"Is this a squadron of UFOs flying over California?", asks the London Daily Mail, adhering strictly to the First Law of UFOlogy: any unidentified object spotted must be presumed to be an alien spacecraft until conclusively proven otherwise. And there were other stories in the press. What they had in common was: somebody photographs something in the sky that he doesn't understand, and thousands of people jump to conclusions about alien craft.
In brief, an anonymous photographer known only as "KevinMC360" took two videos of unidentified (to him) objects, using an image intensifier ("Night Vision") device, one that (unlike the human eye) is sensitive to infra-red light. He posts them to YouTube with the suggestion that these are objects visible only in the infrared, and unknown to science. Then thousands of viewers, including "serious" journalists who should know better, think they are seeing something extraordinary, but all it means is they don't understand how these "night vision" devices work. In some cases, the anonymity of the photographer creates the strong suspicion of a hoax, but I don't think that is the case here. The video looks absolutely unmodified. This is what you see when you look into Night Vision devices. I wrote a recent "Psychic Vibrations" column about the uses (and misuses) of Night Vision devices by UFOlogists (Skeptical Inquirer, September/October, 2010), and here we see another instance of that.
In this video, the interesting objects are the three that fly in a triangular formation. These look very much like the triad of NOSS satellites operated by the U.S. Navy for reconnaissance (see http://www.satobs.org/noss.html ). However, most information about these satellites and their mission is classified for security reasons. According to that website, there are still two such configurations of three satellites in orbit, NOSS 1-7 and NOSS 2-1. I have seen these myself, using binoculars, and this looks very much like what I saw. Notice that the three objects keep the same position with respect to each other, except that the configuration flattens as the objects move further away. This is exactly what you would expect to see as the configuration recedes to the horizon. The single object that brightens is not too interesting, it is probably just a satellite moving into a position where its sun angle is more favorable toward the observer.
In the second video, the objects do not behave the same. There are four of them, and they do not stay in strict formation. Probably they are birds. The problem is, however, that in low-resolution devices such as this, practically any object is simply a white dot. The argument that these UFOs must be giving off infra-red, because his wife could not see them with her naked eye, doesn't wash. The night vision device amplifies available light, infra-red or otherwise, making faint objects become visible. Had she been using binoculars, she probably would have seen them better than he did. The video also shows the lights of a jet aircraft. Is the jet using infra-red lights? Of course not.
Night-Vision UFO watching is becoming a popular activity. The leader of this pack is Ed Grimsley, who claims to have videos of "Objects in Earth's space shooting it out," which he is happy to sell you. He even has a Meetup Group in San Diego, where for a mere $20 you will be taken out to dark skies to see these amazing night vision UFOs yourself. As I noted in my column, I was present when this group brought its night vision equipment to a star party of the San Diego Astronomy Association. What none of these intrepid explorers seemed to realize was that the "mysterious" objects they thought were visible only in their green goggles were also visible to anyone who has a pair of binoculars - and the binoculars show the objects in better detail.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Commie Nazi Saucer Crashed in Roswell
Just when you think that the credibility of the mass media can't get any lower (see Major Media Reports 60-year-old Eighth-hand Rumor as Proof of a Crashed UFO. ), they fall for this one. According to a new book by Annie Jacobsen, "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base," what crashed at Roswell was not an alien saucer, but instead a collaboration between Stalin and ex-Nazi Mengele to cause panic in the U.S.
This absurd claim was presented in all seriousness by many of the major media, including the Huffington Post. The Albuquerque Journal (May 22) headlined, "Stalin, Nazi Implicated in Roswell Incident." The story was also reported in the Boston Globe, AP News, etc. Practically the only news outlet to show any proper skepticism was Bloomberg's review of the book, "Roswell Martians Might Have Been Nazi Kids From Mengele’s Lab."
Annie Jacobsen interviewed by Joe Rogan
No reporter worth his salt should ever have given credence to this preposterous claim, even for a minute. Any one who did belongs in some other profession. There are so many things wrong with this claim, one hardly knows where to start. But I'll give it a try:
First, the first publicized sighting of a disc-shaped craft was that of Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. The Roswell incident occurred TEN DAYS LATER. Did Stalin and Mengele put this hoax together in just ten days? That's laughable. (Interestingly, Arnold described the objects he saw as boomerang-shaped, but the press reported "flying saucers," so that's what people said they saw. See Martin Kottmeyer's "The Saucer Error." )
Second, how did this thing fly? Its propulsion system would be immediately recognized by U.S. experts as conventional and terrestrial. Its electronics would also be immediately recognized as Soviet in origin, years behind the best U.S. made systems. The idea that Stalin could fool U.S. experts into thinking that they were examining an extraterrestrial craft is simply absurd. Stalin was indeed devious and evil, but he was not stupid.
Third, the children who had allegedly been deformed by the cruel Dr. Mengele to look like extraterrestrials reportedly did not all die in the crash. Surely their Soviet handlers knew that if any of them survived, they would immediately be screaming for help in Russian or German, and would reveal the deception at once.
Fourth, this is an attempt to explain something that does not need explaining. Jacobsen's wild claim attempts to explain the origin of a disc-shaped craft that allegedly crashed at Roswell, containing alien-looking beings. But there is no credible evidence whatsoever that this is what was actually found there. The man who actually found the Roswell debris, Mac Brazel, described it as looking like "large number of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance and pieced together with small sticks much like a kite." In other words, like the debris of a balloon's radar reflector, probably from Project Mogul (see my book UFO Sightings, chapter 4). There is no credible evidence that what was recovered at Roswell was ever anything bigger than tinfoil and sticks. It is not wise to invoke extraordinary explanations for ordinary phenomena. This is the Fallacy of Misplaced Rationalism, when the "rational" explanation is even more implausible that what it is supposed to explain (see my "Psychic Vibrations" column in the Skeptical Inquirer, July/August, 2008. Reprinted in Science Under Siege, Kendrick Frazier, ed.).
Fifth, as anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago surely realizes, Stalin never gave anyone who might have some information embarrassing to the Soviet state a chance to tell it. For example, millions of returning Soviet prisoners-of-war were sent to the Gulag for the "crime" of having first-hand knowledge of the outside world. We know that Mengele was hiding out in Bavaria under an assumed name from 1945 to 1949, and escaped to Argentina soon afterward - all while Stalin was still living. Thus the known facts of Mengele's life contradict this preposterous tale - at no time was he ever living in the USSR, or even in the USSR-occupied sector of Germany. If Stalin ever held Mengele, he would have placed him in the Gulag, probably in the "First Circle" (see Solzhenitsyn), where scientific and technical prisoners were held, but compelled to work for the Soviet state. Stalin never would have let him escape, and Stalin lived until 1953, by which time Mengele had been in Argentina for several years.
But when did the major media ever let common sense get in the way of a sensational story?
This absurd claim was presented in all seriousness by many of the major media, including the Huffington Post. The Albuquerque Journal (May 22) headlined, "Stalin, Nazi Implicated in Roswell Incident." The story was also reported in the Boston Globe, AP News, etc. Practically the only news outlet to show any proper skepticism was Bloomberg's review of the book, "Roswell Martians Might Have Been Nazi Kids From Mengele’s Lab."
Annie Jacobsen interviewed by Joe Rogan
No reporter worth his salt should ever have given credence to this preposterous claim, even for a minute. Any one who did belongs in some other profession. There are so many things wrong with this claim, one hardly knows where to start. But I'll give it a try:
First, the first publicized sighting of a disc-shaped craft was that of Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. The Roswell incident occurred TEN DAYS LATER. Did Stalin and Mengele put this hoax together in just ten days? That's laughable. (Interestingly, Arnold described the objects he saw as boomerang-shaped, but the press reported "flying saucers," so that's what people said they saw. See Martin Kottmeyer's "The Saucer Error." )
Second, how did this thing fly? Its propulsion system would be immediately recognized by U.S. experts as conventional and terrestrial. Its electronics would also be immediately recognized as Soviet in origin, years behind the best U.S. made systems. The idea that Stalin could fool U.S. experts into thinking that they were examining an extraterrestrial craft is simply absurd. Stalin was indeed devious and evil, but he was not stupid.
Third, the children who had allegedly been deformed by the cruel Dr. Mengele to look like extraterrestrials reportedly did not all die in the crash. Surely their Soviet handlers knew that if any of them survived, they would immediately be screaming for help in Russian or German, and would reveal the deception at once.
Fourth, this is an attempt to explain something that does not need explaining. Jacobsen's wild claim attempts to explain the origin of a disc-shaped craft that allegedly crashed at Roswell, containing alien-looking beings. But there is no credible evidence whatsoever that this is what was actually found there. The man who actually found the Roswell debris, Mac Brazel, described it as looking like "large number of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance and pieced together with small sticks much like a kite." In other words, like the debris of a balloon's radar reflector, probably from Project Mogul (see my book UFO Sightings, chapter 4). There is no credible evidence that what was recovered at Roswell was ever anything bigger than tinfoil and sticks. It is not wise to invoke extraordinary explanations for ordinary phenomena. This is the Fallacy of Misplaced Rationalism, when the "rational" explanation is even more implausible that what it is supposed to explain (see my "Psychic Vibrations" column in the Skeptical Inquirer, July/August, 2008. Reprinted in Science Under Siege, Kendrick Frazier, ed.).
Fifth, as anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago surely realizes, Stalin never gave anyone who might have some information embarrassing to the Soviet state a chance to tell it. For example, millions of returning Soviet prisoners-of-war were sent to the Gulag for the "crime" of having first-hand knowledge of the outside world. We know that Mengele was hiding out in Bavaria under an assumed name from 1945 to 1949, and escaped to Argentina soon afterward - all while Stalin was still living. Thus the known facts of Mengele's life contradict this preposterous tale - at no time was he ever living in the USSR, or even in the USSR-occupied sector of Germany. If Stalin ever held Mengele, he would have placed him in the Gulag, probably in the "First Circle" (see Solzhenitsyn), where scientific and technical prisoners were held, but compelled to work for the Soviet state. Stalin never would have let him escape, and Stalin lived until 1953, by which time Mengele had been in Argentina for several years.
But when did the major media ever let common sense get in the way of a sensational story?
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Doomsdays of Yesteryear: God in a Flying Saucer, March 31, 1998
From my "Psychic Vibrations" column in the Skeptical Inquirer, September/October, 1998:
Also, I am this week's guest on CFI's Point of Inquiry Podcast, hosted by Karen Stolznow (http://www.pointofinquiry.org/robert_sheaffer_its_a_conspiracy/ ). Have a listen!
As you might have heard, approximately 150 members of a Taiwanese UFO cult called Chen Tao (“Perfect Way”) came to the U.S. in 1996 expecting to meet God, who they said would arrive in a flying saucer. They first settled in San Dimas, California, a state where cults seem almost normal. Then suddenly they moved to Garland, Texas, the sort of town where a large crowd of foreign-speaking cult weirdos would not exactly pass unnoticed. A group of homeowners in Garland wrote the mayor and City Council complaining that this bizarre group was ruining their neighborhood. The mayor replied that these people were simply exercising their rights to free speech, and there wasn’t anything he could do. However, what he should have replied was, “Don’t worry, these people won’t bother you for long. They say they’re going to be carried away on flying saucers on the morning of March 31.” For according to the group’s leader Hon-Ming Chen, God was going to arrive at his house on that date at 10:00 AM Central Time with a whole fleet of flying saucers, swooping all of them up from the earth to rescue them from the coming Great Tribulation. Authorities, suspecting that the saucer fleet might not materialize, feared another mass-suicide like the Heavens Gate UFO cult last year, especially since many members carried neatly-packed backpacks with identical white clothing and sneakers for their anticipated heavenly rendezvous. The Taiwanese media had been reporting that Chen was encouraging newcomers to kill themselves so their bodies could be picked up by flying saucers. However, the church members denied having any thoughts of suicide.
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| cartoon by Rod Pudim |
I should note that I'm currently working on a book of my Psychic Vibrations columns. Rob Pudim has kindly agreed to let me use his cartoons from the Skeptical Inquirer - and there are a lot of them! I expect to have the book electronically published, and it should be available on Amazon.com and elsewhere by the end of the year, if not sooner. I'll keep you posted.Large numbers of reporters, in addition to Chen’s followers, gathered at the appointed place and time but, alas, nothing happened. Chen had an explanation: God had already arrived, invisibly, and entered their souls. As soon as things quieted down a bit, Chen announced that God would not be gathering people up from Texas after all, but instead from the area of the Great Lakes. He and a small group of the faithful set off for Buffalo, New York. Many of the others returned to Taiwan. While in New York, Chen had a vision of the numbers seventeen and eighteen, which he interpreted as a divine instruction to move his followers to the town of Olcott, where those two numbered road routes intersect. Should anyone care about Chen’s remaining prognostications, he sees Armageddon occurring in August of 1999. Of course, with the year 2000 fast approaching, if the Apocalypse does begin, the doomsayers will be lined up for blocks trying to get credit for the prediction. (For more information on the Chen Tao cult, see http://www.anthroufo.info/un-chen.html).
Also, I am this week's guest on CFI's Point of Inquiry Podcast, hosted by Karen Stolznow (http://www.pointofinquiry.org/robert_sheaffer_its_a_conspiracy/ ). Have a listen!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Doomsdays of Yesteryear: Harold Camping - Rapture in September, 1994
From my column "Psychic Vibrations" in The Skeptical Inquirer, March/April, 1995:
1994 was a great year for the world ending. Indeed, the world ended more times in 1994 than in any other year in recent memory. Harold Camping, president and general manager of a 39-station network of religious radio broadcasters, proclaimed that before the end of September, 1994, the dead would be arising from their graves for their final judgment. Camping explained to the San Jose Mercury News (Sept. 4, 1994) that he had arrived at his prediction by a laborious and careful process of counting off significant dates in the Bible. Furthermore, his math has been checked by a nuclear physicist and “a number of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore lab,” as if errors in arithmetic were the only way such a prediction might go awry. Mainstream religious scholars, of course, suggested Camping was seriously mistaken. Fortunately, Camping exhorted his listeners, “Don't do anything bizarre. Just live the way you should have been living all the time.” His stations are still on the air, and seem to have found something else to talk about.
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| A current Harold Camping billboard in Stockton, CA. Photo by Michael Fitzgerald |
June 9, 1994 was another date on which the world ended. Various fundamentalist prognosticators somehow settled upon that date, and started warning ominously that “June ninth is coming,” the day on which God would supposedly “rip sin out of the world.” Warnings were issued for a major destructive earthquake somewhere along the Pacific “ring of fire,” supposedly only the first event in an eschatological progression. So widespread was the expectation that it was even mentioned on the 700 Club [evangelist Pat Robertson’s popular TV program], although with the clear disclaimer that it would not be the start of the Rapture. When a large underground earthquake, which caused little or no damage or casualties, struck on this date, it was hailed as fulfillment of the prophecy. The last we checked, the world still had plenty of sin.
But don't give up on the eschaton merely because the world has survived into 1995. Dr. Leland Jensen of Missoula, Montana says that he is the Second Coming, and that during 1995 the earth will suffer great meteor impacts, earthquakes, and major planetary changes. Those lucky enough to survive all this will enjoy Heaven on Earth. And according to a story in the Washington Post (March 12, 1994), followers of the Institute of Divine Metaphysical Research expect the world to end in an instant, by 1996. So the end may come while you are reading this page. Fortunately, even if these people are right, they won't be in a position to gloat about it!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Doomsdays of Yesteryear: Rapture on October 28, 1992
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| Billboard near San Diego, CA, May 2, 2011 |
In honor of the next scheduled Rapture, coming on May 21 From the Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1993. News and Comment item by Erik Vaughn, "Where's the Rapture?":
"In case you missed it, Wednesday, October 28, 1992 was the Rapture, the day faithful Christians dead or alive ascend to heaven. The Rapture kicks off the last days: the appearance of the Antichrist, Armageddon, and the Second Coming.
"Lee Jang Rim, leader of the Dami Mission Church in Seoul, South Korea, spread the prophecy. Followers quit their jobs and sold or destroyed their property in anticipation, even as Rim was arrested for allegedly bilking hundreds of thousands of dollars from church members. The hysteria created a near crisis in South Korea.
"Members of Korean churches in South Korea, Hawaii, Los Angeles, and New York held marathon prayer vigils....
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Another Doomsday Coming this Year in September
As many of my readers already know, the Rapture and all that end-of-the-world stuff is supposed to start on May 21, only five weeks from now. And of course, there is the biggie on Dec. 21, 2012, when a whole lot of manure is supposed to hit the Great Celestial Fan (different accounts vary, but all agree that something Really Significant is supposed to happen then). However, I just learned that the world is ending (or at least getting all messed up) at least one more time this year, probably in September, when Comet Elenin (C/2010 X1) comes to Perihelion (its closest approach to the sun).
This information (more accurately, misinformation) comes to us from one Laura Knight Jadczyk, who channels messages from the Cassiopeans . Superficially this looks very similar to Nancy Lieder, who channels doomsday messages about Planet X from the Zetas . However, Ms. Jadczyk emphasises that Comet Elenin is not Planet X, and it is not going to collide with earth. The Cassiopeans explain that they are not strictly speaking extraterrestrials, but rather in some way our "future selves."
This is a faint comet, now visible only with difficulty in large amateur telescopes but expected to become visible in binoculars this fall. Why is it of so much interest? For some conspiracy-oriented websites, it's primarily that the media has been strangely silent about the comet. For Ms. Jadczyk, it's because the Cassiopeans told her that the outburst of 596 Scheila, an object believed to be an asteroid that began outgassing and revealed itself to be a comet, was related to Comet Elenin in some unspecified way. She also ties this in with James McCanney's Plasma Theory of comets, and similar "electric universe" theories about comets being "electric."
Just as you don't find "Creation Science" any more, just "Intelligent Design," you also don't find "Velikovskian" theories - it's now the "electric universe." As I understand it, all comets are filled with electricity according to these latter-day Velikovskiians, and so when Comet Elenin reaches the inner solar system, supposedly it's going to zap all of the planets with big lightning bolts. Ms. Jadczyk thinks that the greatest danger to earth will be on Sept. 27 and Nov. 23 of this year, although the comet will never get closer than about 21 million miles from the earth. This is indeed closer than the Earth ever comes to Venus or Mars, but still about 100 times the distance to the moon.
From a standpoint of science, of course this "electric universe" stuff is all nonsense. There are no regions of "positive charge" and "negative charge" in our solar system, and the sun does not produce its energy from electricity. (According to these guys, the sun and other stars are not nuclear furnaces, but rather electric heaters, heated up by supposed massive electric currents circulating across the Milky Way, energy apparently from nowhere.) In any case, Comet Elenin will have about as much effect on earth as did Halley's Comet, which is none at all. And the Comet Elenin Doomsday will be as destructive as was Nancy Lieder's Doomsday from the imaginary Planet X in May, 2003, or that of the asteroid Toutatis in 2006.
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| animation of Comet Elenin's motion from Gustavo Muler, Observatorio Nazaret (Lanzarote, Canary Island)::: |
This information (more accurately, misinformation) comes to us from one Laura Knight Jadczyk, who channels messages from the Cassiopeans . Superficially this looks very similar to Nancy Lieder, who channels doomsday messages about Planet X from the Zetas . However, Ms. Jadczyk emphasises that Comet Elenin is not Planet X, and it is not going to collide with earth. The Cassiopeans explain that they are not strictly speaking extraterrestrials, but rather in some way our "future selves."This is a faint comet, now visible only with difficulty in large amateur telescopes but expected to become visible in binoculars this fall. Why is it of so much interest? For some conspiracy-oriented websites, it's primarily that the media has been strangely silent about the comet. For Ms. Jadczyk, it's because the Cassiopeans told her that the outburst of 596 Scheila, an object believed to be an asteroid that began outgassing and revealed itself to be a comet, was related to Comet Elenin in some unspecified way. She also ties this in with James McCanney's Plasma Theory of comets, and similar "electric universe" theories about comets being "electric."
Just as you don't find "Creation Science" any more, just "Intelligent Design," you also don't find "Velikovskian" theories - it's now the "electric universe." As I understand it, all comets are filled with electricity according to these latter-day Velikovskiians, and so when Comet Elenin reaches the inner solar system, supposedly it's going to zap all of the planets with big lightning bolts. Ms. Jadczyk thinks that the greatest danger to earth will be on Sept. 27 and Nov. 23 of this year, although the comet will never get closer than about 21 million miles from the earth. This is indeed closer than the Earth ever comes to Venus or Mars, but still about 100 times the distance to the moon.
From a standpoint of science, of course this "electric universe" stuff is all nonsense. There are no regions of "positive charge" and "negative charge" in our solar system, and the sun does not produce its energy from electricity. (According to these guys, the sun and other stars are not nuclear furnaces, but rather electric heaters, heated up by supposed massive electric currents circulating across the Milky Way, energy apparently from nowhere.) In any case, Comet Elenin will have about as much effect on earth as did Halley's Comet, which is none at all. And the Comet Elenin Doomsday will be as destructive as was Nancy Lieder's Doomsday from the imaginary Planet X in May, 2003, or that of the asteroid Toutatis in 2006.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Major Media Reports 60-year-old Eighth-hand Rumor as Proof of a Crashed UFO.
I was tempted to make a posting a few days back when the major media made such a big thing out of the 1950 memo written by FBI Agent Guy Hottel, repeating a yarn he'd been told. For example, see this piece from The Telegraph, The International Business Times, etc. But by the time I was ready to get started, several of my colleagues were already producing some excellent pieces so there was really nothing much I could add.
Ben Radford pointed out in his Livescience blog that the FBI Memo was far from new, and that it had nothing to do with Roswell. Dave Thomas of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason sent around email to many active UFO skeptics and researchers, sharing what he had found so far, and requesting a copy of a report done by Bill Moore on the memo's origin. Dave has produced a really fine analysis telling the complete story of the Hottel memo's origin, and of others' attempts to exploit it. In my files I found this 1983 newspaper article showing how MUFON's Director, Walt Andrus, was shamelessly trying to exploit the Hottel Memo:
I also created a new web page about the Frank Scully / Silas Newton UFO Crash hoax at http://www.debunker.com/Scully.html . On it, you will find a three-part MP3 recording of J.P. Cahn giving a talk to the Bay Area Skeptics in 1984. So far as I know, this is the only recoding of Cahn discussing his research into the Scully Crash hoax. You might enjoy hearing Cahn tell the story in his own words. He was a very entertaining speaker.
By the way, in his talk Cahn relates how he was contacted by UFOlogist William L. Moore, who was one of the first promoters of the Roswell Crashed Saucer story. Moore phoned his house and introduced himself on the telephone. Moore said "I'm an investigative reporter, and I've been looking for you for three years." Cahn questioned Moore's investigative skills, saying "you'd think he'd pick up a phone book," because Cahn had always been listed in the San Francisco White Pages.
The lesson of this whole fiasco is: the next time you hear the major news media reporting some major development supposedly proving the reality of extraterrestrial UFOs, remember how they sensationalized the sixty-year-old, eighth-hand information in the FBI memo. And remember that they're in the business of grabbing readers and customers first, and only secondarily of reporting the news in factual and actual manner.
Ben Radford pointed out in his Livescience blog that the FBI Memo was far from new, and that it had nothing to do with Roswell. Dave Thomas of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason sent around email to many active UFO skeptics and researchers, sharing what he had found so far, and requesting a copy of a report done by Bill Moore on the memo's origin. Dave has produced a really fine analysis telling the complete story of the Hottel memo's origin, and of others' attempts to exploit it. In my files I found this 1983 newspaper article showing how MUFON's Director, Walt Andrus, was shamelessly trying to exploit the Hottel Memo:
I also created a new web page about the Frank Scully / Silas Newton UFO Crash hoax at http://www.debunker.com/Scully.html . On it, you will find a three-part MP3 recording of J.P. Cahn giving a talk to the Bay Area Skeptics in 1984. So far as I know, this is the only recoding of Cahn discussing his research into the Scully Crash hoax. You might enjoy hearing Cahn tell the story in his own words. He was a very entertaining speaker.
By the way, in his talk Cahn relates how he was contacted by UFOlogist William L. Moore, who was one of the first promoters of the Roswell Crashed Saucer story. Moore phoned his house and introduced himself on the telephone. Moore said "I'm an investigative reporter, and I've been looking for you for three years." Cahn questioned Moore's investigative skills, saying "you'd think he'd pick up a phone book," because Cahn had always been listed in the San Francisco White Pages.
The lesson of this whole fiasco is: the next time you hear the major news media reporting some major development supposedly proving the reality of extraterrestrial UFOs, remember how they sensationalized the sixty-year-old, eighth-hand information in the FBI memo. And remember that they're in the business of grabbing readers and customers first, and only secondarily of reporting the news in factual and actual manner.
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