related to four churchwomen murdered there in 1980. There were 12 on Guatemala related to the deaths of several Americans and for records on the 1954 CIA-backed coup, the list said.

CIA Director George Tenet requested a search for documents related to convicted spy Jonathan Pollard on the damage done to national security by his espionage activities.

The request was made in late 1998 when President Clinton, during the Wye River Middle East peace conference, said he would review the case of Pollard, a former naval intelligence official jailed for life in 1986 for selling military secrets to Israel.

Israel has been seeking Pollard's release, reportedly as recently as the just-ended Camp David summit that collapsed. Tenet has opposed releasing the spy.

Other special searches were done in response to congressional requests for documents on parapsychology studies, and satellite imagery on the presence of Noah's Ark, on which after spending 1,000 hours the CIA concluded "no definitive information identified."

A CIA director also requested information on UFO sightings and Roswell, New Mexico, a subject on which more than 2,700 pages have been released, according to the list.

Several items for which special search requests had been made were blacked out on the list.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Fjd

[wvu80]

OK FJD, the amount of words written over 50 years ago that you quoted have convinced me, flying saucers are real!!! 

 

But in the future, posting the links will be enough.  I can do my own research from there. 

 

[Fjd]

OK FJD, the amount of words written over 50 years ago that you quoted have convinced me, flying saucers are real!!! 

 

 

 

Either that or recreational drugs are NOT a modern day phenomena.

 

Actually, I figured it was through articles like these that gave producers the novel idea that a television show like this would actually fly with the masses and gain ratings and result in huge advertising revenues.

[CECAA850]

Anyone got the Cliff notes on Fjd's posts?  My fingers got tired of scrolling.

[Fjd]

Anyone got the Cliff notes on Fjd's posts?  My fingers got tired of scrolling.

 

 

Here, I typed out the Cliff notes version: "We are not alone"

 

 

Edited March 25, 2015 by Fjd