"Chasing UFOs" and "Dirty Secrets" - The National Geographic Channel

(See the previous two postings for more on Chasing UFOs.)

The second episode of Chasing UFOs on the National Geographic Channel, "Dirty Secrets," was one of the most paranoid and absurd pieces of supposedly non-fiction TV that I have ever seen. Apparently the military has constructed an underground base just outside Fresno, CA (not recently, but about 60 years ago), and uses it to conduct secret research on alien technology, and perhaps the aliens themselves. And you thought that all secret UFO activity was in New Mexico or Nevada! The rich agricultural areas surrounding Fresno are probably home to more cows than people, and the generally flat terrain of the San Joaquin Valley is poorly-suited for hiding secret government stuff. But that hasn't stopped the area from becoming a local UFO Hotspot.

One woman identified only as "Sarah" and photographed only in shadows, says she has been followed and harassed since she began investigating local UFO activity. Justin and Eva Moncrief claim to have seen a UFO crash near their house, and saw a  caravan of trucks go to the crash site. Justin says he has been "followed," too. We are repeatedly shown a white van apparently slinking away when observed, it supposedly is the harassing vehicle. Later they photograph it so clearly that the license plate has to be blocked out while it is on screen. It would be trivially easy for any law enforcement agency to identify this vehicle and its owner, should any of those who claimed to be harassed actually file a complaint. I suspect that if that were done, we would find the van to be rented to Chasing UFOs' production crew, and its driver to be one of its employees, since he seems to always appear on cue. Ryder later says that she looked up the license plate, "but couldn't find anything conclusive here." What is that supposed to mean? Here is a clear example of how the UFO Chasers don't want to investigate and reach a conclusion. Instead, they leave the evidence they gather on the table, and walk away.

The FLIR Mobile Training Unit

How to investigate the alleged UFO crash? It's time to stumble around in the dark some more, this time assisted by a FLIR mobile infrared unit. (According to the company website, this is a mobile "training unit" only.) The FLIR was used to look for warm spots in the area that might supposedly represent UFO debris. Or else outcroppings of bedrock. On go the prosthetic neck braces with lights and cameras, and off they go again, Blair Witch style, with metal detector and Geiger counter. Apparently they think it's easier to find UFO crash debris in the dark than in daylight. However, they soon spot a vehicle farther up the hill. Convinced they are being followed, Ryder decides they should "call it a night." "It wasn't worth taking any chances." There was no attempt to investigate the vehicle, or look for crash debris later, in daylight. This whole crash site investigation was staged for drama, not to seriously gather any information.

Next was a visit to UFOlogist Jeffrey Gonzales, who is the State Section Director for MUFON, a fact they don't mention. He, too, says he is being followed, andhas surrounded his house with a multitude of security cameras. He might attract less attention if he didn't park his truck, covered with UFO emblems and murals, right in his driveway. Gonzales is convinced that there is an underground military base north of Fresno that studies alien technology, possibly just beyond the levees of the Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District. "This levee sits up over the houses" - as indeed it must if it is to provide flood protection - "so it's a beautiful spot to hide something." The white van puts in another appearance.

So they decide it's Blair Witch time once again; they start out in daylight, but soon Ben and Ryder are rappelling down a canyon, in the dark with their "prosthetic" protrusions, to set up a camera on top the ridge on the other side. We never learn if the camera recorded anything. They later rendezvous on a bridge over the canyon, which I assume could have been crossed earlier to eliminate the need for rock climbing in the dark.

map of hydroelectric tunnels near Fresno, CA

 

Meanwhile James and Jeff, also stumbling in the dark in their prosthetics, appear to be trespassing by climbing over a tall fence, which has a sign that cannot be read, because it has been blanked out. It probably says something like "No Trespassing, Property of Fresno Flood Control District." There they enter an impressively large tunnel, but sealed off and leading nowhere. "We found evidence of an underground facility!" It was later acknowledged that the tunnel was constructed as part of a hydroelectric project. "But they could also be used to access underground bases," according to Ryder.

Next is a visit with Manuel Amparano, who claimed to have a Close Encounter with a UFO on May 13, 1978 when he was a police officer. Tim Printy points out that there is a discussion of the Amparano sighting in  his SUNlite Webzine (Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 9). It occurred within two minutes of a known rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a launch visible for hundreds of miles. I'm practically certain that's what Amparano saw; he said the object was "rising." He claims to have been "sunburned" by it, but of course it's perfectly possible he was sunburned in the normal manner the previous day, and attributed it to the "UFO." The UFO Chasers borrow for investigation the flashlight and jacket Amparano had on that night. They tested them, and found nothing unusual. James Fox proclaims Amparano's testimony to be "bulletproof." Nobody's testimony rises to that level.

The program reaches the utter heights of absurdity when, because one couple got a blurry photo of a "UFO" near the airport, the UFO Chasers decide that their next episode of stumbling in the dark should take place in the vicinity of the Fresno Airport. (One anonymous commenter identified this location as 3770 North Pierce Avenue, Fresno, CA; put that address into Street View of Google Maps, and you'll see that's probably correct.)  Ryder walks right up to the airport perimeter fence wearing her ungainly prosthetics, and at one point actually begins to climb the fence!  Here is the clearest proof that we are seeing staged incidents, and not actual investigations. Can you imagine the call from an airport security guard to headquarters? "Boss, there's a woman wearing these strange protrusions with cameras and lights, and she's trying to climb the perimeter fence!" In the real world, she would have immediately been arrested for trespassing, then interrogated for days to uncover any links to terrorist organizations. But in the TV Fantasy world of UFO Chasers, the guard shines a flashlight in her direction, a military helicopter takes off and circles her position, then she rejoins the others who hide under a tree, and the authorities lose all interest in finding out who was trying to penetrate their perimeter.

I don't know whether I'll be reviewing future episodes of Chasing UFOs. We have seen enough in these first two episodes to know exactly what kind of show this is. There is a lot of "data gathering" (more precisely, getting observers to tell their stories), but no serious effort to follow up, investigate, and come to a definite conclusion. It's all Wow, Gee Whiz, What an Amazing Story!. But don't actually look for answers - that isn't fun! Plus, the "investigations" we are shown are obviously staged for dramatic purposes, and are not actual efforts to gather information and solve mysteries. The National Geographic Channel may think it has plausible deniability for the contents of this show, since it was produced by Ping Pong Productions for NGC. But it's being sold under the National Geographic's brand, and it's dragging that once-proud brand through the mud.

"Chasing UFOs," National Geographic Style - Texas is for Sightings

So, Friday evening was a marathon of the first two episodes of The National Geographic Channel's "Chasing UFOs," repeated ad nauseam. In my previous Blog posting, I cited reasons to fear that the series would be lurid and sensational. Those fears have been shown to be well-founded.

The first episode was Texas Is For Sightings, and it was mostly about the mass sightings in Stephenville, Texas, not far from Dallas-Ft. Worth,  on January 8, 2008. The way they investigate this is to go to Stephenville and arrange a "UFO Town Hall Meeting" to "share stories," i.e. tell random anecdotes about lights seen in the sky. (To a UFOlogist, the plural of "anecdote" is "data.") There was no order to these accounts, and no reason to believe that any one account has anything to do with any other. They ignore the fact that the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, former scientific consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book and Patron Saint of today's UFOlogists, repeatedly said that reports of lights in the sky are of little or no value. He also said, contradicting the program, that pilots make relatively poor observers while they are engaged in flying their aircraft.

Ben McGee stumbling around in the dark

A fellow named Kacey Simmons claimed to have seen UFOs in a particular forested area, so the UFO Chasers decide to go there to check it out. At night, of course. So they attach themselves to absurd-looking night vision equipment with long booms protruding from shoulder braces, looking very much like people with broken necks wandering about. We repeatedly hear one or another excitedly exclaim, "What the (bleep) was that?" They take a video of a light in the sky "changing sizes," not realizing that is the operation of their camera's auto focus function, trying to bring the light into focus. We hear coyotes howl in the distance, and they have an almost-encounter with a wild boar. Such are the hazards facing those who dare to pursue extraterrestrials. They photograph an aircraft with three lights, and wonder if it is from earth.

 

The UFO video taken by Mauricio Ruiz

Later they bring in UFO author John Alexander, who has nothing to do with the Stephenville sightings, and doesn't even mention them in his book. They interview Mauricio Ruiz, who made a very hokey-looking video of a hat-shaped UFO, and nobody wants to whisper the word "hoax." In the local library they find an account from 1891 of a meteor that reportedly exploded, showering the area around the Grist Mill with a fine meteor dust. They decide to go investigate that one - in the dark. That it might be easier to find meteor dust in  daylight seems not to occur to them. So back on go the prosthetic braces, and they stumble about some more. Again, they are almost attacked by a wild boar. They photograph a reflective object that appears like it might be circular, but it is suspiciously close to some power line poles. It looked to me like it could be a light reflection off a transformer on the pole (I have seen such things), but we only see the scene in darkness. It didn't occur to any of them to come back and photograph that same scene in the daylight to find out what it might have been.

It's strange that the National Geographic Channel would put so much emphasis on the Stephenville case. There is no longer any mystery about what happened in Stephenville on January 8, 2008. UFO skeptic and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha investigated, and submitted his findings to Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier, who published them in the January/February, 2009 issue. The article is on-line here.

The FAA informed McGaha on January 18 that a group of four F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron entered the operating area at 6:17 pm local time. A second group of four F-16s entered the same area at 6:26 pm. They departed at 6:54 and 6:58, respectively. The time the aircraft were flying in the MOA accords with the time of the sightings....
What were the aircraft doing? McGaha says they were flying training maneuvers that involved dropping extraordinarily bright flares. The LUU/2B/B flare is nothing like the standard flares you might think of. These flares have an illumination of about two million candlepower. They are intended to light up a vast area of the ground for nighttime aerial attack. Once released, they are suspended by parachutes (which often hover and even rise due to the heat of the flares) and light up a circle on the ground greater than one kilometer for four minutes. The flare casing and parachute are eventually consumed by the heat. At a distance of 150 miles, a single flare can still be as bright as the planet Venus. McGaha also describes the testimony of a medical helicopter pilot, a retired U.S. Army pilot, flying that night, who saw the lights. He said: “I saw multiple military aircraft, with some dropping flares, in the area of the Brownwood 1 MOA.”

Case closed. The Stephenville case was essentially a repeat of the flare drop responsible for the famous Phoenix Lights in 1997. Don't the National Geographic researchers know how to use Google??? Those responsible for this program must be either totally incompetent, or else deceitful. They must know that the Stephenville mass sighting was simply a flare drop, but how can you make a mystery out of that?

See the next Blog posting for more about Chasing UFOs..

The National Geographic Channel's "Chasing UFOs" - How Credible Will It Be?

The National Geographic Channel is premiering a new "reality TV" series, Chasing UFOs, on June 29. 

"A team of trained investigators sets out to uncover the truth about UFOs. But they’re not just looking for more stories on extraterrestrial activity—they want answers. Risking it all, this team of scientists and UFO researchers investigate and dissect some of the most mysterious sightings on the planet to unearth stunning new evidence. The data they collect on these adventures paints an entirely new picture of what we know about these strange lights in the sky."

To judge from this teaser video,  it seems that investigating UFOs involves a lot of car chases and extraterrestrial spotlights. As best I can tell, this video has nothing to do with the real world.

There are three principal "investigators":

1. Ben McGee, Physical Scientist, THE SKEPTIC. The world of  skeptical UFO researchers is pretty small, but I've never heard of this guy. There isn't a lot about him on the web, either. " A space-minded geoscientist, Ben is engaged in the development of xenoarchaeology - a speculative form of archaeology exploring possible alien life and culture....A respected field researcher with experience in nuclear rocketry, planetary geology, hydrology and glaciology, Ben's job is to gather evidence at proposed sites of unexplained occurrences and scientifically determine its origin." Wikipedia says that Xenoarchaeology is "a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in science fiction works concerned with the physical remains of past (but not necessarily extinct) alien life and cultures. It is not practiced by mainstream archaeologists." It's not the same thing as "Ancient Astronauts," but the latter is included within it.
2. 
   Erin Ryder, Tech and Recon THE 'SKELIEVER'. "Lara Croft.  Amelia Earhart.  Dana Scully. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, there are few hard-hitting, tough-as-nails females as fearless as Erin Ryder... Ryder is a force to be reckoned with not only for her brains and brawn, but also for her industry-leading knowledge of all things tech.  Her years of experience investigating unsubstantiated claims make her an expert in the field of alien/ghost-hunting technology.  Ryder "geeks out" over thermal cameras, Geiger counters and night vision scopes and can't wait to use the latest technology to investigate new and old UFO cases alike."
   
   
   
   3. James Fox, UFOlogist THE BELIEVER. Well, here is somebody who has a track record in UFOlogy. He is a documentary filmmaker, an associate of UFO author Leslie Kean. He's the guy who claimed that Buzz Aldrin was followed to the moon by a fleet of UFOs, but was paid off by Paul Allen to not tell his story.
   
   
    

More worrisome still, the series website is filled with misinformation about UFOs. Here are a few examples, by no means a complete list:

• "Astronaut Buzz Aldrin has stated on multiple occasions that his crew saw a UFO outside their shuttle during the Apollo 11 mission." Not true. Wikipedia says of Aldrin, "In 2005, while being interviewed for a documentary titled First on the Moon: The Untold Story, Aldrin told an interviewer that they saw an unidentified flying object. Aldrin told David Morrison, a NASA Astrobiology Institute Senior Scientist, that the documentary cut the crew's conclusion that they were probably seeing one of four detached spacecraft adapter panels. Their S-IVB upper stage was 6,000 miles away, but the four panels were jettisoned before the S-IVB made its separation maneuver so they would closely follow the Apollo 11 spacecraft until its first midcourse correction.^"
• ^"Former president Jimmy Carter reported seeing an unidentified flying object while working as a peanut farmer in southwest Georgia." Highly misleading.Way back in the Humanist magazine, July/August, 1977, I wrote "President Carter's 'UFO' Is Identified as the Planet Venus." So this fact has been known for more than thirty years. Even UFO proponents like Jerome Clark accept that Carter's "UFO" is simply a misidentification of Venus. Disingenuous UFO proponents love to mention the Carter sighting, but conceal its explanation. For example, Leslie Kean. That's one easy way to tell which UFOlogists are trying to fool you: if they present the Carter UFO as "unexplained," they are either totally incompetent, or else they intend to misinform.

Of course, we haven't seen the first episode yet, so we don't know if the show will really be as unrealistic and misleading as its advance publicity suggests.

News From Across the Galaxy

UFOs that seem to be genuinely extraterrestrial have been spotted in Missouri. KCTV5 in Kansas City broadcast a news story about sightings of "strange lights in the sky" seen hovering over the neighborhood of Blue Springs. Some of these lights have seen "for weeks," "vibrating lights, red, green, and blue."One UFO investigator came out to see them, and proclaimed "I'm 90% certain that we're looking at Vega in this instance." But she wasn't certain because she had been told by a colleague that Vega is bluish, and this object had sparkles of red and green color. Had she taken graduate-level courses in advanced physics, she would have known that the earth's atmosphere causes stars to twinkle, and breaks down starlight into flashes of different colors. Reporter Dave Jordan said that he contacted the Blue Springs Police, the FAA, and NORAD, and none of them had any information on these lights. NORAD had, however, received one other UFO report, and "is still working to determine whether that report came out of Missouri." Let us hope that NORAD completes this difficult investigation quickly, and reports its finding.



Missing from that contact list is "astronomer." Any astronomy professor, or even an advanced amateur, could have immediately identified which stars, and which planets, were being spotted as "UFOs."  This case, and its investigation, are a strong contender for this year's UFOdumb Award.

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.

There is a new book out, The Aztec Incident - Recovery at Hart Canyon by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey. Basically, it tries to bring the Aztec UFO Crash story back from the dead the same way that the Berlitz and Moore book The Roswell Incident did for that yarn. I've already submitted a detailed review of it to the Skeptical Inquirer. The book's argument, in brief, is that the devious and unscrupulous spoiled rich boy journalist, J.P. Cahn, was embittered by Scully's refusal to sell his story to the San Francisco Chronicle, Cahn's employer. So Cahn vindictively set out to ruin the honest oilman Silas Newton, his colleague the great "scientist" Leo Gebauer, and Scully himself. There are many arguments against what is claimed here. Roswell proponent Kevin Randle already has a review of this book on his Blog. He's not buying it.

The British UFOlogist Philip Mantle is hawking two new books:

"Russia's Roswell Incident". (Notice the strange English on that web page promoting a book by British authors!)

Real Cowboys meet real Aliens. (Face-slap!)

Leslie Kean says on her Facebook page that she is headed to Chile to meet with the CEFAA:

Exciting News! I'm going to Santiago, Chile on June 7th on an "official visit" with the CEFAA. The staff are arranging interviews for me with high level military and aviation officials, scientists and police who work with them to investigate UAP. General Ricardo Bermudez (photo) is the head of the CEFAA.

Maybe she will bring back more videos of flies buzzing around? Frankly, I thought this case would be relegated to the "indefinitely deferred" file, to avoid further embarrassment. But this visit promises meetings with pilots, government officials, and at least one General. You go, girl! (Kean only seems to be interested in UFO cases if  there are pilots or generals around!)

Finally, no connection to UFOs, but here is my photo of the annular solar eclipse of May 20, taken from Redding, CA. I plan to participate in a public viewing of the Transit of Venus tomorrow (June 5), close to home. I'll try to get some photos of that, too.

"Top Ten" UFO Case - Yukon, Canada, 1996 - BUSTED!

On the evening of December 11, 1996, more than 30 people in several different locations in Canada's sparsely-populated Yukon Territories reported seeing a huge "UFO mothership" with rows of lights, flying by as a Close Encounter of the First Kind.

The documentary film Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings lists this "multiple witness sighting in the Yukon" as number eight of the top ten UFO cases of all time. In that film the celebrated "Flying Saucer Physicist" Stanton Friedman says of this case:

"The Yukon case IS emblematic of what a good case should be. I mean, sure, we'd like to have a piece of the craft, we'd like to have the crewmember introduced for dinner. BUT multiple independent witnesses lasting a long time, describing something that's WAY outside the norm, -- there's no way you can make it into a 747, for example [chuckle]. And big, but this was much much bigger than a 747. "

UFO "Mothership" sighted from the Klondike Highway, Yukon Territory, Dec. 11, 1996. 

Longtime UFOlogist Michael Swords of CUFOS says:

Not knowing [investigator] Martin Jasek I can't "stand up in court" on this one, but everything that I've heard says that this is not only a "good" but possibly one of the best cases ever… I look forward to any of the gang clearing my misconceptions up on this case, because right now it might be one I'd "take into war" with me.

Another illustration of the Yukon "UFO Mothership"

What Was It? 

On April 4, the British skeptic Ian Ridpath sent around email to a number of active UFO skeptics, asking if anyone had information on this case. James Oberg replied that he was unable to help because he was in Beijing, China, headed for North Korea! James traveled with the NBC news team to witness North Korea's new missile, before its (unsuccessful) launch. His reporting on this unprecedented trip is on his website, http://www.jamesoberg.com/ .

Witness PEL2 drew the UFO passing below the Big Dipper

When he returned, Oberg contacted the Canadian satellite expert Ted Molczan with the details of this case. Molczan is probably the world's top civilian expert on observing earth satellites and calculating satellite orbits. Molczan looked into the matter carefully, and came up with an exact match: "the observed phenomena were due to the re-entry of the 2nd stage of the rocket that placed Cosmos 2335 into orbit earlier the same day." Should anyone doubt this, Molczan provides details of the mathematical calculations that support this conclusion.

James Oberg placed a comment on the "Above Top Secret" forum discussing this case.

Molczan's software-generated plot of the decay of the rocket booster for Cosmos 2335

Stimulus / Response

A case of this type affords us an excellent opportunity to judge the credibility of eyewitness testimony. Given a known stimulus "in," what is the observer's response "out"? In other words, how accurately did the observers' descriptions match the known stimulus? Not well at all!

Report: "many rows of lights"

Reality: The booster disintegrated into an irregular train of debris, that was perceived as an orderly pattern of "lights" on a huge solid object.

Report: "As he was walking his flashlight happened to point in the direction of the UFO. As if reacting to his flashlight, the UFO started speeding rapidly toward him."

Reality:  the "UFO reacting" to him was entirely in his imagination. The rocket booster did not react to his flashlight.

Report: the UFO was hovering approximately 300 yards in front of the observer. "Hynek Classification: CE1" (Close Encounter of the First Kind).

Reality: the distance to the re-entering booster was approximately 233 km (145 miles), so this was not a "close encounter." At no time did it stop, or hover.

Report: The UFO was approximately 500-750 meters (up to 1/2 mile) in length.

Reality:  It is impossible to estimate the size of an unknown object unless its distance is known. Since the disintegrating booster was about 145 miles distant, its debris train must have been spread over many miles.

Report: "The interior lights in her car started to go dim and the music from her tape deck slowed down."

Reality: This effect was entirely in the observer's imagination. The rocket booster did not affect her car's electronics.

Report: "stars blocked out" by huge UFO.

Reality:  the observers were viewing a long train of debris from the disintegrating rocket booster. It was not a solid object, and thus could not have "blocked out" stars. However, the light from the reentry may have made nearby stars difficult to see.

ESA illustration of a satellite disintegrating and burning up upon re-entry to earth's atmosphere

 Molczan closed his analysis by saying,

Experienced sky watchers on SeeSat-L may find it difficult to believe that anyone could misidentify a re-entry as a spaceship, but human perception is notoriously fallible, and no one is immune. Much depends on the circumstances and personal experience. Driving through the wilderness under a pitch black sky, and suddenly faced with a slowly moving formation of brilliant lights can be awe-inspiring and even terrifying. The human mind races to make sense of the unfamiliar, drawing on experience that may be inadequate. Depth perception can play tricks, such that something 200 km away, 100 km long, and moving at 7 km/s, seems to be just 200 m away, 100 m long, and moving 7 km/h - the angular velocity is roughly the same. Taking these considerations into account, the eyewitnesses did a pretty good job, and need not be embarrassed for having perceived more than was there.

He left out the part about reports of the object hovering, the electrical interference, etc. Not "a pretty good job" in my book.

Here we have yet another clear-cut example of extraordinary reports ("giant UFO Mothership!") arising from a perfectly ordinary (if rare) phenomenon. Therefore, the existence of extraordinary reports does not suggest the existence of extraordinary objects. It is perfectly possible to get extraordinary reports from ordinary objects. 

Which gives us more evidence of the wisdom of the Royal Society of London, the world's first scientific body founded in 1660, taking as its motto "nullius in verba' : take nobody's word for it!

[January 14, 2014: More discussion of this case in later Blog entry.]

Archive Documents Show Klass Did NOT Try to Bribe Travis Walton Witness

Just this year, supposed UFO Abductee Travis Walton ("Fire in the Sky") revived an old claim that Klass offered Steve Pierce $10,000 to lie and say that the Walton abduction story is a hoax. Many people accepted the accusation as true. The arch-skeptic Klass was not exactly a popular figure in UFOlogy!

I investigated these claims in my Blog posting of February 13, "Travis Walton vs. Philip J. Klass," and found them unfounded. Klass mentions these charges in his 1983 book UFOs The Public Deceived (p. 221). Those accusations at the time did not come from Steve Pierce, but instead from Mike Rogers, Travis Walton's best friend. And Klass had never spoken to Pierce at all or communicated in any way until he read about the bribery accusations in Bill Barry's 1978 book about Travis Walton, Ultimate Encounter.

Steve Pierce (left), Travis Walton, and John Goulette at the 2012 International UFO Congress

But this time there were new accusations. This time Steve Pierce himself was on-board. When he appeared with Travis Walton and John Goulette at the International UFO Congress in February, 2012, Pierce completely supported Walton's accusation against Klass. Absolutely yes, Klass tried to bribe me, said Pierce. He flew out to Texas to wine and dine me and try to persuade me. He kept following me, I had to move to like three different states, to get away from him.

Of course, there is no proof that this 'new version' of Pierce's story is correct. No photos of Klass and Pierce together, no letters or documents of any kind to back up this implausible tale. During the Q&A, I asked Pierce why he had changed his story from 1978. He claimed he didn't. Pierce explained that what happened was, he got into a feud with Mike Rogers, and so in anger he grumbled it about that the case was a hoax, but that was not true.

When I returned home from the conference, I began to search for any documents that might support one version or another of this story. Klass willed his papers to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA, where the collection now resides. I contacted them, requesting any files in Klass' Travis Walton case files concerning Klass and Steve Pierce.

The result was this PDF file, that completely supports in every way what Klass wrote about his interactions with Pierce in his 1983 book UFOs The Public Deceived. (To read the document easily, Click on "ROTATE CLOCKWISE.) It is a transcript of the 1978 phone conversations between Klass and Pierce. At no time does Pierce suggest that the "bribe" story is true. 

Interestingly, Pierce says some rather unflattering things about Travis Walton! At one point, Pierce says,

"Travis is the most ignorant, stupid person I've ever met in my life. He ain't got enough sense, you know the book he wrote, he couldn't have wrote that book by himself. He ain't got enough common sense to write that book." (It was widely rumored that John G. Fuller, author of "The Interrupted Journey" and other books, was Walton's ghost writer.)

Pierce also says that he never liked Travis in the first place, and explains why.

This file was obtained from the archives of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA. It is from:

Philip J. Klass Collection, 1948-2000.
36.0 Linear feet, Mss.Ms.Coll.59

Series II. UFO Case Files

Arizona: Sitgreaves National Forest-Travis Walton Case, 1975 (Misc. Interviews)
    1975-1979         Box Series II-1

I did not alter the file in any way except to add a few brief "post-it notes." If anyone doubts the authenticity of this file, you can order your own copy. Contact: manuscripts@amphilsoc.org .

The last few pages pertain to the Sheriff department's initial polygraph test, given while Travis was still "missing." This information was already well-known, and has been published in many articles and books.

Leslie Kean Update: the Fly is Still Flying High!

And still they fly!
 
On the afternoon of April 13, Leslie Kean finally posted to the Huffington Post her promised update on the highly-controversal video from El Bosque Arifield in Chile, exactly one month after her initial story about it. The video supposedly shows an unknown craft maneuvering, but is widely believed to be just a fly buzzing around. (My March 21 Blog posting explains the fly-analysis in detail.)

Strangely, unlike Kean's initial story ("Is this the case UFO skeptics have been dreading?"), there does not seem to be any link to the update on the Huffington Post home page. However, the update appears prominently on Kean's Facebook page. It almost seems that she does not want to bring any new readers into this controversy, and is writing only to maintain credibility with those already involved. (I suspect at this point Kean wishes she had never heard of the Chilean Air Force UFO group CEFAA, but having embraced this Tar Baby, she is unwilling to admit that her new dress is covered with tar.)

Her new piece is titled "Update on Chilean UFO Videos: Getting the Bugs Out." Surprisingly, this update changes almost nothing: we don't really learn anything that we didn't know before. She quotes Alberto Vergara, "an expert in digital imaging," who stated that "When we examine the whole scene frame by frame, we have been able to realize that [the object] has, apparently, moved at a speed far superior to any flying object of known manufacture." Neither Kean nor Vergara explain how he could possibly know the speed of the object without knowing how far it is from the camera. But Vergara is an "expert," so Kean doesn't question this obvious absurdity.

A strange metallic flying object - Lucilia Sericata, the common  Green Bottle fly

Kean complains that "Skeptics caused quite a stir by taking it upon themselves to do their own "analysis" of the video clips and then to declare, with bravado, that the object of concern was simply a bug. Often this involved misquoting or misrepresenting me and the CEFAA in accompanying text." [Kean does not specify what supposed "misquotes" or "misrepresentations" she is referring to]. "The question of qualifications aside [we skeptics, you see,  are not "qualified" to analyze these videos, but somebody like Vergara is], these individuals were handicapped by one even more overwhelming problem: They were working without the necessary data required to make a proper analysis, and, most importantly, they were looking at video clips pulled from only one of the multiple cameras."

This is a very strange complaint: if people are "working without the necessary data," it is because the CEFAA refuses to release any more data (although in reality, the clips from the single video already released contain plenty of information to conclude the "UFO" is an insect). So she blames investigators for looking into this case prematurely (a case she suggested was "the case UFO skeptics have been dreading"), rather than blaming the CEFAA for being secretive. And people "were looking at video clips pulled from only one of the multiple cameras" for a very good reason: the CEFAA has only released video clips from one camera, and people cannot analyze what they're not allowed to see.

"In accordance with the wishes of the scientific team in Chile and these new analysts, General Bermúdez will not be releasing any more videos now, so that the public can be fully informed and maximum understanding achieved when the full package is released. Those involved agree that the new studies should be completed first." In other words, the message to those who want to investigate this high-profile case is: sit still, shut up, and we'll let you know when our "experts" have all of the answers for you.

Then Leslie Kean gets into a discussion of beetles, largely, I suspect, to deflect attention from flies. She presents some pretty good arguments to suggest that the object in the video probably isn't a beetle. Beetles fly more clumsily than the object we see. That's why I think that the insect in the video is probably a fly.

General Bermudez has been stating  that UFO photo analyst Dr. Bruce Maccabee has examined the video, and has concluded that it represents an unknown object. However, there is nothing about this on Maccabee's website, or anywhere else I could find. I asked Maccabee about it. He replied, "As for the CEFAA video, I have been studying it or them, but things are not straightened out yet as to how many independent videos there are, what they show and when they show it.  No conclusion yet." In other words, he hasn't had any more success getting the full data from the CEFAA than anyone else has!

Interestingly, the UFOlogist A. Gevaert in Brazil reports "the two major and oldest official UFO research organizations in South American, one from Uruguay (founded in 1979) and other from Chile ([CEFAA] founded in 1997), have decided to establish a cooperation agreement to work together to both investigate new cases, to evaluate new and old cases and to promote Ufology in general among the scientific community of all South America, but, of course, concentrated in both countries." So it appears that, in Chile and Uruguay at least, the government-sponsored UFO investigative organizations are trying to strongly promote UFO belief. That gives us a little bit of perspective into what is going on with the Fly Saucer story.