The Pseudo-Science of Anti-Anti-Ufology

      [This is reprinted from my Psychic Vibrations column in The Skeptical Inquirer, September/October, 2009. It answers Friedman's critiques of "debunkers," and it explains how Betty Hill's "UFO Star Map" has crashed and burned. Friedman knows this (I discussed it with him), but he has gotten too much mileage from that "star map" to ever give it up, no matter how bogus it turns out to be.]

Stanton Friedman

           Many readers are surely familiar with the author and pro-UFO lecturer Stanton T. Friedman, who calls himself the “Flying Saucer physicist,” because he actually did work in physics about fifty years ago (although not since). Well, Stanton is upset by the skeptical writings contained in SI’s special issue on UFOs (January/February, 2009), and elsewhere. He has written two papers thus far denouncing us, and it is the subject of his Keynote Address at the MUFON Conference in August (2009).

            In February (2009), Friedman wrote an article, “Debunkers at it Again,” reviewing our UFO special issue (http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009/02/debunkers-at-it-again.html).  “In actuality, the active writers and “investigators” aren’t skeptics. They are Debunkers doing their best to pull the wool over the eyes of a curious public. They know the answers, so don’t really need to investigate. Proclamation is more their style. Deception is the name of the game.”

Friedman goes on to name names:  He critiques Joe Nickell’s article “Return to Roswell ” by noting that Nickell is a former magician, and “of course the stock in trade of magicians is intentional deception with another sterling example being the Amazing Randi.”  So by Friedman-logic, anyone who has ever practiced prestidigitation can never again be trusted in anything. He criticizes Nickell for raising “the baseless Project Mogul explanation” for Roswell, which cannot be correct, says Friedman, because it does not match the claims made in later years by alleged Roswell witnesses (although it does match quite well the account of Mac Brazel, the original witness, given in 1947).

He moves on to my critique of the Betty and Barney Hill case, where I note the resemblance of their “hypnosis UFO testimony” to Betty Hill’s post-incident dreams. I said, “Barney had heard her repeat [them] many times,” which he claims is “nonsense.” According to Friedman, “Barney read Betty’s dreams once, and the notes were put in a drawer,” and that settles that. He conveniently forgets the passages in John G. Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey, the first book about the incident, describing the long sessions Betty and Barney spent with several UFOlogists, “beginning at noon and running almost until midnight” (Chapter 3), in which all aspects of the incident were discussed again and again. He also forgets that Barney told Dr. Simon, the psychiatrist who interviewed and treated them both, that his wife had told him “a great many details of the dreams,” and that Dr. Simon had concluded that the dreams of Mrs. Hill “had assumed the quality of a fantasized experience” (Chapter 12).

Friedman next attacks Dr. David Morrison, NASA senior scientist, for the “absurd” suggestion that if intelligently-controlled UFOs were here, we might pick up radio transmissions from them, or from their home planets. “Maybe secret NSA listening devices pick up alien signals, but then the NSA doesn’t release info about what signals it receives,” said Friedman. He also attacks Dave Thomas, “a scientist in New Mexico and president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason”, saying “Dave has certainly demonstrated his lack of knowledge of both the Roswell and Aztec UFO crash retrieval cases.” Thomas has conducted in-depth interviews with Dr. Charles Moore, the chief scientist of Project Mogul, whose balloon caused the Roswell crash scare in 1947. The “Aztec crash” case that Friedman seems so keen on is taken from a 1950 book by Hollywood writer Frank Scully, Behind the Flying Saucers, exposed as a hoax more than fifty years ago by newspaperman J.P. Cahn. Friedman concludes with, “the Skeptical Inquirer provides many examples of the intellectual bankruptcy of the pseudoscience of anti-ufology.”

            Friedman was still hot under the collar in May, when he followed this up with a second article titled the “Pseudo-Science of Anti-Ufology” (http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009/05/pseudo-science-of-anti-ufology.html ). He says that skeptics’ arguments “aren’t scientific, but rather represent research by proclamation rather than investigation.” Given that SI’s special issue on UFOs contained detailed investigative reports on the 1984 Minsk, USSR UFO sightings, the Big Sur UFO of 1964, an update on Roswell developments, and the Stephenville, Texas sightings of 2008, if this is mere “proclamation,” then I can’t imagine what “investigation” would look like. “Proclamations and attacks, often given the appearance of being scientific, have been launched at every aspect of the phenomena. Despite an enormous array of real evidence and data, we have been treated to false claims, false reasoning, bias and ignorance.” Of course, if Friedman or anyone else could produce even one piece of “real evidence and data,” the UFO debate would have been over long ago.

Friedman has long been obsessed with the little-known and even less-read Project Blue Book Special Report Number 14, a statistical analysis of UFO reports released by the Battelle Memorial Institute way back in 1955. However, he carefully picks and chooses the quotes that he uses from that report, implying it to be some hidden pro-UFO gem, deliberately ignored by skeptics. However, Friedman never reveals this quote from the Summary of BBSR14: "It is considered to be highly improbable that reports of unidentified aerial objects examined in this study represent observations of technological developments outside of the range of present-day scientific knowledge" (page viii), which means that the Report says exactly the opposite of what Friedman wants us to think it does. “Why isn’t BBSR 14 cited in the debunking books?” he pointedly asks. Probably because it is over fifty years old, and contains little that is interesting or relevant today, although Alan Hendry (not a “debunker” but a very skeptical UFOlogist) did spend several pages of his UFO Handbook (Doubleday, 1979) critiquing its approach. Hendry concluded, “If the Battelle group had had a real appreciation for how loose the data were, they never would have bothered with a statistical comparison to begin with” (p. 266). [For more on Blue Book Special Report 14, see my discussion of Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek, and the "Pentacle Memorandum."]

Freidman concludes, “If one makes an appropriately objective and careful examination of the pro and anti-UFO arguments, one finds that the evidence is overwhelming that Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled vehicles of extraterrestrial origin and that only pseudo-scientific arguments of a vocal but small group of debunkers stand in the way of reaching that conclusion.”  It’s truly remarkable what we, a small group of skeptics writing for SI and similar publications, have supposedly been able to accomplish. Even though the number of people we reach in our publications is far fewer than Friedman reaches on any one of his many appearances on TV and radio programs such as Larry King Live, Coast to Coast AM, etc., he claims that the only reason that Extraterrestrial Visitations have not been accepted by the mainstream of science and the media is because we noisy negativists keep chattering against them. The reality is, of course, that if his supposed “UFO evidence” were nearly as good as he claims it to be, then nothing would be able to stand in its way.

Betty Hill's sketch of a "UFO star map"

            Since Friedman loudly claims to represent “scientific UFOlogy,” then like all scientists he must revise or even discard his hypotheses when new data comes in and invalidates them. One such instance has clearly occurred of late: the complete invalidation of the Fish Map, supposedly an extraterrestrial navigation map that Betty Hill saw during her celebrated “UFO abduction” in 1961. For at least 35 years, Friedman has been claiming that researcher Marjorie Fish’s supposed identification of the dots Betty Hill drew as being potentially habitable nearby stars proves the extraterrestrial nature of the Betty and Barney Hill “UFO abduction.” He has made the Fish Map one of the central points of his lectures and writings. The similarity between the Hill drawing and the Fish Map was actually never very good, but folks who were so inclined could point to a number of points of correspondence between the two. (For a detailed discussion, see my paper “There Were No Extraterrestrials” in Encounters at Indian Head (Pflock and Brookesmith, eds. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2007) ).

The Fish interpretation is supposedly correct because it consists of single, non-variable stars that all lie inside this box. But using the newer and more accurate data, two stars are actually much farther away, and nowhere near this box. Two are actually variable, and two more are close binaries. Poof!

But today the Fish Map is no longer viable whatsoever. In her research beginning in 1966, Fish made the wise choice to use the Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars, which was then the most accurate available. But that was over forty years ago, and science never stands still. Astronomical researcher Brett Holman recently checked out what the Fish Map would look like if it were built using the most accurate astronomical data available today. His answer is in his article in the British publication Fortean Times (#242, November 2008): "Goodbye, Zeta Reticuli" (the supposed home solar system of the UFOnauts). Holman writes, “In the early 1990s the Hipparcos satellite measured the positions of nearly 120,000 stars 10 times more accurately than ever before – including all of those that appear in the Fish interpretation. The results of this work, and much else besides, is available online now, and can be easily queried using websites such as SIMBAD at the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory.”

           Fish excluded all variable stars and close binaries to include only supposedly habitable solar systems – but the new data reveals two of her stars as suspected variables, and two more as close binaries. So there go four of her 15 stars. And two more are much further away than earlier believed, removing them completely from the volume of space in question. Six stars of that supposedly exact-matching pattern, definitely gone, excluded by the very criteria that once included them using the forty-year-old data. Goodbye, Zeta Reticuli.

Kathleen Marden, Stanton Friedman, and Robert Sheaffer at the MUFON Symposium 2011

            Since scientists are obligated to repudiate their hypotheses should subsequent data contradict them, if Friedman is practicing “scientific UFOlogy” as he claims, he will have to admit that he was wrong about the Fish map. But that will never happen. Arguing with Friedman is like arguing with a Creationist, who keeps using discredited arguments to impress new audiences, and seizing upon minor misstatements of his critics and attributing to them the very worst of motives, while completely ignoring their strongest arguments. His arguments rely heavily on the ad hominem attack – his critics are such terrible persons – a sure sign of somebody trying to defend emotionally a position that can’t be defended logically. (Whenever you see the strong reliance on the ad hominem – my critics are such terrible persons – it’s almost like a red banner proclaiming, “my arguments don’t hold up.”) Another major UFO case with a strong endorsement from Friedman is the 1996 Yukon UFO, conclusively shown to be the re-entry of the Cosmos 2335 second stage rocket booster. But Friedman refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong about that case, either.

           From this moment on, every time that Friedman speaks of the Fish Map, except to say “I was wrong about it,” his own words brand him a hypocrite.


[There is a follow-up posting to this one, dated December 17, 2012: Friedman's Frenzy.]

"U.S. News" Proclaims UFOs a "Danger to Aviation"

The next time you get on a plane, don't worry about the terrorist who might have smuggled explosives on board inside his rectum. Instead, you should be worrying about UFOs, according to this story by Michael Morella  in the News section of U.S. News and World Report (October 19, 2012):

UFO Sightings Pose Danger to Aviation
Flying saucers and other unidentified flying objects can distract pilots and cause accidents

the illustration from the U.S. News article

Before you get too concerned, remember that the number of fatalities in airline accidents caused by UFOs equals the number of motorists killed in vehicle collisions with unicorns (although the private pilot Fredrick Valentich appears to have perished in a graveyard spiral while distracted by what he thought was a UFO).

Following this bit of remarkable stupidity, the rest of the article is basically a completely uncritical review of Leslie Kean's book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record. She presents supposedly "unexplained" UFO cases involving either a pilot, a general, or a bureaucrat. But as I showed in my review of this book, her cases are only "unexplained" if one ignores all explanations. Philip J. Klass and others have published thousands of words explaining most if not all of Kean's supposed "unexplained" cases. She pretends that other interpretations don't exist, and thus ensnares too-trusting reporters into her UFO net. Good reporters, recognizing that controversial stories have two sides, would interview a knowledgeable expert with a different view, and present both sides. He might have even uncovered the ridiculous story of Leslie Kean and the Fly, and asked her to explain that. Unfortunately, good reporting is quite rare. The piece is rounded off with more UFO advocacy by Richard Haines and John Alexander, with just the briefest objection presented by Seth Shostak.

Morella had previously written "Mysteries of Space" for a special issue of U.S. News (April, 2012). A cover teaser promised to explain "Why UFOs are dangerous," but the text didn't deliver on that promise.

This is not the first time that U.S. News and World Report has embarrassed itself by publishing UFO stories that turned out to be simply foolish.

“Before the year is out, the Government perhaps the President—is expected to make what are described as 'unsettling disclosures' about UFOs” - U.S. News & World Report, April 18, 1977.

There were no "unsettling disclosures," and still have not been, thirty-five years later. Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter famously promised to release all of that UFO files, if elected. This set up something like a Millennial frenzy among UFO believers, expecting the official announcement of alien visitations to come at any time. After Carter was elected, he probably found out that the Blue Book files had already been declassified and released; Phil Klass and I had already been reading them in the National Archives before Carter took office.

Then there is this doozy:

 “FLYING SAUCERS—THE REAL STORY: U.S. BUILT FIRST ONE IN 1942. Jet-propelled disks can outfly other planes ... By choosing which [jet] noz­zles to turn on or off and the angle of tilt, the pilot could make the saucer rise or descend vertically, hover, or fly straight ahead, or make sharp turns… a big advance in the science of flying... No official announcements are being made yet, but about the only big secret left is "who makes them." Evidence points to Navy experiments... ” - News “scoop” in U.S. News & World Report, April 7, 1950.

It would seem that about every thirty-five years, U.S. News is determined to publish something monumentally stupid about UFOs, something that is a profound and lasting embarrassment to any professional journalist. Like clockwork, they've done it again.

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.