White House replies to the "Disclosure Petition" - No ETs!

When the Obama administration launched its "We the People" petition program, they probably never expected to get a petition like this. Signers were promised that the administration would give a formal response to any petition gathering 5,000 signatures within 30 days. One of the very first petitions to qualify for a response was the so-called disclosure petition, whose title says "we petition the obama administration to: formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure."

The petition was written by Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group, who also proclaimed July 8 to be World Disclosure Day. It states,

We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon.

This goes well beyond a request for simple "disclosure," to release all documents. It presupposes that the U.S. government is involved in ongoing contact with extraterrestrials, and demands that the Obama administration acknowledge that fact. However, the petition quickly gathered enough signatures to qualify, creating a dilemma for the White House. All they can do is deny that they are meeting with extraterrestrials on a daily basis, and the denial further inflames the conspiracy flames. For a government agency to address UFO claims in any way is an automatic no-win situation. If you say they're not a real mystery, and you get a controversy over that. On the other hand, if you say that they are mysterious and challenging, you stir up an even bigger controversy, and many people suspect (quite correctly) that you have been nibbling peyote or something. Read Lee Speigel's Huffington Post article on the petition dilemma.

On Nov. 7, the White House finally issued its response to the Disclosure Petition, which reads, in part:

Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.

As far as I can tell, this response is 100% correct and accurate. However, as you might imagine, this is not going down well in certain places. PRG states simply, "The response was unacceptable." They promise to have more to say about it soon.

The White House's threshold for a petition response has since been raised to 25,000, but the change is not retroactive. However, Bassett was urging his followers to raise the signature count over 25,000 anyway, as a demonstration of their strength. The final signature count was 12,078.

The Phoenix Lights Return

On March 13, 1997 the Phoenix Lights became a sensational UFO story, when bright, slowly-falling lights were seen in the sky across the Phoenix metropolitan area, and across much of southern Arizona. They were determined quite definitively to be flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft,  in a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona. This was actually the second UFO incident reported that evening across Arizona. The first incident, involving a V-shape of lights, may have been aircraft lights, but is in any case not relevant to this discussion. Some UFO promoters deliberately confuse the two, showing the video of the second incident (dramatic but easily explained) while describing the first (less certain identitfication, but no good photos or videos).

On the evening of Friday, Oct. 28, four bright lights in the sky were reported and photographed at a high school football game in Scottsdale, Arizona (Phoenix metropolitan area). The lights were shown by broadcaster Mark Mancuso on Accuweather. The video used to be at
http://www.accuweather.com/video/1805489410/ufo-sightings-in-scottsdale-ariz.asp , however that video has apparently been pulled (probably because it made Accuweather a laughingstock, and the broadcaster is now in the woodshed). However, as Ian Ridpath notes in a comment below, you can still find that video on the Accuweather website if you search for it another way: http://www.accuweather.com/video.asp?search=scottsdale

You can also see the "UFOs" in another video below:



It's not hard to see the similarity to the parachuting flares of the Phoenix lights. There was a lot of speculation that these might be flares attached to sky divers, but can we do better than just speculate?

Sometimes a little investigation goes a long way. SkyFOX helicopter pilot Rick Crabbs (Fox Channel 10 in Phoenix)said, "I was at the location where those skydivers were coming in ... Friday night, so that's exactly what happened -- there were some skydivers," he said. "And they did have pyrotechnics on their ankles. There were four of them, and if you look at the video, you can see four different lights."


The skydivers were at an event called the "Halloween Balloon Spooktacular" at the Salt River Fields. Looking at the schedule of activities for that event, we find:
•9:00pm Arizona Skyhawks performance with sky divers in lighted suits and pyrotechnics  

The Arizona Skyhawks are indeed a professional skydiving team that sometimes uses pyrotechnics.



But for some "journalists," wild speculation is more gratifying than a little bit of actual research.

Mr. (and Mrs.) Hills' Wild Ride

The alleged "UFO abduction" of Betty and Barney Hill on Sept. 19, 1961 was the first such report of its kind in the United States, and one of the most famous alleged UFO encounters of all time. I will not attempt to relate in detail this extremely complicated story. For a detailed account of it, see chapter five of my book UFO Sightings. For even more details and all kinds of viewpoints on the case, pro, con, or simply confused, see Encounters at Indian Head .

I just recently happened across a very interesting paper written in 2007 by James D. Macdonald,  a former Navy navigator and  science fiction writer who lives in Colebrook, New Hampshire (not to be confused with the late atmospheric physicist and UFO proponent Dr. James E. McDonald.). He lives right along the path of the Hills' famous journey, on U.S. Route 3. Performing a careful line-by-line analysis of the account of the Hills' Wild Ride in John Fuller's Interrupted Journey and also scrutinizing the recent book Captured by Kathleen Marden and Stanton T. Friedman  (Marden is Betty Hill's niece), Macdonald notes that "the real reason why they were making a forced march is revealed. They didn’t have enough money for a motel so they’d decided to pull an all-nighter." Exactly.

As quoted by Fuller, Barney Hill told Betty while in Colebrook, NH shortly after 10 PM, “It looks like we should be home by 2:30 in the morning—or 3:00 at the latest.” Macdonald says, "That’s a wildly optimistic estimate. But they’d already decided that they were going to drive home that night. They were on the tail end of a twelve-hundred-mile trip, had run out of money, and were committed to pushing on." In fact, "By the time they reached home they’d been driving for around twenty-one hours. They’re lucky that being abducted by space aliens was the worst that happened to them: Others who’ve tried similar trips have run into trees." Or a deer. Or a moose. In fact,  the National Sleep Foundation has proclaimed November 6-12 as Drowsy Driving Prevention Week® 2011. The AAA's Foundation for Traffic Safety lists as the top "warning sign" of the driver who is too drowsy to drive safely as "The inability to recall the last few miles traveled."  The Hills could be the poster children for this traffic safety crusade. 

The moon, Jupiter, and Saturn (bottom) as seen from the White Mountains at midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1961 (moon and planets enlarged, not to scale)

 

 

I was the one who suggested, back in the 1970s, that Betty Hill's description of the "UFO" and a "star" near the moon matched up quite well with the known positions of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. (It was much more difficult to calculate celestial positions for a specific time and place back then, without computers, than it is today.) This was published in the now-classic Official UFO magazine in 1976. But I knew that this was not the whole story. As the Hills passed by tall peaks like Cannon Mountain and went though the Franconia Notch, the Moon and Jupiter would have been too low to see in the west behind the mountains. So surely they must have been looking at something else. But what?

The light at top of Cannon Mountain: is this the "UFO" that abducted the Hills? (Photo by James D. Macdonald)

 

Driving the route late at night, Macdonald noted that "the Cannon Mountain tramway runs 365 days a year, and has been doing so since 1938 when it became the first aerial tramway in North America." A bright light on the lookout tower at the top of the mountain was installed in 1959, and shines all night long. Macdonald says,

Betty would have lost sight of the moon and its accompanying planets as the car went up hill along the side of Mt. Prospect, heading nearly due south. As they crested the rise, the moon and planets would reappear, only now there were two lights to the left of the moon. The light on Cannon Mountain, at that range on a clear night, is as bright or brighter than Jupiter. On a clear night stars appear below the peak of Cannon Mountain to the right and left. Up above we heard the Hills, in a different interview, relate, “it first appeared to be a falling star—only it fell upward.” Immediately after cresting the shoulder of the mountain, Route 3 plunges down a 9% grade for the next half mile. The road is pointed directly at Cannon Mountain at this time. Subjectively, at night, I can report of my own direct observation, the light appears to head rapidly straight up...the light on top of Cannon Mountain is visible at various points along this entire route—sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes to the right of the road, and sometimes to the left... One question that you’d have to answer in order to show this was a flying saucer is, “If what you saw was a space ship, where was the light on Cannon while all this was going on?”

The Hills reported what appears to be a second Close Encounter with the light atop Cannon Mountain on April 2, 1966: "As we were returning through the Franconia Notch in the general area of the tramway and Cannon Mountain, one [UFO] moved around the mountain about 50 feet from the ground, in front of us. Its lights dimmed out and we could see the row of windows before it became invisible. It just faded out of sight and then just reappeared with different lighting behind us... On the opposite side of the highway was a second one, which also faded out. ” (Marden, p. 208-209).

The final spot where the Hills stopped and had a "close encounter" (where Barney says he saw "Nazi" spacemen in his binoculars) was just south of Indian Head. Barney and Betty took UFO researcher Walter Webb to that spot to re-enact the sighting in 1964, and in 2000 Betty Hill took those of us participating in the Indian Head conference there. It's near the location of the now-defunct Mountaineer Motel on Rt. 3 in Lincoln, NH, whose sign stands just north of Exit 33 of  I-93 (which was not yet built in 1961). After they drove off from that site, in something of a panic, they never saw the UFO again. Macdonald notes, "2.1 miles south of Indian Head is the last time the Lookout Tower Light is visible from Rt. 3."

Macdonald continues:

"There's another possible object they may have seen: the Jack O'Lantern Resort in Woodstock which, at the time, had a large billboard with their logo (a stylized jack-o-lantern) down by the road. That would certainly appear to be a "large, luminous moon-shape, which seemed to be touching the road, sitting on end under some pines." This is well out of town; no other features are nearby."

That is a very interesting suggestion. As Kathleen Marden describes it, at this point the Hills vaguely remembered "seeing a huge fiery red-orange orb resting upon the ground." I was not able to find any photo of the Jack O'Lantern resort's giant, unlighted billboard, but I did discover some old postcards with photographs of the giant orange pumpkin that used to sit on the motel roof. Judging from the cars out front, the photo would seem to be from the 1960s. And if the pumpkin were illuminated but the motel lights were out, the "orb" might seem to rest on the ground. In any case, the Hills must have driven past this giant pumpkin on Rt. 3, just minutes after they were frightened out of their wits near Indian Head.

Could this be the "huge fiery red-orange orb" that the Hills remembered seeing as they sped away from the "Close Encounter" site, just a few miles away?

 Macdonald concludes:

What do they remember south of Indian Head?
a) The Lincoln/Woodstock road marker
b) Downtown North Woodstock
c) (Possibly) the billboard for the Jack O'Lantern Golf Course & Resort in Woodstock
d) Downtown Plymouth
e) Downtown Ashland
f) Entering the superhighway
g) Concord
h) Portsmouth

In short, they remember every single town they passed through. The rest of the trip is past dark lakes, rivers, fields, and woods. I’ve driven that route more than once, and I don’t remember much more than that myself. Not only isn’t there any missing time, there aren’t any missing memories.

Exactly!

Doomsdays of Yesteryear: Toutatis Threatens Totally, 2004

From my column Psychic Vibrations   in the Skeptical Inquirer, 

Volume 28.4, July / August 2004

Toutatis Threatens Totally

Heads up—the End of the World is coming again! This time it’s the asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which, according to no less an authority than the celebrated Swiss UFO contactee Billy Meier, is in danger of slamming into Earth on September 29, 2004 (see Billy Meier’s Warning of a Catastrophic Impact Event Threat). According to NASA, Toutatis will make a close approach to Earth on that date, passing within approximately one million miles, which is nothing on a cosmic scale (see http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/ 4179_Toutatis/toutatis.html).

 But Meier is in contact with the space people from the Pleiades (he calls them “Plejarans”; I suppose that “Pleiadeans” sounds too unwieldy). And according to Michael Horn, who says he is the officially authorized media representative of Meier in the United States (which so far as I know Meier has never disputed), the Plejarans have warned that when Toutatis is closest to Earth, it will suddenly veer off course and head straight toward us. Horn says that it will require a “pre-emptive nuclear strike” to keep this multi-kilometer-sized asteroid from slamming straight into Earth. Before you dismiss this prophecy as the ravings of a demented man, be forewarned that Meier claims a long list of successful predictions (no doubt selectively culled from a much longer list of unsuccessful ones—Meier reportedly has written thousands of pages of predictions). Horn says that Meier predicted back in 1987 that Islamic fanatics would destroy the World Trade Center in New York. If true, this information will be of great interest to the current Congressional investigation into the September 11 attacks: What did Meier know, and when did he know it?
Others are also starting to sound alarm bells. The Web site of the conspiracy-oriented radio host Jeff Rense carries similar warnings (see www.rense.com/general50/sep29th2004.htm). There is even a claim of a secret government missile program to save us from disaster on September 29. And the biblical prophecy expert Arnie Stanton suggests that the encounter with Toutatis indicates that the Second Coming will be just a few months away. Stanton also warns that a larger, as-yet undiscovered asteroid will definitely smack into Earth sometime in 2006.
This is the first time to my knowledge that the world is ending in 2004. The world most recently ended in May of 2003, when a mysterious Planet X, inhabited by Zetans, was reported to be on its way to a disastrous close encounter with Earth, moving the poles and flooding entire countries. The Web site www.zetatalk.com is still there. It talks a lot about the disasters expected in 2003 but says nothing about there being a year 2004; as near as I can tell, their claim is that a disastrous planetary encounter did occur in 2003, but was covered up by NASA. Before that, the “planetary alignment” of May 5, 2000, was threatened as a trigger for all manner of earthly havoc. And of course, society as we know it ended on January 1, 2000, when every major computer system in the world not only failed, but became contagious, infecting even computers that did not suffer from the Y2K bug. The next scheduled major world-ending is in 2012, when, according to a number of reliable experts, the Mayan Calendar simply “runs out,” apparently making it impossible for time to continue.

Are You Going to CSICon in New Orleans?

It's coming up in just a few weeks: the first CSI(COP) conference in several years, to be held in New Orleans on Oct. 27-30: http://www.csiconference.org/ .



"The conference dedicated to scientific inquiry and critical thinking.

Separate history from legend and science from voodoo by joining the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) for four days of fun, mystery and reason, in New Orleans's famous French Quarter."

I will be there to speak about UFO Conspiracy Theories, on a panel with astronomer and UFO skeptic James McGaha, moderated by physicist Leonard Tramiel. I will be discussing how UFO conspiracy theories are put together, from the most plausible-sounding, to the most extreme. James will be talking about new developments in the claimed UFO landing at Bentwaters AFB / Rendlesham Forest in the U.K.

So, please come and spend Halloween with us in New Orleans, meet some skeptical celebrities like James "The Amazing" Randi, Eugenie Scott, Phil Plait, and chat about really interesting stuff. And don't forget to bring your Halloween costume! I won't tell you yet what mine is going to be.

Comet Elenin "Self Destructs"

Sorry to disappoint those who were expecting Mayhem and Destruction from puny Comet Elenin this fall. However, Sky and Telescope magazine has just reported "Comet Elenin Self Destructs." This is not exactly surprising, as the same thing has happened to many small comets before. As astronomy writer Kelly Beatty reports, "Within the past week the comet's brightness has declined by 50%, dropping a half magnitude between August 19th and 20th...  images show Comet Elenin's bright core becoming elongated and diffuse — the telltale signs that its icy nucleus has either broken in two or disintegrated altogether. One veteran comet-watcher who's not surprised is John Bortle. Four months ago, based on Elenin's performance to that point, he cautioned, 'The comet may be intrinsically a bit too faint to even survive perihelion passage.' "

According to some, Comet Elenin was a giant menacing object that was going to zap earth with lightning bolts

As noted in my Blog posting of April 17, "Another Doomsday Coming this Year in September," Comet Elenin was proclaimed by many to be a destructive force headed toward Earth, where it will (somehow) cause something Truly Awful to happen to earth. Those who would not believe the descriptions of Comet Elenin as a feeble, puny visitor to the inner solar system now must contend with the fact that the comet's icy core has simply melted as it got closer to the sun.

But I can guarantee you that the Conspiracy claims will not end there. Soon we'll be hearing how NASA blew up Comet Elenin. Or maybe friendly Space Aliens did it, to save earth. Or maybe the comet has faded to near-invisibility to better sneak up and surprise unsuspecting earthlings? But I think the claim that will win out is one that emphasises the comet's alleged dangerous and destructive nature. Like, "that comet was so radioactive that it blew itself up!". Or possibly,  "Its weapons of mass destruction accidentally triggered prematurely!"

Some Comments on the History Channel show "UFOs On The Record"

On Thursday, August 25 the History Channel premiered a UFO documentary titled "Special Access - UFOs On The Record." It was based upon the best-selling book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean. This is not intended to be a comprehensive commentary on the contents of that show. I have already written a long review of Kean's book  in the March / April 2011 Skeptical Inquirer, from which the show's content is taken. The review's title is " ‘Unexplained’ Cases—Only If You Ignore All Explanations." Most of the cases that Kean proclaims "unidentified" have already had explanations published. Kean deals with this problem exactly as her UFOlogical mentor, the late Budd Hopkins did: she simply ignores it. SI Editor Ken Frazier told me that I was way past the length of a book review, and he'd have to cut back. That's the way things are with magazines. Most of the omitted material is included here, where I can post as much as I want. This posting, and my review of Kean's book, together address most of Kean's major "evidence."



The 'strongest evidence' presented was the Belgian UFO wave. In my book review I mention the strange lack of photographs given thousands of reported Close Encounters in a densely-populated country, a lack for which Kean offers a weak apology. There was, however, exactly one photograph purporting to show a structured craft, a 35mm slide, said to have been taken at Petit-rechain in Belgium in April of 1990. Much is made of this photo, both in the book and the show. In the latter, Kean calls the Petit-rechain photo "one of the most convincing" pieces of evidence for the existence of UFOs.

Let us be charitable and assume that this show was filmed prior to July 26, 2011, which it probably was. Unfortunately for Kean and Co., the Petit-rechain photo is now a confessed hoax! I noted this in my Blog post of July 26. On July 26 the hoaxer appeared on Belgian TV, confessing that "The UFO of Petit-rechain is not a spaceship from a distant galaxy but a panel of painted styrofoam with three spots affixed." And what about those scientists with impressive university positions, who supposedly 'validated' the photo? Piffle!

Worse yet for Kean, the Belgian UFOlogist Patrick Ferryn, who is featured prominently on the program proclaiming the validity of the Petit-rechain photo, now acknowledges that it is a hoax. Ferryn also appeared on Belgian TV on July 26 to argue that the bogus UFO photo from Petit-rechain does not in any way invalidate the Belgian UFO wave that began in November of 1989. (True enough, but it does remove the sole supposed photographic evidence for thousands of reported sightings.)

No word from Kean yet on her reaction to having one of the main pillars supporting her edifice suddenly kicked out from under her (and it's been more than a month). If she's honest, she'll admit she was wrong, and disavow the photo. However, that kind of honesty is extremely rare in UFOlogy. When I talked to Stanton Friedman at the MUFON symposium last month, he still would not give up on the "Zeta Reticuli" Star Map, even though he agreed with me that the star positions in the new Hipparchos catalog are far more accurate than in the forty-year-old catalog used to create the famous Map (and whose supposed 'one-in-ten-thousand' matching is now blown to smithereens). What Kean will do about the Petit-rechain hoax, time will tell. One thing is clear: Patrick Ferryn is an honest investigator, who is willing to acknowledge an error.

At  the beginning of the segment about the Phoenix lights, it seemed to me that the program was deliberately confusing the two separate incidents, using photos of the flares dropping (Phoenix Incident 2) to support  claims of the sightings earlier in the evening (Phoenix Incident 1). For information about Phoenix I, see The Great UFO Cover-up by Tony Ortega. Later in that program segment, Kean acknowledges that Phoenix 2 was a flare drop, in which case the photos of them are completely irrelevant to supporting any UFO claim, unless the aim is to confuse the viewer with good photos of a bad UFO, in lieu of bad or no photos of a presumably better one.

Former Arizona governor Fife Symington is one of Kean's favorite witnesses (although exactly how he became a "former governor" is never spelled out). He now claims to have 'held back' UFO information, and now claims a UFO sighting of his own. How credible is Fife Symington? This news story tells you all you need to know: Arizona Governor Convicted Of Fraud and Will Step Down. Seven felony counts! Sure, I believe everything this guy says. He'd never make up a story for fun and profit.

Little has been written about the “Incursion at O’Hare Airport” on Nov. 7, 2006, which is a major case for Kean. Several employees of United Airlines reported seeing a “strange object hovering just under a cloud bank… the metallic-looking disc was about the size of a quarter or half dollar held at arm’s length.”  Unfortunately, no photographs exist of this supposed “metallic-looking disc” hovering over one of the world’s busiest airports in daytime, and nothing showed up on radar.  Even more surprising, we learn in the program that the UFO hovered over gate C-17 at O'Hare. Apparently it was not seen by anyone at Gate C-15, C-16, or anywhere else.

After approximately five to fifteen minutes, “the suspended disc suddenly shot up at an incredible speed and was gone in less than a second, leaving a crisp, cookie-cutter-like hole in the dense clouds. The opening was approximately the same size as the object [I would suggest that the opening was in fact the object], and those directly underneath it could see blue sky visible on the other side.”  She ridicules an explanation offered by an FAA spokesman that the observers saw a “hole-punch cloud,” an unusual weather phenomenon where a large, dramatic circular hole is formed in a cloud layer. She cites a report by NARCAP, a pro-UFO investigative team, showing that temperatures were too high for a hole-punch cloud to form at the 1,900 foot elevation of the ceiling, which is probably correct. (Kean has no difficulty referencing investigations by other researchers, so long as their conclusion agrees with hers.) But then she bizarrely suggests that “this just happens to fit the witnesses’ explanation of what they saw: a high-energy, round object very likely to be emitting some form of intense radiation or heat while cutting through the cloud bank.” Now, one cannot simultaneously argue that a hole-punch cloud could not have formed because the temperatures were above freezing, but a UFO formed one anyway. In any case, the low ceiling might easily have briefly opened up to reveal a much higher cloud layer, where a hole-punch cloud already existed. It is interesting that the photo used on a NOAA website to illustrate the phenomenon of the hole-punch cloud was taken exactly eight days after the O’Hare Field “incursion,” from nearby Wisconsin. Hole-punch clouds typically occur in cirrocumulous clouds, approximately 16,000 to 39,000 ft. elevation, not at 1,900 ft!

On the positive side, the program featured a short segment on the UFOTOG project of Douglas Trumball, the special effects wizard who worked on 2001 - A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and many other films. Putting serious money into state-of-the-art cameras to detect and record anomalous moving objects is exactly the right way for someone who believes that UFOs might be real to prove he is right. Should a clear image of an unknown structured craft appear in a consistent manner across several different instruments, there would be no 'splaining it away. Of course, that has never happened, and I suspect it never will. But I will applaud Mr. Trumbull if he is able to prove me wrong. And I would admit it, unlike Lesile Kean, Stanton Friedman, or Budd Hopkins.

Physicist Michio Kaku, who is well known for attempting to rationalize the physics of UFOs and of Time Travel, is quoted on the cover of Kean's book declaring it filled with “eye-opening information” that would “set the gold standard for UFO research.” Skeptics should note how easily Kaku has been dazzled by Fool’s Gold.