New Developments in the Frederick Valentich Disappearance: An Airplane Abducted by a UFO?

Valentich and his aircraft

A famous "unexplained" UFO case (or more precisely, a case where the solution is probable, but not clearly proven) is the 1978 disappearance of Fredrick Valentich, a 20 year old pilot in Australia.  On October 21 1978  he was piloting a Cessna 182L  light aircraft over Bass Strait in Australia. He intended to land at King Island and return to Moorabbin Airport.

However, he never made it to King Island, 127 miles away. The final exchanges between Valentich (DSJ) and air traffic control are as follows: (from Wikipedia)


19:06:14 DSJ [Valentich]: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below five thousand?
FS [Flight Services; Robey]: Delta Sierra Juliet, no known traffic.
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, I am, seems to be a large aircraft below five thousand.
19:06:44 FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, What type of aircraft is it?
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, I cannot affirm, it is four bright, and it seems to me like landing lights.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.
19:07:31 DSJ: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet, the aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, and it is a large aircraft, confirmed?
DSJ: Er-unknown, due to the speed it's travelling, is there any air force aircraft in the vicinity?
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, no known aircraft in the vicinity.
19:08:18 DSJ: Melbourne, it's approaching now from due east towards me.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.
19:08:41 DSJ: (open microphone for two seconds.)
19:08:48 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, it seems to me that he's playing some sort of game, he's flying over me two, three times at speeds I could not identify.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, what is your actual level?
DSJ: My level is four and a half thousand, four five zero zero.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet and you confirm you cannot identify the aircraft?
DSJ: Affirmative.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, stand by.
19:09:27 DSJ: Melbourne, Delta Sierra Juliet, it's not an aircraft it is (open microphone for two seconds).
19:09:42 FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, can you describe the - er - aircraft?
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, as it's flying past it's a long shape (open microphone for three seconds) cannot identify more than it has such speed (open microphone for three seconds). It's before me right now Melbourne.
19:10 FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger and how large would the - er - object be?
19:10:19 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne, it seems like it's chasing me.[21] What I'm doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It's got a green light and sort of metallic like, it's all shiny on the outside.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet
19:10:46 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet (open microphone for three seconds) It's just vanished.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.
19:11:00 DSJ: Melbourne, would you know what kind of aircraft I've got? Is it a military aircraft?
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, Confirm the - er ~ aircraft just vanished.
DSJ: Say again.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, is the aircraft still with you?
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet; it's (open microphone for two seconds) now approaching from the south-west.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet
19:11:50 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, the engine is rough-idling. I've got it set at twenty three twenty-four and the thing is (coughing).
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, what are your intentions?
DSJ: My intentions are - ah - to go to King Island - ah - Melbourne. That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again (open microphone for two seconds). It is hovering and (open microphone for one second) it's not an aircraft.
FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.
19:12:28 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet. Melbourne (open microphone for seventeen seconds).

It was Valentich's first and only night flight over water. And neither Valentich nor his aircraft was ever seen, or heard from, again.

An artist's conception of Valentich pursued by a UFO

But at last, we have some new information on this puzzling case:

"Adelaide researcher Keith Basterfield has been following the case since the disappearance in 1978, but had been told by the Government in 2004 the official file had been lost or destroyed. He "found" it when searching through an online National Archives index on an unrelated topic. The file has since been digitised and uploaded on the archive's website." 

 So we have skeptic Keith Basterfield to thank for the recent government "document dump" that gets this new information 'out there.' Basterfield explains that the newly-released files reveal that "parts of aircraft wreckage with partial serial numbers were found in Bass Strait five years after the disappearance." Also, one pilot searching at the right time and place saw debris that appeared to be from a Cessna, but before he could get a good fix on its position it apparently sank. This makes it extremely likely that Valentich's aircraft simply crashed into the water in the darkness,  although it falls short of conclusive proof. 

Those interested in reading the 315-page official file still need to go out of their way to find it, however, via a seven-step process outlined by Mr Basterfield, which he perhaps charitably denies is another attempt to hide information. He says: 1. Go to National Archives of Australia. 2. Click on search the collection 3. Click on Begin your search 4. Up comes RecordSearch 5. In the keywords box type VH-DSJ 6. Up comes this file 7. Click on the View digital copy icon. (Miles Kemp, Adelaide Now, Fri, 06 Jul 2012)

If that is too complicated, and you really don't want to read all 315 pages in this maddeningly slow way,  there is a nice summary of these findings in Basterfield's Blog entries of June 28,  July 3, and August 24, 2012. You can also download the first set of documents from scribd. From the documents:

 A number of reports of a fast moving brilliant white light were received from various parts of the country. Mt Stromlo observatory advised that the night of the 21st was the peak of the meteorite stream with 10-15 sightings per hour achieved.

The question of why Valentich took this somewhat risky night flight is a separate matter. According to Wikipedia,

His stated intention was to fly to King Island in Bass Strait via Cape Otway, to pick up passengers, and return to Moorabbin. However, he had told his family, girlfriend and acquaintances that he intended to pick up crayfish. During the accident investigations it was learned there were no passengers waiting to be picked up at King Island, he had not ordered crayfish and could not have done so because crayfish were not available anyway.

So clearly Valentich was being evasive about something. The late Philip J. Klass suggested that Valentich may have been involved in drug smuggling, a suggestion which has infuriated some people and for which there is no proof. However Valentich's stated explanations for making this night flight make do not check out. Some have also suggested that it was Valentich's intention to commit suicide.

Also, it turns out that Valentich was a UFO True Believer, and hence probably inclined to assume anything as a "UFO" that he could not immediately identify. He actually worried about what to do if a UFO attacked him!

from the recently-released Australian documents

Assuming that Valentich became disoriented and thought that Venus, or perhaps a meteor, was flying above him and chasing him, his average life expectancy at that point was about three minutes. This chilling pilot PSA video from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association shows exactly what happened to Valentich (as well as to JFK Jr in 1999). Watching this video made my blood run cold, but it's absolutely realistic.



This is exactly the situation Valentich found himself in when darkness fell on that moonless night. Assuming that he became disoriented and thought that Venus, or perhaps a meteor, was a UFO – he says it was “orbiting” him – we would expect him to crash in about 178 seconds. He actually survived 374 seconds from the time of his first UFO report until crashing. Valentich had a “Class Four Instrument Rating,” but we know he was not watching his instruments; his eyes were fixed on the “UFO” he was describing.  We also learn from Wikipedia that Valentich

had twice applied to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Force but was rejected because of inadequate educational qualifications. He was a member of the Air Training Corps, determined to have a career in aviation. His student pilot licence was issued 24 February 1977 and his private pilot licence the following September. Valentich was studying part-time to become a commercial pilot but had a poor achievement record, having twice failed all five commercial licence examination subjects, and as recent as the previous month had failed three more commercial licence subjects. He had been involved in flying incidents, straying into a controlled zone in Sydney (for which he received a warning) and twice deliberately flying into cloud (for which prosecution was being considered). 

    I would never knowingly get into an aircraft with a pilot like that – and especially not for a night flight over water! In any case, we can be quite sure of what happened to Valentich, even if we cannot say why he made that fatal flight.

[Added Nov. 10, 2013: An article was published in The Skeptical Inquirer, November/December, 2013: "The Valentich Disappearance: Another UFO Cold Case Solved", by James McGaha and Joe Nickel. The conclusion they reach is the same as I did: "distracted and disoriented - the young pilot unexpectedly enters the "graveyard spiral" that carries him to his death." They make the point that Valentich was paying attention to a supposed "UFO", when he should have been paying attention to his instruments.
Also, Brian Dunning covered the Valentich story on his Skeptoid podcast, http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4385 ]

Smithsonian-Affiliated "National Atomic Testing Museum" Promises UFO "Secrets" Revealed

The National Atomic Testing Museum is a relatively new, and seemingly professional, museum a few miles east of the Las Vegas Strip on Flamingo Road. I visited it about two years ago, and was very impressed by its powerful and relevant exhibits on the subject of atomic testing and the Cold War.

Now that museum, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, is getting heavily into claims about Area 51 and UFOs. It has a special exhibition on "Area 51," which requires a separate admission ticket. I did not see this exhibit, but I understand that it depicts ongoing classified projects, which would seem to place the museum in the same business as Wikileaks. Whether a Smithsonian-affiliated museum ought to be doing this is a serious moral and legal question. I thought that the Area 51 exhibit restricted itself to aerospace-related matters, but Lee Speigel writes in the Huffington Post, "Among the many items displayed are materials presented as "Authentic Alien Artifact" -- samples of small objects originating from an alleged UFO crash in Russia." So if you want to see an "Authentic Alien Artifact," the National Atomic Testing Museum claims to have one.

Lee Speigel's photo of an "Authentic Alien Artifact."

Not satisfied with that absurdity, the National Atomic Testing Museum is now getting into full-fledged promotion of UFO claims. On September 22, they are sponsoring an "Area 51 Special Lecture - Military UFOs: Secrets Revealed." There is nothing whatever skeptical about this panel.

The entrance to the National Atomic Testing Museum

One of the speakers is Nick Pope, who for years has been warning about an "alien invasion." Most recently, just before the London Olympics Pope warned, "The government must - and has planned - for the worst-case scenario: alien attack and alien invasion. Space shuttles, lasers and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defence against any alien ships in orbit," he said, apparently unaware that America's Space Shuttle orbiters have been dispersed to various museums, and the rest of the  system scrapped.

Another speaker is Col. Charles Halt (USAF Retired), who was the deputy base commander of  the Bentwaters U.S. Air Force Base in England, and a major witness to the supposed Rendlesham "UFO landing"  in December, 1980. As noted by the British skeptic Ian Ridpath, the tale told by Col. Halt about this incident has "improved" dramatically over the years. In 1980, he claimed only to have witnessed "starlike" objects in the sky. By 2010, his account had expanded so that the objects zoomed up over his head and sent down a laser-like beam at his feet. The audience at Las Vegas will surely hear the new and improved version of Col. Halt's tale, with no hint of any reasons to question it. As Ridpath wrote in reference to a posting by Dr. David Clarke,

Halt’s superior officer at the time of the events, Col Conrad, has been scathing of his claims, saying: “He should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.”

Former intelligence officer Col. John Alexander (U.S. Army Retired), is also speaking. He probably organized this lecture event. Alexander is a bit unusual among UFO proponents in that he absolutely does not believe that the U.S. Government is covering up any "UFO secrets," or is engaged in any "UFO conspiracy." So that rules out belief in the Roswell Crash (which got him jeered while speaking at the MUFON Symposium last year). Yet Alexander apparently believes in a British UFO cover-up, as he is a strong proponent of Col. Halt and the other supposed witnesses at Rendlesham. James McGaha and I each told Alexander personally about Col. Halt's changing UFO claims, and asked how could he continue to have confidence in Halt's story? But Alexander does not seem troubled by Halt's inconsistency in the least, or by the dressing-down of Col. Halt by his superior officer, Col. Conrad; why give up on a UFO story as good as this one??!!!

Also speaking are retired Air Force Cols. William Coleman and Robert Friend. Col. Friend was the director of  the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book. Coleman, an Air Force public information spokesman, was the producer of the former NBC-TV program "Project UFO," which ran two seasons (1978 and 1979). The show was so bad that, as I wrote in Psychic Vibrations (SI Fall 1979; book, p. 15):

Edward Winters, one of the stars of the series, explained how the writers for Project UFO got their material: “As I understand the story, the Air Force finally got tired of looking at us, because they said, ‘Anything your writers can dream up, we can find … There are over 12,000 cases in the Blue Book report.’ So instead of finding it first and then writing about it, they let the writers write it and then they go find one like it!” 

If either of these gentlemen, Col. Friend or Col. Coleman, ever actually had any "UFO secrets," they should have appeared in the Blue Book files. Or at least in Project UFO.

James McGaha contacted the Director of the National Atomic Testing Museum, Allan Palmer, to get an explanation of why such sensationalist material was being presented under the auspices of the museum, but received no clear explanation. His attempts to get a comment on this matter from the Smithsonian has thus far been likewise unsuccessful.

For whatever reason, we are now seeing once-respected names dragging themselves through the swamp of UFO and alien claims. First the National Geographic, embracing UFO claims as if there were no tomorrow, with Chasing UFOs merely the most egregious example. Now even a Smithsonian-affiliated museum is shamelessly promoting entirely uncritical UFO claims. What will be next: Bigfoot exhibits? Astrological displays? Are museums to be the next venue for tabloid entertainment? If America's museums are willing to shed all scholarly rigor and self-respect to bring more visitors through the doors, then it will be a sorry day for science education in America.

(March 22, 2014: Another Blog posting on this same subject: More Museum Shenanigans.)

CIA-CSI Connection Finally Laid Bare by Robert Hastings

Often UFO proponents hint that the government, and the CIA in particular, must be behind skeptics' knee-jerk debunking of every major UFO sighting. But nobody has come right out and argued the point as directly as has Robert Hastings, the UFOlogist who is best-known for revealing how UFOs have repeatedly zapped our nuclear missiles, and the government has covered it up.

Robert Hastings

On July 29 with his article CSI Skeptic Robert Sheaffer doubts the U.S. Government Uses the Media to Debunk UFOs , Hastings hinted at the truth but did not fully tie everything together. I replied on August 9 with CSI and CIA: Hastings' Hyperbole, still desperately attempting to hold onto a bit of cover.

But then on August 21 Hastings wrote Robert Sheaffer's Bogus Claims on Nat Geo's "Secret History of UFOs": Incompetence or Disinformation? :

Highly relevant to this discussion is my research into Sheaffer’s affiliation with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) which was previously named The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). As journalist Terry Hansen has argued in The Missing Times, the historical role of CSICOP (now CSI) strongly suggests it has been performing as an intelligence community “front organization”—pumping anti-UFO propaganda into the media without revealing its true source or motivation.

This is actually CSI's secret Logo, given out only on a need-to-know basis

Hastings is most concerned about the biased and misleading information I gave to the public in the recent show The Secret History of UFOs on the National Geographic Channel. For me it was all in a day's work, but he observed:

Well-known “skeptic” Robert Sheaffer’s performance in Secret History of UFOs, the National Geographic network’s latest debunking-disguised-as-documentary, begs the question: At what point does the systematic presentation of half-truths and outright falsehoods about the UFO phenomenon cross the line from incompetent scholarship to intentional disinformation? 

As I noted in my last article, given the extremely biased and propagandistic treatment of the UFO subject one consistently finds on Nat Geo, it might reasonably be argued that the network has been working behind the scenes with the CIA to debunk the phenomenon. 

Hastings' Press Conference: Disclosure, not Debunking!

I am not the only one Hastings singles out. James Oberg, Ken Frazier, and James McGaha are all taken to task for their roles in misinforming the public, and covering up the truth. There is no point in further dissimulation. Hastings has laid it all out in a perfectly logical fashion, the first to do so. Now Roger Marsh, the director of public relations for MUFON, has written Hastings speaks out: Could a TV network be working with the CIA? making it   pointless to continue further denial. Everything Hastings says is true.

Last year I began working on a UFO debunking effort with the National Geographic Channel at the request of CIA director David Petraeus. (Next year we planned to begin similar programs on Animal Planet, and the Playboy Channel.) I came up with the idea of a UFO investigations show that would be so foolish, an obvious insult to everyone's intelligence, that it would discredit the very idea of UFO investigations. The result is Chasing UFOs, and I don't mean to boast, but this was a stroke of genius. Then we realized that we'd also need some more sophisticated debunking programs, so I dictated the outline for The Secret History of UFOs, in which a little bit of debunking is mixed with a little bit of UFO truth, to keep everyone confused.

What did I gain from this, apart from the obvious great wealth and cool jetpack? I believed I was helping my country, by protecting people from panic over the fact that not only are the alien abductors, who we are helpless to stop, aroused by our naked bodies, but that they also eat children. Now that you know this, I hope you can still sleep.

the author flies his CIA-supplied jetpack

I don't mean to imply that I have been doing all this work by myself. In between his spy missions to Russia and North Korea, James Oberg has done splendid work explaining away the many alien spacecraft that have been following NASA space missions. James McGaha, a retired Air Force intelligence officer who is in reality still part of the official debunking squad, has done great work spreading disinformation about the UFO that landed in Rendlesham forest, and deciphering the binary message that it sent out telepathically. Dave Thomas helped keep the lid on New Mexico landings and crashes, and would have done more if he didn't have to spend so much time planting thermite in the World Trade Center. And I shouldn't forget Ben Radford, who Hastings takes to task in this earlier column. Congratulations, Gentlemen, now that Disclosure has arrived you can bask in the recognition you have earned!

Now that I have revealed all this, I know that my CIA handlers will be upset with me. They won't "disappear" me because I am too well-known, and they will not arrest me because the trial would reveal too much dirt about the long-standing UFO Coverup which, I understand, is now set to end a week from Tuesday. Gone for sure will be my $1 million-plus annual Debunker First Class salary from the CIA. But I am not going to give back the jetpack!

Nick Pope and Alien Invaders

Nick Pope is making an entire career out of having once been responsible for the UK's Ministry of Defense UFO investigations from 1991 to 1994. One would think that such a brief stint would not count for much, but Pope is not one to let an opportunity pass. He gets invited to all the major UFO conferences, and frequently is a guest on the Coast to Coast AM radio show, to spin his tales.

Earlier this year, Pope claimed that a UFO photo that was perhaps the best and clearest ever taken 'mysteriously vanished' from the MOD offices.

Nick Pope

In June Pope got a lot of attention when he warned that mass sightings of UFOs were likely during the upcoming London Olympics. When some  videos showing the Goodyear blimp over the Olympic stadium were interpreted by some people as a UFO, some said 'Nick Pope predicted this.' (Of course, it was only people seeing the video on TV who called the blimp a UFO; people in the stadium recognized it as a blimp, and did not report seeing a UFO.)

Pope also warned that "The government must - and has planned - for the worst-case scenario: alien attack and alien invasion. Space shuttles, lasers and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defence against any alien ships in orbit," he said, apparently unaware that America's Space Shuttle orbiters have been dispersed to various museums, and the rest of the  system scrapped.

Since the collective response among "serious" UFOlogists has been astonishment, Pope began to slowly backtrack, in a very clumsy manner. He told Richard Dolan (who says quite a few wild things himself, like about aliens on Mars),

“My comments concerning Alien Invasion etc, arose because I was commissioned to do some tie-in PR for the launch of the alien invasion themed Sony Playstation game, “Resistance: Burning Skies”, out exclusively on the Playstation Vita. I came up with the idea of an alien invasion war plan. There are 2 versions out there, I can email you copies, a serious version and a more pop culture version that got picked up by the Daily Mail. The real issue here, and it applies to lots of subjects, is the increasingly blurred lines between real news reporting and marketing. 

In an entry titled The End of Nick Pope, blogger "nickpost" on ufodaily.net  reveals his own conspiracy theory:

Nick Pope has completely discredited himself in the field of UFOlogy. Ironically he speaks of “the real issue of blurring the lines between news and marketing” whilst perpetuating just that. It also reconfirmed my assumption that he’s not ex Ministry of Defense.  The issue of Disinformation and Counter Intelligence Programs, (COINTELPRO ), designed to deliberately spread false Information in order to keep the public away from the truth and muddy the waters by intentionally spreading false stories to de-legitimize the subject. In other words if some of the info is true and some of it is ridiculous, it’s all perceived as ridiculous. [emphasis added]

Blogger Simon Sharman writes, "In Pope's own words he 'came up with the idea of an alien invasion war plan' only because he had been commissioned to do some PR for Sony. Secondly, his war plan was carefully thought out because he has no knowledge that any such plans exist." Or in other words, he made up the claim about a government plan for alien invasion,  for commercial gain.

UFOlogist Joe McGonagle wrote, "I struggle to understand why anyone thought Nick Pope had any credibility to start with."

The same man who claims to have investigated Alien abductions,
crop circles, and animal mutilations for the British Government
when he was "in charge of" "the British Government's UFO
Project", when according to the head of his department in 1997;

"Turning specifically to your comments concerning Mr Pope, I
should point out that he was a junior desk officer in the
Secretariat(Air Staff)2a section from 1991-1994 and was not in
charge of, or the head of any part of Secretariat (Air Staff)2.
Mr Pope was an executive officer and shared the support of one
administrative officer"....according to one of his successors, Linda Unwin, "The first point to make is that there is no 'UFO Project'. Handling of UFO sightings is a very small element of our work."

McGonagle adds that Pope is "the man who still pushes the "Cosford incident" as unexplained, when in fact there is an obvious explanation for the majority of the reports on 31st March 1993... The same man who discussed an obvious image of a gull as "If I was still there [on the UFO desk] I'd be looking at this very closely. The object looks structured, symmetrical and metallic"... The same man who continues to portray the radiation readings as hard evidence of something unusual at Rendlesham forest when in fact the readings are meaningless."

Some have described Pope as a 'very conservative' UFOlogist, but the facts don't bear this out. As skeptic Ian Ridpath noted, Pope "has been banging on about potential alien invasion for years."  In a 2006 news interview Pope warns, 'Aliens could attack at any time':

a former MoD chief warns that the country could be attacked by extraterrestrials at any time...

During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain.

His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed.

And he complains that the project he once ran is now "virtually closed" down, leaving the country "wide open" to aliens.

There has been no suggestion that Pope was 'promoting a video game' at that time.

Steven Greer's 18 Inch Extraterrestrial, and Ghost Rockets

Earlier I reported on the claim of Dr. Steven Greer, of CSETI and The Disclosure Project, to have seen and examined the body of a presumably genuine extraterrestrial, in the possession of an unspecified organization (that he now says is in an unspecified foreign country). He was seeking funds for proper DNA analysis of the creature (although if a being evolved on another planet, it is not at all clear that the creature will even have DNA).

Now Greer has released a photo of it. Or, more exactly, a photo of Greer (or someone) holding a photo of it. Why don't we see a good close-up of the photo itself? Probably it was done that way to prevent us from seeing how phony it is. The photo is now on YouTube, with a soundtrack of Greer describing the creature, and explaining how you need to send him even more money to get it analyzed.



Meanwhile, over in Sweden a team of real-life UFO Chasers is assembling to try to answer once and for all the question of "Ghost rockets" in Sweden. The history of "Ghost Rockets" in Sweden began in 1946, the year before Kenneth Arnold's pioneering saucer sighting. (I wrote about this in the context of "Mystery Missiles" being seen here in the U.S.) In the midst of very real concerns about possible Soviet rocket test launches, people throughout Sweden reported sightings of unknown objects usually described as "Rockets," some of which were reported to have plunged into lakes. But no evidence of a corresponding rocket launch was ever found, and searches by divers failed to turn up Soviet rockets (or anything else) at the bottom of lakes. Hence the name "ghost rockets": they are allegedly seen, but then vanish like a ghost. Many of these sightings were very likely contrails, left by high-altitude military surveillance aircraft that were relatively new sights in post-war Europe. Others were probably meteors, especially if seen at night.

The one "classic" photo of a Swedish "Ghost Rocket"

Frankly, I was not even aware that the "Ghost Rocket" sightings had continued to the present day. It just goes to illustrate the role that cultural expectations play in generating UFO reports; in no other country do people regularly report seeing unidentified objects plunging into lakes.

A group called UFO-Sweden, that appears to be quite well-organized and funded (as UFO groups go), is now preparing a documentary film to hopefully solve this mystery:

 In 2012 the head of UFO-Sweden Clas Svahn will lead an expedition to investigate one of the latest ghost rockets sightings. The case, based on a previous classified report, will be their biggest expedition yet and will take them to a lake located deep in the forests of northern Sweden.

Coming along with Clas is a professional diving team, the two original witnesses, a support team and a chef. And of course a whole lot of equipment including inflatable boats, diving tanks, underwater cameras, a sonar scanner and metal detectors, adding up to over a ton of equipment. Set within a beautiful landscape, this team of people have come together for the first time with a common goal. To find an object that may very well hold the key to unlocking one of the worlds biggest UFO-mysteries.

So possibly they will haul up the remains of some "ghost rocket" at the bottom of a Swedish lake, although I seriously doubt they'll find anything mysterious down there. On the other hand, maybe they'll find a Lake Monster hiding out? Wouldn't that be a nice surprise! But that's not how it works: the bottom of Swedish lakes are supposed to contain rocket parts, and the bottom of lakes in Scotland are supposed to contain Nessie. Different countries, different mythologies.

A Socorro Student Hoax Confirmed?

Alleged UFO landing at Socorro, NM, 1964

On September 23, 2009, UFO investigator Anthony Bragalia wrote a Blog entry that generated huge controversy within UFOlogy. I wrote about it in my Psychic Vibrations column of March/April, 2010. I wrote:

The famous Socorro “UFO landing” case of April 24, 1964, has been proclaimed by leading UFOlogists, such as Jacques  Vallee and the late J. Allen Hynek, as among the best ever recorded. Policeman Lonnie Zamora allegedly witnessed two humanoids standing outside a landed craft, which then flew away with a loud roar. The object’s landing pads allegedly left behind four indentations in the ground, and nearby vegetation was scorched and burning. Could this classic UFO incident have been a hoax perpetrated by students at the New Mexico Institute of Technology? That’s exactly what UFOlogist Anthony Bragalia, who usually argues the pro side of UFO discussions, claims.... 

Officer Lonnie Zamora

In a September 23, 2009, blog entry, Bragalia wrote, “The Socorro UFO Hoax Exposed! (Famous 1964 sighting was a college prank).” The principal support for this conclusion was found in a scribbled reply to a letter by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling to Stirling Colgate, a noted physicist who also served as president of New Mexico Tech. The 1968 letter recently discovered in Pauling’s papers has Pauling asking Colgate, purely as an aside from other matters, about the famous UFO incident that occurred in Socorro, just a short distance from his campus. Colgate’s brief and enigmatic reply was, “I have a good indication of the student who engineered the hoax. Student has left. Cheers, Stirling” 

While there were a few others in the New Mexico Tech community who also hinted at knowledge of a hoax, the matter was never proven, and how such a hoax might be pulled off was, unfortunately, never explained. The noted UFO skeptic, the late Philip J. Klass, visited Socorro in 1966 and interviewed Zamora and others who had first-hand knowledge of the incident. Klass was puzzled by how little interest there was among the scientists at New Mexico Tech in what might be the first genuine alien encounter in recorded history, occurring literally in their backyard. Klass wrote, “When I pressed one member of the community to explain his apparent indifference, he suggested that I ‘nose around a bit,’” and he went on to explain that the town was seeking to attract tourists to strengthen its economy. Klass also noted the curious lack of symmetry in the “pad prints” supposedly left behind, illustrating how unsuitable such an unstable design would be for any craft. Klass concluded that the incident was a hoax to 'put Socorro on the map,' a collusion probably involving Zamora, the mayor, and a few others. If that is the case, Socorro has not been nearly as successful at milking UFO notoriety as another New Mexico town named Roswell. The assumption that the incident was a student hoax instead of one perpetrated by publicity-seeking town leaders changes Zamora from an 'active participant' to 'victim of the hoax,' which frankly seems more plausible.

Stirling Colgate (1925-2013)

Now Bragalia has written, The Ultimate Secret of  Socorro Finally Told. He says that Dr. Colgate, now age 86,  has very recently provided additional information:

“It was a prank and I was very concerned for Officer Zamora.”
“No one would come forward on this, they were all embarrassed.”
“So many things were pressuring me and still are about this.”
“I did not feel that I could add anything by pressuring the students, and recognized it as a prank.”
“The students were embarrassed about the possible harm that could have come to Zamora (from the prank.)”

 But how exactly was it done? Bragalia writes,

Beauty is often found in simplicity. And so it is with Socorro. For all of the speculations about the hoax involving such things as tethers, remote control and flame throwers - it needn't be and wasn't. In the August 8^th email from Stirling Colgate, he opened up even a bit further about how the students had hoaxed Lonnie. I had of course always wanted to know from him just exactly how the deed was done.  How did the students do it?
I stated to Colgate that he must know how they did it- and directly asked of him:
 “How did they do it? What was the craft made of?”
His short but telling reply:
“A candle in a balloon. Not sophisticated.”
I also asked of Stirling how many were “in on the hoax?” Again, a short reply received:
“I’d say about 3-6”

Two students standing in white lab suits - the "aliens" - and one driving the speeding car to lure Zamora, the intended victim of the hoax, to the spot where the hoaxers needed him to be. If you want more details, read Bragalia's piece.

Is this proof that the incident was a student hoax? Not yet, but we're getting closer. To me a guy like Dr. Colgate has a lot of credibility in "telling it like it was." Now that almost 50 years have passed since the incident, and Zamora has passed away, it is time for those involved to step forward and proudly confess their role in one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of UFOs.

News from Across the Galaxy - MUFON "Blockbuster" Fizzles!

As noted in a previous Galactic news dispatch of June 4,

The upcoming MUFON symposium in now promising "Blockbuster UFO Discoveries!"  They won't reveal what these are: you'll just have to register for the Symposium to find out. I'm sure they need to hype it like that to fill the seats. The non-member registration price has been raised to $329, up from about $225 last year (I can't find the exact figure), and the location has been changed from southern California, a tourist mecca, to northern Kentucky, not exactly a major tourist destination.

Well, today was the day. The Schedule at the Symposium read,

Sunday August 5
9:00am-4:00pm	National Air Force Museum at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base
4:30pm-6:30pm	National Release of “Blockbuster” UFO discovery

UFO zapped by radar in Kingman, AZ

And what was the "Blockbuster"? According to Jack Brewer in The Examiner,

researcher Harry Drew took the podium in Covington, Ky., explaining he is convinced he has located two sites where alien craft landed or crashed in 1953. The sites are in the vicinity of Kingman, Ariz. Drew explained he believes the craft were brought down by triangulated radar running at boosted power to extend range. According to Drew, military personnel quickly retrieved and cleaned up the wreckage. The archaeologist and historian apparently included photos of the sites in his presentation, as well as presented information contradicting past accounts of the case and alleged crashes.

supposed UFO recovered at Kingman

Wow! More stories about saucers that crashed sixty years ago! It's a Blockbuster! (Actually, it's very Old News: a Google search of UFO CRASH KINGMAN 1953 returns 160,000 hits!) Brewer adds, "Don't shoot me, I'm just the piano player."

The Blogosphere was quick to dismiss MUFON's grandstanding. The UFO and Conspiracy website GodlikeProductions quickly sported a thread, "MUFON 'Blockbuster' Announcement Peters Out Without A Bang."    The Following the Nerd "Paranormal" Blog said, "The big build up to an earth shattering announcement from MUFON yesterday that they would rock the UFO community to their core proved to be more than a disappointment."

But if anyone has a True Blockbuster up his sleeve, it must be Steven Greer, who has kept it uncharacteristically quiet. In a previous Galactic News Dispatch on July 29, I noted

Steven Greer of CSETI announces that "The Disclosure Project and CSETI has teamed up with Emmy award winning filmmaker Amardeep Kaleka to make an historic new documentary on Disclosure, Contact and the suppression of New Energy." However, "No major studio or media group will touch this story : It is simply too explosive and world- changing for large corporate interests to embrace." So he is collecting nickels and dimes (and hopefully plenty of dollars, too, from folks just like you.) And it looks like he is very close to meeting his goal.

At that time I hadn't seen Greer's Blog posting of July 28. In it he announces meeting the fundraising goal for that movie. But he still needs more money! Why?

There is a chance that we may be able to include in the film “Sirius” the scientific testing of a possible Extraterrestrial Biological Entity (EBE) that has been recovered and is deceased. This EBE is in the possession of a cooperative institute desiring further scientific evaluation of the possible ET. We cannot reveal at this time the location of this being or the name of the person or persons who possess it.

Dr. Jan Bravo- who is a STAR Board member and a fellow Emergency Physician- and I have actually visited the group that possesses this EBE and have personally and professionally examined the being. It is indeed an actual deceased body, and most certainly is not plastic or man-made. It has a head, 2 arms and 2 legs and is humanoid . We have seen and examined X-Rays of the being. Its anatomy however is not homo sapien (modern human) or any known hominid (predecessors to humans).
As you can imagine, the security and scientific issues surrounding the further testing of this potentially explosive and world- changing evidence are mind-boggling. However, we feel we simply must proceed expeditiously but cautiously. The cost of doing proper MRI testing, full and dispositive  forensic-level DNA testing and carbon dating with other isotope testing are considerable and certainly not currently funded. We must rule out other hominids, bizarre genetic defects and so forth. But it is most certainly an actual biological specimen – and it may be – well, what it looks like.

In fact, nobody seems to have noticed this remarkable claim until one commenter, Bjorn Tolouse, posted a thread about it on the JREF forums. As I noted in a comment on the last News posting,

all Greer needs to do is pick up the phone and call Ray Santilli, the guy who produced that hoax "alien autopsy" video. "Ray, this is Steven Greer. Remember how much money you made on that fake alien autopsy film? Well, I have a REAL dead alien - how much money do you think we could get for a video of that?"

Then on a truly tragic note, Greer writes on his Blog on August 6 that the father of the Sirius filmmaker, Amardeep Kaleka, was among those gunned down in the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. The mind boggles at such senseless slaughter.

I'm being interviewed in DC for Nat Geo "Secret History of UFOs"

Finally, in between the near-continuous re-runs of Chasing UFOs, you may have noticed that a new program has turned up in the National Geographic Channel's UFO rotation: The Secret History of UFOs. This is the show that I and a number of other skeptics interviewed for, as well as a lot of non-skeptics, too. The show follows the familiar formula for UFO documentaries: the UFO believers gush on and on about their amazing sighting, the object must have come from another world, etc., followed by a short explanation from a skeptic suggesting that there may well be a rational explanation for it. On the show we see skeptics James McGaha, Tim Printy, Matt Baxter, and Bryan Bonner, as well as myself. Especially entertaining is David Jacobs, who tells about "the threat" (the title of one of his books) that alien abductions pose to the human race. And there is nothing we can do to stop them! Still, it's a better show than Chasing UFOs!