The 2014 International UFO Congress, Part 4

The fourth day of the UFO Congress was Saturday Feb. 15, and the day of the highest attendance. Starting off the proceedings with a Bang was Dr. John Alexander, retired Colonel in the U.S. Army, and longtime leader in the Pentagon's foray into Weird Science: ESP, remote viewing, etc. Alexander appears on 18 different pages of the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson (but not in the movie), where he is portrayed as a sort of shadowy behind-the-scenes figure giving direction to all of the Pentagon's weird studies.

Col. Alexander (left) with Lee Speigel of the Huffington Post

Life, Alexander said, may have originated somewhere in the universe 9 billion years before it did on earth. He went through the usual brief history of U.S. government involvement with UFOs. He mentioned a few UFO cases that he thinks are especially good:

• Bentwaters/Rendlesham. Highlights the testimony of Halt and Penniston. He did not mention how the testimony of each has significantly changed over the years. He is aware of this - I've mentioned it to him more than once - but it's something he prefers to ignore.
• Phoenix lights. They were certainly not A-10s with flares. (When I asked him afterward about this, he claimed that he didn't say anything about flares!)
• Gulf Breeze photos. Good grief!
• Coyne helicopter case. See Klass, UFOs the Public Deceived, chapters 16,17.
• B-52 radar picks up a visual UFO, Minot AFB, 1968. (Has anyone done any recent research on this case?)

What sets Alexander apart from most other UFOlogists is that he does not believe that there is any U.S. government coverup of UFOs, or any secret program. He accepts that the "Roswell crash" was actually a spy-balloon program, Project Mogul. UFO enthusiasts, he explained, do not know how the system works.  Even secret or "black" projects need to compete with each other for a fixed pool of money, and to justify those expenditures with results. Concerning UFOs, this is simply not happening.

As for the UFO coverup claims of British UFOlogist Nick Pope, Alexander pointed out that Nick's father, Geoffrey Pope, was a leading aerospace engineer who, upon hearing his son's claims about the British government having captured a UFO, remarked "it would have been in my hanger!" As for the MJ-12 papers (the second set, at least), he pointed out that Tim Cooper, the man who supposedly (and inexplicably) received these documents in the mail, has as of 2009 disavowed their validity.

Alexander is also a big believer in 'alternative healing' that supposedly cannot be explained, especially the faith healer John of God in Brazil. He also believes the recent claims of "Proof of Heaven."

Alexander mentioned the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah purchased by Robert Bigelow, where many strange incidents have been reported, some involving UFOs. "The Phenomenon" is "in control," he concludes. It knows how you will react to it. If you're having trouble deciding what to make of Alexander (and many people are), think of him as Jacques Vallee in a military uniform.

Jaime Maussan

Next was the well-known Mexican UFO promoter Jaime Maussan. I didn't hear this talk, but the description says, "Hear Jaime Maussan present the most recent evidence demonstrating that the UFO phenomenon is closer than ever before. The new technology and new techniques used by skywatchers around the world is allowing us to know how “close” we are to establishing some kind of contact or communication with other beings. While we do not know for sure yet, it is clear that contact will be sooner than expected." He showed a lot of videos. James McGaha told me that they all looked pretty fake.

In reviewing Maussan's talk last year to the UFO Congress, I wrote:

Maussan said that worldwide UFO sightings have increased dramatically recently because of December 21, 2012, and aliens are now sending us messages by creating meteorological formations in the sky. He showed what were supposedly "vortexes" in meteorological charts, "messages" he says of "the new time."

He showed many blurry photos and videos. There was a huge black sphere sucking energy out of the sun - probably a Mothership, he suggested. NASA's Spirit rover photographed a human figure on Mars, and also a "little house." We saw objects (probably satellites in low earth orbit) crossing the face of the moon. Russia, he says, now has the greatest number of UFO sightings of any country, and he showed Russian videos of supposed "motherships." He also played videos having very low-pitch "unexplained" sounds or hums. Maussan's talk was loony, but the audience loved it.

Rob Simone

After that came Rob Simone, "an award-winning media personality, TV host, author and for the last 3 years, guest host of the nationally syndicated talk show, Coast to Coast AM." His speech was "UFOs In The Headlines - Real Reporting on a Real Phenomenon." He showed the headlines, and discussed the cases, from newspaper coverage of UFO sightings and claims from all around the world. Most of them were cases that practically nobody has heard of, and go back to the 1950s, mostly in Europe. Actually, he did a fine job of locating and presenting these cases, several of which sound as if they were significant at the time, but since forgotten. This information needs to be recorded in a form that is searchable on-line.

Timothy Good

The well-known British UFOlogist Timothy Good, long known for promoting dubious claims, gave an even wilder talk than I expected: "Earth - An Alien Enterprise," in which he  promised to reveal "the shocking truth about the greatest coverup of all time." He reviewed some old claims of ET contact going back to the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. He showed some of Adamski's photos (Good has long been a low-key supporter of Adamski's claims.) Supposedly Adamski was given a special access card that got him into all military bases, the White House, etc. Adamski supposedly met with JFK twice. Good even showed a letter supposedly received by Adamski from an alien, written in alien-ese. He spent several minutes discussing Amicizia ("friendship"), a long-running Italian contactee case.

He also claimed that Neil Armstrong had revealed to a friend, long after his lunar landing, that other craft were already on the moon when he got there.

Good's new book, with the same title as his talk, promises to reveal:

• Genuine photographs of aliens and some of their craft
• A crashed alien craft and bodies stored in the U.S. Capitol in 1939
• Contacts with military personnel and several presidents
• Over 100 witnesses encounter two landed flying discs in a London suburb

 The final speaker on Saturday afternoon was George Noori, the longtime host of the late night, all night, paranormal and conspiracy radio show Coast to Coast AM, which he claimed to be the highest-rated show in the history of broadcasting. His talk consisted mostly of gossip, jokes, and chat (and his jokes were rather gross and gruesome). "Big foot = little penis," he said (which might come as a surprise to readers of Bigfoot porn).

Noori brought up on stage Lee Speigel of the Huffington Post, who talked about the Dead Bigfoot touring show, which was supposed to open in Phoenix that same weekend, but the arrangement fell through. (Speigel actually worked very hard on a last-minute plan to have the Bigfoot carcass show open right then, right there at Ft. McDowell, right alongside the UFO Congress. But that plan also fell through.)

During the question & answer time, an obviously disturbed man calling himself "the Reincarnated Christ" delivered a rambling, confused statement about how there is a conspiracy to conceal that the earth actually curves upward, and there is a glass sky 100 km above us. Noori ignored the boos and groans from the audience, and played with the guy like a cat with a mouse. (This is what he often does on his show.) Finally somebody grabbed a cane, and yanked the guy away.

After his talk, people lined to to meet George Noori (wearing sports coat), and have their picture taken with him.

Hang on, just one more posting to go!