A Skeptic at the 2012 International UFO Congress - Part 1

I am here at the 21st Annual International UFO Congress near Scottsdale, Arizona. The sessions begin tomorrow morning. Lots of major UFO personalities will be here. When I wrote up my visit to the MUFON Symposium last summer, I did it after getting home. I suspect I won't have much time to Blog in near-real time these next few days, but I'll do what I can, and try to fill in the rest later.

 

The UFO Skywatch on Feb. 21

When I picked up my badge tonight, there were only two things going on: a movie, and a Skywatch. The Skywatch is organized by the UFO Skywatch Club of Fountain Hills, Arizona (a.k.a. "right here"). They use very powerful night-vision equipment to look at the night sky for objects that move. The gentleman seated at the computer has a camera pointing straight up, more or less. He moves it around a bit. It shows a lot more stars than can be seen with the naked eye, displayed on the big screen. If you want to lie back in the reclining "zero-gravity chair" and look through the night-vision binoculars for yourself, that will cost $20 (although the price soon fell to $10, that being all the market would bear). They saw several airplanes and satellites. They also saw objects that fluttered about and changed directions. Those are either owls, bats, or even possibly moths. The camera has an extremely wide-field and tremendous depth-of-field - when the operator walked up to dust something off the lens, his finger was almost in focus, as were the stars. So there is no way to tell how far away an object might be, just looking at the display. "We're seeing a lot of UFOs tonight," one of the Skywatchers said. Pretty much whatever they see, it's a UFO.

The evening movie was The Truth is Out There

Directed by: Phil Leirness
Dean Haglund is an actor, artist, improv comic and investigator. Best known as one of the Lone Gunmen from “The X-Files”, Dean continues to be closely identified with the paranormal realm and the conspiracy field. An epic that is equal parts comedy, consciousness and conspiracy, “The Truth is Out There” follows Dean Haglund as he travels the globe hoping to discover what it means to search for the truth in a world where conspiracies, conspiracy theories are everywhere.

This was one of those movies where the director apparently could not afford a camera tripod. Or else he thought that the movie would be more "authentic" if the audience watched the hand-held camera wobble for two hours and twenty minutes. In any case, the wobbly camera was making me seasick, and I didn't see any reason to care about what Dean Haglund said, so I didn't stay more than about a half hour.

Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek, and the "Pentacle Memorandum"

I have just finished reading Jacques Vallee's diaries from 1957-69, published as Volume I of Forbidden Science. It tells the story of his life from childhood in France, his education and early career, his developing interest in UFO reports, etc. The book is very literate, very personal, and in places even poetic. It is a good read.

Hynek (left), and Vallee

Perhaps the most significant new issue discussed in this book is the matter of the so-called "Pentacle Memorandum." In June of 1967 while Hynek was away on vacation in Canada, Vallee went over to Hynek's empty house to organize (with permission) and sort Hynek's disorganized UFO-related files. He found one document, a two-page typed memo, that he believed to be extremely significant. Dated January 9, 1953, it was stamped "SECRET - Security Information" in red ink. Vallee refered to it as the "Pentacle Memorandum," in order to not identify the author. "Pentacle" was later revealed to be H.C. Cross of Battelle Memorial Institute, Battelle's liaison with the Air Force for Blue Book-related matters. A good account of the memorandum's discovery, Vallee's claims about it, and the text of the memorandum itself, are here.

1. Vallee Finds a Secret Large-Scale UFO Research Program

The Memorandum begins,

This letter concerns a preliminary recommendation to ATIC on future methods of handling the problem of unidentified aerial objects. This recommendation is based on our experience to date in analyzing several thousands of reports on this subject.

ATIC was the Air Force's Air Technical Intelligence Center. Vallee writes, "This opening paragraph clearly establishes the fact that prior to the top-level 1953 [CIA] Robertson Panel meeting somebody had actually analyzed thousands of UFO cases on behalf of the United States government." (Vallee 1996, p. 284. Emphasis in original.) This is supposed to reveal the existence of a huge and secret UFO investigative program, other than Blue Book, somewhere within the U.S. government.

The plot thickens when Vallee finds out a short time later that "Pentacle must indeed have worked at Battelle [Memorial Institute]." (Vallee 1996, p. 294). Gasp - you mean that in January, 1953 there was someone working at Battelle who had analyzed "thousands" of UFO reports for the U.S. government?? And this was a secret program????????

Earth to Vallee: The Battelle Memorial Institute began working on Special Report #14 for Project Blue Book in March, 1952  This was a statistical analysis of UFO reports in the Blue Book files, the first to use newfangled computers and punched cards.A total of 3200 cases were analyzed. The report was completed and published in 1954. Blue Book Special Report #14 is well-known to UFOlogists. In fact, Stanton Friedman hardly ever stops talking about it.

Of course there were people working at Battelle in January, 1953 who had analyzed "thousands" of UFO reports for the U.S. government. They were working on Blue Book Special Report #14. They finished the following year.

Congratulations, Jacques! You've found indisputable proof of the existence of the team writing Blue Book Special Report #14! Which has never before been doubted. Just ask Stanton Friedman.

2. Vallee uncovers the Manipulators Manipulating the CIA's  Robertson Panel

One of the most controversial sentences in the Pentacle memorandum reads,

Since a meeting of the [CIA's Robertson] panel is now definitely scheduled we feel that agreement between Project Stork and ATIC should be reached as to what can and what cannot be discussed at the meeting in Washington on January 14-16 concerning our preliminary recommendation to ATIC.

According to Hynek, White Stork was a former Air Force project name encompassing the Blue Book project. Vallee suggests that Project Stork was keeping the soon-to-meet Robertson Panel in the dark and would decide what they would be allowed to learn. Vallee writes that the memorandum seemed to dictate "a key determinant in what the panel could discuss – and what not, i.e. what would be kept away from the panel. By preselecting the evidence, the conclusion the scientists would reach could thus be known in advance."

Vallee should read that sentence more carefully. It does not talk about UFO sightings or evidence. He is interpreting that sentence as if it said "agreement between Project Stork and ATIC should be reached as to what can and what cannot be discussed at the meeting in Washington on January 14-16." But the sentence does not end there. It continues with "concerning our preliminary recommendation to ATIC." In other words, not to decide what subjects are off-limits to discussion by the Robertson panel, but to decide what to tell that panel about plans involving Battelle and ATIC.  Or, in plain English, "How much should we tell the Robertson panel about what we've been proposing to ATIC?" I realize that English is not Vallee's first language, however his mastery of English seems to me to be so complete that I am surprised to see him misreading that sentence so badly.

3. Vallee finds evidence of a huge covert UFO deception project

In this passage Vallee finds evidence of a huge and alarming military-sponsored project intended to deceive the public about UFOs:

we recommend that one or two of theses areas be set up as experimental areas. This area, or areas, should have observation posts with complete visual skywatch, with radar and photographic coverage, plus all other instruments necessary or helpful in obtaining positive and reliable data on everything in the air over the area. A very complete record of the weather should also be kept during the time of the experiment. Coverage should be so complete that any object in the air could be tracked, and information as to its altitude, velocity, size, shape, color, time of day, etc. could be recorded. All balloon releases or known balloon paths, aircraft flights, and flights of rockets in the test area should be known to those in charge of the experiment. Many different types of aerial activity should be secretly and purposefully scheduled within the area.

About it, Vallee writes, “the Pentacle proposal goes far beyond anything mentioned before. It daringly states that ‘many different types of aerial activity should be secretly and purposefully scheduled within the area’. It is difficult to be more clear. We are not talking simply about setting up observing stations and cameras. We are talking about large-scale, covert simulation of UFO waves under military control.”

Pentacle's proposal seems to be this: Let's identify an area where people are making a large number of UFO reports. Let's set up an extensive monitoring system so that we know everything flying in or out of that area. Then we'll try a controlled experiment: we will cause the people to see balloons, unusual aircraft activity, etc., and then monitor UFO reports we get from that area. We will see how a known stimulus is reported as an unknown object, and thereby better understand the UFO reports we receive.

This sounds like an excellent idea from a standpoint of science, although from a standpoint of law or ethics it may not pass muster. It also sounds rather expensive, and not easy to keep under wraps, which would defeat its purpose. Interestingly, as a result of several passive (not active) experiments of this kind, UFOlogist Allan Hendry, one of Hynek's chief investigators during the 1970s, became far more skeptical about eyewitness reports. As detailed in his book, The UFO Handbook, Hendry examined the reports being received originating from a known stimulus (advertising aircraft, balloons, etc.) and found many of them so wildly in error that he cautioned against taking such reports at face value. To other UFOlogists, Hendry seemed to be guilty of horrible blasphemy (even though he believed some UFO reports to be unexplainable), and they began to denounce him. Understandably embittered, Hendry withdrew from UFOlogy some thirty years ago, and has refused to discuss it since then.

A frequent theme in Forbidden Science is Vallee's commentary about the rigidity of bureaucracy, in government and in science, in France and in the U.S. He gives one example after another of seemingly good proposals being rejected or even ignored by a bureaucracy unwilling to accept change. What is surprising is that here Vallee, of all people, seems to be confusing a proposal with a project. He must surely realize that, merely because Pentacle is proposing some grand and new UFO investigative project, the odds of that proposal being actually implemented by a rigid Air Force bureaucracy (which clearly had little enthusiasm for UFO investigation) were slim to none. This passage does not in any way establish that such a controlled experiment involving UFO stimuli was ever carried out.

Commentary

I was very interested to read this book not only for its historical aspects, but also because his path in certain ways parallels mine. We both were interested in astronomy from childhood - and also in UFOs. Many of the people and the places he writes about during his years at Northwestern are familiar to me. I learned that Vallee left Northwestern to go back to France just two weeks before I arrived there as a freshman, interested in science and astronomy - and UFOs - except that I was a skeptic even then. I lived in Sargent Hall, right next to the Technological Institute where Vallee earlier had his office - on the opposite side of that building from Dearborn Observatory, which housed the astronomy department offices. His description of Hynek exactly matches my own recollections: disorganized, witty, charming, and obviously quite pleased to be in the media spotlight for UFOs. Hynek would eagerly recount his meetings and his travel, and newly-received UFO reports, never quite sure what to do about them. Later Vallee and I each moved to California's Silicon Valley because of the outstanding career opportunities there at that time.

However, even more striking are the differences in our world-views, and in the way we think. Surprisingly, Vallee writes quite seriously about matters such as

• Rosicrucianism:   They claim that their 'Ancient Wisdom' is thousands of years old, but there is absolutely no proof of that. "I find their documents to be an interesting spiritual complement to my scientific training. Every month I receive a set of course material through the mail. It includes both theoretical reading and instructions for simple rituals, promising insight into higher realities" (Vallee, p. 39). He later explains that the Rosicrucian order he belongs to is "AMORC, which is headquartered in San Jose." If you've ever seen that Rosicrucian Museum with the awesome mummies interspersed with cheesy claims of ancient mysteries, that's the group he was talking about. When I was a kid, they used to regularly have ads on the back page of comic books. Hynek was also interested in Rosicrucianism (p. 233).
• Astrology: Vallee, and later Hynek, became friends with Michel and Francoise Gauquelin, who were attempting to put astrology on a scientific basis. "Yesterday Hynek went back to see the Gauquelins to discuss astrology and destiny" (p. 341). Vallee claims he was responsible for his publisher Regnery accepting Gauquelin's book on astrology, The Cosmic Clocks. In the early days of CSICOP, there was a big stink when the skeptics challenged Gauquelin's "Mars Effect" data, which apparently was (in that one instance) correct. However, the correlations he claimed to find could not be replicated.
• Mystical and psychic realms: "In recent discussions with Hynek, I pointed out that the saucer question may well be part of a complex series of scientific realities, but it also plunges deep into mystical and psychic theories. I found him very receptive to this idea" (p. 88).
• Alchemy, elementals, homunculi.......seriously!!

As for myself, I cannot see how any intelligent person can, upon clear reflection, take any of those subjects seriously. I have never felt that there was some 'alternate' or 'hidden' realm of being, at least not since I figured out that the Catholic Catechism I was being fed was a load of codswallop.

Their Huge Mistake

Ultimately, the case for UFOs as promoted by Hynek, Vallee, and their followers boils down to what Hynek termed "credible persons reporting incredible things." Now exactly how "credible" is that, especially if it is supposed to serve as a foundation for a radical revision of science?

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, invariably shortened to The Royal Society, is the oldest and probably the most prestigious scientific body in the world. Founded in 1660, over the years its Fellows have included such luminaries as Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Humphry Davy, Charles Darwin, and practically every other British scientist of any note, as well as a number of foreign ones.

The intellectual world of the mid-seventeenth century was very different from ours today. Learned men disputed not only about the properties of gases and the motions of the planets, but about witches, miraculous apparitions, and other apparent violations of the natural order. How to sort out what is real from what is not?

 The Royal Society selected for its motto, Nullius in verba, which serves as a sort of Razor for scientific claims. The Latin phrase translates literally as “on the word of no one,” or, more colloquially, "take nobody's word for it". If you have some kind of proof for what you are claiming, then it can be investigated. But if all you have are words, it cannot.

The Royal Society, the world's oldest modern scientific organization -
"Take Nobody's Word For It."

In our day, we still get reports from seemingly credible persons of things we are fairly certain do not exist: UFOs, Bigfoot, angels, and miracles of every kind. The popular press and the mass media are very fond of such claims. They make good ratings. But they make very bad science.

             The UFO proponent’s motto, on the other hand, would seem to be something like Omnius in Verba, or “words are all we’ve got.” In fact, Hynek was honest enough to admit that directly: we possess no actual UFOs, he said, only reports of them. Hynek was surprised and genuinely hurt when the scientific establishment replied to him, as it had to in order to remain true to its centuries-old foundation, “we take nobody’s word for it.” Give us a piece of a UFO, or some indisputably authentic, clear and detailed photos, or some instrumental data. But if all you have to offer are stories about sightings of UFOs, we are not interested. Nullius in verba, Allen.

            Vallee wrote that, concerning UFOs, “the scientific world is as close-minded as an old pig” ( p.184). Jacques, you’re a very bright fellow. You should know that Nullius in verba has been the rule in science since 1660. Since then, the scientific world has embraced Newton’s laws of motion and of gravitation, electromagnetism, evolution, Einstein’s relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, and the Big Bang. These are just a few of the major paradigm changes occurring in science since that time. Not bad for a close-minded old pig. Now exactly what kind of evidence do you have to offer, Jacques? Words?

             That is the big mistake of Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee, and more recently of Kevin Randle, John Alexander, Leslie Kean, and so many others:   Nullius in verba, folks.

Travis Walton vs. Philip J. Klass

One of the best-known UFO abduction stories is that of Travis Walton. He claims that on Nov. 5, 1975, as he and six others were returning from a day's work cutting logs in Arizona's Sitgreaves National Forest, he was zapped by a beam of light from the UFO, and taken aboard the craft for five days. His story won $5,000 as the Best UFO Case for 1975 from the National Enquirer, has been the subject of several books, as well as the Hollywood movie Fire in the Sky (1993).

The best-known and most influential of all UFO skeptics was Philip J. Klass (1919-2005), longtime Senior Avionics editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine in Washington, DC, and one of the founding fellows of CSICOP. Klass wrote many letters and made many phone calls to people involved in the story, including Travis' family, the local Sheriff's office, polygraph examiners, etc. He found strong reasons to brand the entire story a hoax. His conclusions were written up in great detail in chapters 18-23 of his book UFOs The Public Deceived (Prometheus, 1983). Fortunately, there is a Kindle edition of this book for less than $10, and used paperback copies can also be purchased on-line. Still, the skeptic's case against the Walton abduction claim is not being widely read. For several years I have had a Travis Walton page on my Debunker.com website, containing some of the best anti-Walton arguments, but not nearly as much information as Klass provides.

Philip J. Klass (left), and Travis Walton

On a website promoting the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina as a UFO "hotspot," Sky Ships Over Cashiers, there is a page titled Debunker's $10,000 bribe to stop UFO truth. This claim is now making the rounds of UFO-related Forums. Someone shouts on the Outpost Forum on February 5, "BRIBE BOMBSHELL! STEVE PIERCE WHO WAS WITH TRAVIS WALTON WHEN HE WAS ABDUCTED CLAIMS THAT HE WAS OFFERED A $10,000 BRIBE FORM THE LATE DEBUNKER PHIL KLASS TO STATE THAT THE ENTIRE TRAVIS WALTON ALIEN ABDUCTION CLAIM WAS A HOAX!" 


Travis Walton himself quickly replied, "Yes, it is true. I even mentioned this in the1996 edition of my book. But all I knew then was that Deputy Click had taken Steve the message when Steve still lived in this area. I didn't know then that Klass had also flown to Texas and spent hours taking Steve out to dinner and trying get him to accept the bribe. And followed Steve to another state or two. Very curious, since in my first edition I had criticized Klass for being "an armchair investigator" who, unlike Dr J. Allen Hynek, the Lorenzens and Stanton Friedman, had never personally contacted anyone involved nor ever bothered to visit the site." If Walton thought that Klass was an "armchair investigator," then he obviously knew nothing about Klass, and had not read any of Klass' UFO books. Walton continues, "All this strongly supports the belief that Klass was a paid government disinformationist." 

Travis Walton gets 'zapped' by a UFO

This charge is, of course, absurd and unfounded, and left me amazed to see that Walton would stoop so low. I went back to Klass' 1983 account in UFOs The Public Deceived, and to my surprise found that same accusation there being discussed. In Bill Barry's 1978 book about Travis Walton, Ultimate Encounter, it says 

According to Mike Rogers, "Steve told me and Travis that he had been offered ten thousand dollars just to sign a denial. He said he was thinking about taking it." (p. 160)

However note that the accusation does not come from Pierce, but instead from Mike Rogers, Travis' best friend, and future brother-in-law. Barry does not directly accuse Klass of offering a bribe, but hints it is so.

Klass, however, notes that Rogers told Pierce "Then you'll spend the money alone, and you'll be bruised." Klass writes, "The latter suggests that Rogers was threatening Pierce with physical harm if he recanted." If you read A Profitable Nightmare of a Very Unreal Kind on my Travis Walton page, you would see that such a threat of violence should be taken seriously. Klass continues, "had Barry checked with me, I would have assured him that I never made such an offer to [Deputy] Click or to anyone seeking to 'buy off' a member of the Rogers crew." In the wake of the bribery accusation, Klass did locate and speak with Steve Pierce (but not until after the accusation had already been made!). Note that Klass did not travel to Texas or anywhere else to meet with Pierce, or take him out and entertain him - those are lies made up by the Walton crowd.

One of the most convincing arguments in favor of the Walton abduction has always been that the five woodcutters sitting in the back of the pickup truck, who did not know each other well and had only come together recently to work on Roger's contract with the Forest Service, all told compatible stories about the incident, and all passed a polygraph exam, more or less. They would have no incentive to go along with a hoax. Klass, however, insisted that they were all in collusion.

The late Karl Pflock was a pro-UFOlogist who was nonetheless skeptical of a number of major cases, including this one. One day Karl and I were discussing the Walton case, and he made what was, to me, a novel suggestion: the five woodcutters in the back of the truck knew nothing about any UFO hoax. Only three people were behind the hoax: Travis himself; Mike Rogers, who drove the truck; and a confederate in the woods, very likely Travis' brother Duane. Pflock wrote in the Jan. 15, 2000 issue of James Moseley's UFO gossip sheet Saucer Smear (Vol. 47 Nr. 1) , disagreeing with Klass:

I thought Walton and his best friend Mike Rogers could have rigged up something convincing enough to make the other five think they'd seen a hovering, hostile UFO. * Properly primed with flying saucer talk by Walton and Rogers, with clever theatrics by the duo during the sighting/zapping, with Rogers whisking the crew away after but a few seconds exposure, it wouldn't have taken a "Day the Earth Stood Still" saucer to fool them. After the fact, in the forest gloom, with Walton and the UFO mysteriously gone, their impressions easily could have been further molded by Rogers continuing his act and repeating his version of the saucer and what it had done to Walton.

Experienced investigators know eyewitness testimony frequently is unreliable, a point often made by Klass in criticizing the work of ufologists. They also know people are highly suggestible during and in the wake of dramatic unexpected events. Yet, in pooh-poohing my suggestion, Phil implicitly accepts the accuracy of the Walton witnesses' publicized descriptions of the UFO.

Phil also ignores some very important testimony he obtained from witness Steve Pierce during a June 20th, 1978, tape-recorded telephone interview (a dub of which he kindly supplied me in early 1998), testimony which to my knowledge he's never revealed in any of his writings about the case:

Klass: What did you see?

Pierce: Uh, well, I thought it was something a deer hunter, you know, rigged up. You know, 'cause it was deer season, you know, so he could see. You know? And, uh, and, but I couldn't see the bottom or a top or sides, all's I could see was the front of it, you know. You couldn't tell if it had a bottom to it or, you know, or a back to it or anything...

Hmmmmm... A "Plan Nine from Outer Space" saucer, perhaps?

* I hasten to add that, while I think a hoax is possible, I have not made up my mind about the case.    

 Klass writes that Pierce told him that, on the day of the "UFO abduction," Walton did no work at all, claiming to be ill. During the afternoon, Mike Rogers disappeared from the work site for about two hours (perhaps to prepare the UFO light show). They usually left the work site about 4:00, according to Pierce, but on that day they remained until about 6:00, thus they were uncharacteristically driving home in the dark. If they drove home in daylight, the UFO light show would not be visible.

Klass says that when he told Pierce that he believes Walton's story to be a hoax, Pierce replied, "Me too. If I could ever prove it was a hoax I'd damn sure do it." (Klass 1983, p. 221). Which suggests that Pflock's hypothesis is correct: the five woodcutters in the back of the truck were not perpetrators of a hoax, but its first five victims. It also shows the absurdity of supposing that Klass would offer such a bribe: even if Pierce did claim that the case was hoaxed, he would not be believed unless he had had proof of a hoax. Plus, he might get "bruised."

So, because of Travis Walton's slanderous new charges against Philip J. Klass, I have performed a major Document Drop of papers in my files on Travis Walton. Added to my page of historical UFO information is a 47-page PDF file of Klass' writings and related material concerning the Travis Walton UFO story. Among the contents of that file:

• "Walton Abduction Cover-Up revealed": NICAP reveals, using Klass' research, that APRO and the National Enquirer were complicit in covering up "inconvenient facts" about Walton's claims, and lying about it.
• A 17 page 1976 White Paper by PJK laying out the case for a hoax. 
• Point-by-point refutation by PJK of APRO's claims.
• Evidence of Mike Rogers misrepresenting facts about the case. Why  Mike Rogers engineered a UFO hoax to get out of an unprofitable Forest Service contract.

A second file contains contemporary news clippings, interviews, memos, and other "real-time" information about the construction of the Walton UFO hoax.

Happy Reading!

Rex Heflin, 1965: a Classic UFO Photo, now in 3-D!

The first of Rex Heflin's UFO photos

In Santa Ana, California on August 3, 1965, highway worker Rex Heflin got three photos of a supposed UFO out the window of his van, using his Polaroid instant camera. This series of photos has long been touted as a “classic” by NICAP and many prominent UFOlogists. This object supposedly flew right over the Marine Corps El Toro Air Station, plus the Santa Ana freeway (Interstate 5) in broad daylight, but no one else saw it. (Sheaffer 1998, p. 91-93). In these photos, distant objects are hazy because of the Los Angeles smog, while the UFO is not, probably because it is tiny, and very close to the camera. For many years the original prints could not be investigated, because Heflin claims that they were confiscated by an investigator who came to his house, flashing an ID supposedly from NORAD. At least Heflin did not claim that the Men In Black came for his prints, or that the dog ate them. He blamed NORAD. So all we had left were copies made from the originals. The Air Force's Project Bluebook listed the Heflin photos as a "hoax."  However, "In 1993, Heflin’s Polaroid originals surfaced unexpectedly under mysterious circumstances." Heflin died in 2005.  

 

 

Dr. William K. Hartmann replicated Heflin's photos for the Condon report (case 52), using a suspended lens cap.

  

Skeptics have argued that Heflin’s UFO appears to be a tiny model, just a few inches in size, hanging from something like a fishing pole propped up over the cab of his van. 

Enkidu created this stereo pair from Rex Heflin's UFO photos

 

However only in 2006 did a still-anonymous person, using the alias Enkidu, make an extremely important finding. In a discussion thread on the conspiracy-oriented website AboveTop Secret, Enkidu argues that Heflin unintentionally created a 3-D photo of his UFO. Assuming that the UFO was attached in some way to the truck, by moving the camera a few inches between the exposures, Heflin has produced a near-perfect stereo pair, as can be seen in stereo viewers. The photos above are reversed by Enkidu to allow easier viewing of the 3-D effect without a stereo viewer by simply crossing one’s eyes. And when you do that, the UFO is seen to be tiny. It’s clearly farther away than the truck’s mirror, but much closer than the roadside vegetation, or the distant trees. Responding to criticism, Enkidu writes, “Yes, it's possible that the UFO moved between the time the first photo was taken and the second. But it would have to move exactly horizontal to the way the camera moved, because there's no apparent difference in the size of the top part of the ship. It could only tilt forward. It didn't go up or down, and it didn't get nearer or closer. The odds of that happening are pretty slim.” Great work, Enkidu! (I think I have figured out who Enkidu is - we've corresponded before. But don't worry, Enkidu, I won't "out" you!)

Enkidu also created this Red-Blue stereo image for viewing using Red-Blue 3-D glasses

The RB-47 Encounter of 1957 - UFOlogy's Best Evidence?

In the early morning hours of July 17, 1957, a U.S. Air Force crew aboard an RB-47, a plane loaded with the most sophisticated state-of-the-art surveillance and electronic countermeasures gear,  reportedly encountered and was followed across several southern states by one or more UFOs, seen visually as well as on radar. Some UFOlogists consider this the best UFO evidence of all time. It was investigated as Case 5 of the University of Colorado's Air-Force-sponsored Condon Report, which cited the absence of an official report supposed to have been written on the incident, and concluded "Evaluation of the experience must, therefore, rest entirely on the recollection of crew members ten years after the event. These descriptions are not adequate to allow identification of the phenomenon encountered."

A U.S. Air Force RB-47, carrying then-state-of-the-art electronic surveillance and countermeasures gear.

 

The UFO Casebook says, "An Air Force RB-47, equipped with electronic countermeasures (ECM) gear and manned by six officers, was followed by an unidentified object for a distance of well over 700 miles, and for a time period of 1.5 hr., as it flew from Mississippi, through Louisiana and Texas and into Oklahoma.
      "The object was, at various times, seen visually by the cockpit crew as an intensely luminous light, followed by ground-radar and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47.
     "Of special interest in this case are several instances of simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of those physically distinct "channels," and rapidity of maneuvers beyond the prior experience of the aircrew."

There is a brand new in-depth investigation of this case by Tim Printy, just published in his WebZine SunLite, January/February, 2012. It is one of the most complex cases in all UFOlogy. I cannot possibly give more than a brief summary here; Printy's analysis runs over thirty pages, and is enormously significant in the history of this major case, and thus in the ongoing debate over the reality of UFOs.

Printy begins by making what is, to me, a crucial observation: "It does seem rather odd that the UFO would decide to use an S-band radar signal to track or test an Air Force RB-47.  It is this clue that seems to have been glossed over/down played by those presenting this case as the best evidence."  In other words, the UFO seems to have been sending out (but only in this case) S-band radar signals with exactly the same characteristics as those used by the U.S. Air Force at that time. How strange is that if the UFO is sending out exactly the same kind of radar signals we do? So isn't it likely, then, that the source of the signals was not an extraterrestrial craft, but instead a misidentified terrestrial one?

The path of the RB-47 during its supposed "UFO encounter."

Printy notes how the late atmospheric physicist and Ufologist Dr. James E. McDonald interviewed the RB-47 crew and wrote a paper on this case. "McDonald’s stamp of approval had immediately made this case a “classic.”" The famous UFO skeptic, the late Philip J. Klass, "took on the case in 1971 and wrote a rather extensive study on the incident. Klass suggested that it was equipment malfunction, a bright fireball, an airliner, and reception of ground radar signals that made the event appear mysterious to the air crew." This analysis can be found in Chapters 19 and 20 of Klass' 1974 book UFOs Explained.

In the 1990s, UFOlogist  Brad Sparks, who styles himself as "the “RB-47 expert” in his email address, re-evaluated the case. Sparks concluded that Klass had erred, most especially in asserting that the RB-47 had, because of an equipment malfunction, erroneously picked up signals from the radar station at Kessler Air Force base in Biloxi, Mississippi, which was a training facility for radar operators and repairmen. That radar, said Sparks, was not operating at the time of the incident! Sparks wrote, "Since it was a nine-month course it was apparently run during the normal academic term from September to June approximately. In other words, there would not have been a class in session to operate the CPS-6B even in the daytime, let alone nighttime, in the midst of summer vacation, on July 17, when the RB-47 incident took place." 

Sparks simply assumed that, since this was not during the "academic year," the training radar would have been turned off! But Printy looked into the matter very closely of whether or not the Kessler radar was operational at the time in question. He found (as he, a retired Navy submariner, already surely knew), that military training schedules bear no resemblance at all to those of colleges! In fact, Printy found that the Kessler facility had been operating at maximum training capacity in July, 1957, and that some classes were indeed scheduled between midnight and 6AM.

Overall, Printy found that while Klass' analysis contains some errors, his overall conclusions still stand. If you have any interest in the RB-47 c ontroversy, or if you want to read one of the very finest research papers ever published about any UFO case, then I encourage you to read Printy's paper, and come to your own conclusion about this important and controversial UFO case.

 

 

Join the Boycott to Protest the CIA Coverup of President Obama's Trips to Mars

You just couldn't make this up:

For the past few years I have been reporting from time to time on the absurd claims of a group of UFOlogists calling their study Exopolitics, "political implications of the extra-terrestrial presence." Alfred Lambremont Webre claims to have been the founder of Exopolitics, although in reality Michael Salla can probably claim that dubious honor. Webre has the website exopolitics.com, while Salla has exopolitics.org .

Michael Salla's "Exopolitics" banner

  

Lately Webre's claims have gotten so bizarre (the war between the Andromeda Council and the Reptilians, Americans being teleported to a secret base on Mars to meet with aliens) that even others in exopolitics became alarmed, and began distancing themselves from him. (This recalls the old joke about the tenor who was so stupid that even the other tenors noticed it.) As Salla recently wrote, "Webre is a marginal and controversial figure in the network of exopolitics researchers and activists that has formed around the world. Webre's writing and behavior is seen as too bizarre and controversial for most credible exopolitics researchers to use." Nonetheless, Webre's far-out articles on the Examiner were being read by as many as 400,000 people each month. Until recently, that is, when Examiner.com gave him the boot.

Webre's colleague Jon Kelly, "a world-famous expert in the application of voice-based disclosure technology for revealing UFO secrets" (WTF?), writes

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal Judge and founder of Exopolitics Alfred Lambremont Webre is calling for consumers to occupy an immediate boycott of pay-per-impression advertising funded news website Examiner.com.... Examiner.com’s corporate publication ban against the Seattle Exopolitics Examiner is an Illuminati agenda-inspired media hit targeting the columnist who revealed President Barack Obama’s participation in the CIA’s secret Mars visitation program."

Pieces on Examiner.com are presented to make you think you're reading a news story. One time a colleague and I were discussing one of Webre's absurd columns in Examiner.com claiming that NASA was promoting (not debunking)  fears of an "extinction level event" from Comet Elenin, and he asked me "What kind of newspaper is publishing crazy stuff like this?"  I replied "I don't think it's actually a newspaper, it's more like this guy's blog." Well, in his feud with Examiner.com, Webre spelled out Examiner.com's business model:

During 2009 many of the writers were receiving $0.01 per page view. Examiner.com later offered a variety of pay scale options to their writers. Examiner.com now bases compensation on variables such as subscriptions, page view traffic and session length.... Examiner.com derives the bulk of its revenue from consumer (reader) click-throughs.  Every time you as a reader click through to read an article on Examiner.com, the company is paid a royalty by its advertisers.

Let's see, one cent per page at 400,000 pages per month gets you $4,000 a month, although Webre suggests  that was only in a good month. So the formula for success as a UFO writer seems to be: make up the most outrageous claims you can think of and put it on Examiner.com, then sit back and collect the coins dropping into the hopper. And here am I, stupidly wasting my time and effort writing a skeptical Blog! Webre does not say exactly what happened to get him kicked off Examiner.com. It cannot be that they are concerned about their journalistic credibility, for they have none. Webre does say, "Examiner.com has been criticized for its lack of verification and fact-checking of stories published on the site, including accusations of plagiarism."

Webre's request is simple: "Please let your friends and networks know you are boycotting Examiner.com because it is promoting the CIA’s Obama on Mars cover-up, and its direct assault on the Truth movement and Truth movement journalists like Alfred Lambremont Webre." How would that be for a Facebook status?

 

New : Historical UFO Documents (Klass, Hynek, others)

On my website http://www.debunker.com, I have recently began scanning and posting PDF files of some of the more significant correspondence and other historical documents in my private collection. (That's one reason I haven't posted much here recently). These papers involve such well-known UFOlogists and UFO witnesses as Philip J. Klass, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. James E. McDonald, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Thornton Page, Dr. David Jacobs, Lonnie Zamora, Capt. Lawrence Coyne, etc. I first began corresponding with Philip J. Klass in 1968, and we stayed in touch until his death in 2005. Klass' papers were then donated to the American Philosophical Society, where they can be requested by researchers willing to travel to Philadelphia to see them, or to pay the associated fees to have copies sent. My intention is to post all of the most significant UFO related papers, especially Klass' "White Papers," on my website.

Philip J. Klass

At present, here are some of the more interesting and significant papers:

• My paper recounting a talk that the famed UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek gave at Northwestern in 1969 as "freshman orientation." 
• While I was at Northwestern in 1970, Dr. J. Allen Hynek allowed me to read a chapter of the book he was working on, The UFO Experience. Here are my comments to him about it, Hynek's reply, Klass' comment on it, and the note Hynek inserted in his book to answer my critique.
• Klass' highly-controversial "White Papers" about atmospheric physicist and UFO proponent Dr. James E. McDonald (1968). Many pro-UFOlogists have accused Klass of unfairly 'hounding' the poor Dr. McDonald (most notably, Anne Druffel in her book Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science), implying that Klass had a role in driving McDonald to his tragic suicide in 1971. For the first time, Klass' own papers on the subject are now available to researchers.
• Klass' letter to "Plasmarians"  complaining about the pro-ETI 'stacked deck' of the forthcoming AAAS-sponsored UFO Symposium in Boston (Nov. 18, 1969). Note that Klass includes Carl Sagan among the pro-ETI panelists. This is not a mistake.  In testimony to the 1968 hearings before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Carl Sagan said: "I might mention that, on this symposium, there are no individuals who strongly disbelieve in the extraterrestrial origin of UFO's and therefore there is a certain view, not necessarily one I strongly agree with -- but there is a certain view this committee is not hearing today, along those lines."
• Klass' talk to the Maryland Seminar on Science and Technology, UFOs, "N-Rays" and Pathological Science (Dec. 18, 1969). Discusses Blondlot, Hynek, Socorro, James E. McDonald, Heflin, Father Gill, Trent.  
• The Socorro UFO Case, and its "Multiplying Multiple Tourist Witnesses" (Aug. 29, 1976). Examines inconsistencies in the claim that one or more unnamed tourists also witnessed the UFO allegedly seen by Officer Lonnie Zamora in Socorro on April 24, 1964. 
• Capt. Lawrence Coyne's Views on UFOs and his own experience before he and his crew won the "National Enquirer" best case award of $5,000 (Dec. 31, 1976). There's nothing like fame and money to cement a UFO witness' story.
• PJK critiques of Hynek's perceived inconsistencies (1975-83). Hynek's ever-changing "UFO Invariant."

There will be more papers to follow, that I will post as time permits