Found? Gordon Cooper's 1957 UFO film "sent...to...Washington...never to be seen again"

originally posted by: Uggielicious

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8

snip

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I entered my research with an open mind thinking "where there's smoke, there must be fire", but I never found the fire. I found that often the "smoke" was created by people trying to sell books who liked to embellish stories.

This is exactly right and applies to TV shows equally. I remember in the 70's watching UFOs shows with my father that seemed to come out at least once a month. I was fascinated with the UFO topic as a kid. At the time, what you're presented with on TV was the story. At least it was in my world as a child. With the onset of the internet and beyond, you can do a fairly in depth search through some of those cases. But you need the investigative desire to research and find facts out for yourself. You can't simply watch TV or read an online article and believe. It takes a little work and a lot of searching sometimes to weed through the sensationalized stories to the background facts.

As I'm sure you probably know Arbitrageur, Jim Oberg has had a crew follow him for years through different message boards. One is missing from this thread. He seems to strike strong emotional chords with some of these people.

Your last comment sounds to me like an insult to the integrity of Jim Oberg's 5Star reputation. I'm replying to you because Jim Oberg is mostly admired for his excellent way of thinking as opposed to the majority of ATS members. You could say that he is a legend and he covers a lot of topics aside from UFOs. He is also a TV "celebrity" being seen and heard on a lot of documentaries. You sound as if you're stating as fact that "Jim Oberg has had a crew follow him for years through different message boards." I don't think that you can provide evidence for that claim. Jim and I have "dueled" for many years, since the '90s in many old, long-gone forums, and when you are interested in UFOlogy you tend to search forums for knowledge and public opinion, pro and con. If you turn out to be an interesting member who most of the time sound as if you know your stuff, your name and others with similar POVs will come up in conversation as someone to show interest in and possibly learn from.

However, I don't consider myself to be in not only Jim's mythical "crew" but I don't belong to any crew. Yet if i know that Jim is communicating in other forums I will look him up and see if I'm interested in the topic. One learns from Jim not only new stuff but also a way to look at things outside of the box. Agreement with him is not guaranteed but he'll make you think. You shouldn't criticize to just lash out. Work with facts,work with evidence. Doing so will endear you not the opposite.

And I'll bet that Arbitrageur was not thinking of Jim Oberg when he made the comments you quoted but that he might have been thinking about authors such as Stanton Friedman who laugh all the way to the banks, thanks to the gullible.

You misread my comment. When someone makes a claim either on the believer or debunker side, I research both claims. I don't blindly take someone's word just because it jibes with mine. When I've researched Jim Oberg comments on this forum, there's a factual path to follow. He either has access to the direct sources, or he provides something of substance to back up what he says. There's no wishy-washy maybe, kinda, or could be facts. He does actual methodical research through phone calls, interviews, emails, regular mail, etc. with the sources themselves many times. He links PDFs of interviews or screen shots from the letters he's received, as he's done in this thread. He's an invaluable asset and resource to the forum. The process he uses of thorough investigation should be followed by every single believer on this forum.

Now, because I've looked into Jim Oberg comments to verify them for myself, I've come across members on other message boards, sometimes from years ago, with the same attitude. An attitude I can only describe as being strangely personal with anger vented at him. As if Jim has struck a deep emotional chord with them, as I said.

originally posted by: Scdfa
And Jim Oberg can't even prove this is Gordon Cooper's film, correct?
That's why the title of the thread is "Found?"
Oberg puts a question mark in there because he's guessing again, with no proof.

Jim Oberg didn't make this thread, I did and I'm the one who put the question mark after "Found?".

I already explained that I checked the bluebook archives case #4715 here:

bluebookarchive.org...

I compared the photos on the NICAP site to the photos in that bluebook 4715 file and they are very similar. The NICAP identification "edwards570502" matches the location and date of the bluebook file. Am I 100% sure that the NICAP photos are from that file? It seems very likely because all the facts I can find match, but no I'm not 100% sure which is why I added the question mark, but that question mark only applies to the NICAP photos, not the bluebook archive photos.

So, if you prefer to use the lower quality photos in the bluebookarchive link above, feel free to use those instead, and I'll remove the question mark, as I don't have any doubts those are from the bluebook 4715 file because it clearly states that's what they are. That file matches all the other facts of the case, except of course for the details that Gordon Cooper made up and when asked to elaborate on those, he admitted he didn't see anything personally and it was just something he heard about from other people.

There's another reason for adding the question mark, which is the whole myth about Gordon Cooper's involvement. We can't really find Gordon Cooper's film if it was never really his film in the first place, can we? He admits he never personally saw anything.

Interesting research. I do always wonder how such important photographs, films and records can just "vanish". It reminds me of the Apollo mission telemetry tapes, with all but those from Apollo 9 mysteriously disappearing. NASA themselves, in a report, claim that they no longer exist - anywhere. It does make you wonder. Are they really so forgetful as to consistently misplace such important tapes? Probably not.



Gordon Cooper is certainly an interesting case when it comes to UFO sightings by astronauts. He and Buzz Aldrin have to be my favourites, as far as their credibility and what they have to say goes.

Perplexing!

originally posted by: TheParanormalScholar
Interesting research. I do always wonder how such important photographs, films and records can just "vanish".

The photos that are the topic of this thread didn't vanish, they are in the bluebook archives file 4715 in the link I put in my previous post.

Gordon Cooper is certainly an interesting case when it comes to UFO sightings by astronauts. He and Buzz Aldrin have to be my favourites, as far as their credibility and what they have to say goes.

I've always found Buzz Aldrin to be credible, but your video does a great disservice to Buzz Aldrin because it's edited so badly as to misrepresent the event being portrayed. Buzz Aldrin has a low opinion of people that would take his quotes and edit out the explanatory parts so as to misrepresent what actually occurred, so I imagine that would include you. He finished telling the story about how they figured out what they were seeing was one of the four panels that covered the lunar lander but your deceptive video and many others I've seen leave that out for purposes that seem to be more geared toward deception and creating mystery, than at finding truth.

Gordon Cooper certainly has elements of truth mixed in to what he says, but if you find everything he said credible, I don't think you've read this thread or done much research. You could start by reading this thread start to finish.

In terms of what Aldrin really said and thinks about 'space UFO' stories, as opposed to how deceptive video editing falsifies it, check out this new draft report of mine on exactly that question.

www.jamesoberg.com...

So here we all are, conforming to one of the absolutely typical stereotypical ATS threads. Page after page dedicated to what? Well actually, not a lot. We don't have the film, we don't have any true verification of the tiny number of frames we have been shown. Arby, to give him his due, is very rare breed on this forum, unlike the vast majority of his cohorts, he does at least have the bottle to mix it up on the cases where he's often, on hiding to nothing and furthermore, Arby does have the bottle to make himself look a bit of a "believe any old cobblers, so long as it's not a UFO", type.

Meanwhile in his batcave, I have little doubt that, Mr Oberg will be planning his next thread about some incident, the vast majority of people already have decided wasn't a UFO and already has a perfectly acceptable prosaic explanation. At the same time Mr Oberg will not be appearing on any thread where there is substantial evidence something genuinely strange happened. That's perfectly in keeping with his media appearances, which are all carefully orchestrated so that, he never crops up in shows that don't tow his party line.

See, I've been at this whole thing considerably longer than most have and as such, I have seen people such as Jim, though not Jim specifically on these points I want to make that clear, who, back in the early to mid 70s, dismissed "Ball Lightning" and "Earthltes" as "pseudo science" with only anecdotal evidence to back up claims it existed. Those very same people today, are the first to point towards Ball Lightning and Earthlites as an explanation for many difficult cases without ever having one, apologised for their mistake and two, acknowledged they were completely wrong on both those cases. Ergo, you will excuse huge tranche of us, who have a somewhat jaundiced view of their likes and in the end, their actual honesty and their true motivations for forcing their opinions about UFOs on others.

The facts are, several of the so called "sceptic" faces, you see appear on documentaries that are about British incidents, have been outed as purveyors of deliberate disinformation and at times, outright lies. What's more, in the case of at least one TV company, we have direct unchallenged evidence that editorially, they made specific decisions that made the documentaries they finally released totally biased in an unfair way and that. They deliberately missed out key witnesses and those investigators who could have and have since then, brought key information about the incidents to the public's attention.

If one were to be truly conspiratorial then, one might even point out, the increasing number of "non threads" posted on this section of ATS about incidents that virtually no-one thinks was a UFO, since several TV channels have turned to presenting UFO shows where, they deal almost exclusively with witnesses and have forgone the usual suspects talking about them disparagingly having one, not been there when it happened and two, never interviewed or communicated with in an otherwise manner, any of those who were involved.

We constantly are harangued with cries of "Proper procedure", "Peer reviewed evidence" etc etc ad infinitum. Fine , so show me the 500 post 6 page thread on the "Renato Nicholai Incident" after all, you carp endlessly about physical evidence available for peer review, there you have exactly what you demand and yet, why so silent?

The truth is, if it's ..Astronauts speaking out of line as certain people view it, fuzzy indistinct photos or videos of ice floating past shuttle window, military personal breaking what certain people view as their "sacred word" then certain people are there like a shot. There to save us all from those dingbats cos, we are all so hopelessly gullible we can't see it for ourselves. Want an utterly pointless thread about an incident no-one really cares about, their your man, ready present and willing to tell the majority of people that, they already know. The truly hilarious part of it all is that, they are really that naive, they probably don't think others have noted their pattern of behaviour.

a reply to: Ectoplasm8

An attitude I can only describe as being strangely personal with anger vented at him. As if Jim has struck a deep emotional chord with them, as I said.

Do you think it's possible that he might be Satan? This was one of the first things I noticed when I was new to this site. Jim takes a lot of abuse for simply presenting information that anyone can fact check.

But the really suspicious thing is his very noticeable absence in the Blue Avian thread...in fact, I haven't seen many of the more well known believers challenge the information there. Its like they all just run for the hills. Curious.

originally posted by: Uggielicious

originally posted by: Urantia1111
a reply to: Arbitrageur

If anybody is listening to anything Jim Oberg has to say about the reality of UFOs, they have done zero research into the topic. The man is a professional skeptic on a mission to debunk all UFO sightings. Do people still not know this?

You don't understand your mind and minds in general. It is "normal" to be a skeptic, you're not born a believer and become one only because of constant mental conditioning from less than mentally stable authorities such as parents, teachers, etc. If you're not a skeptic chances are that you may be a believer. It is preferable to be an open-minded skeptic so that you don't believe without evidence while considering that one doesn't know everything and there are sufficent strange events happening to humans to give one reason not to make a judgement.

But one of the drawbacks of being a skeptic is that people make claims and expected to have their words accepted as fact because they say so. It is obvious that Oberg has not yet seen what is considered a UFO or UAO in daylight with enough detail to take it out of the human-constructed category. For as soon as he has such an experience you'll be dealing with a new Oberg.

That's how it happened to me. I was never a believer and when I got into UFOlogy I wondered what it felt like to see UFO, something that started happening with increasing frequency. I had to wait approximately 25 years of wonderment before I joined that "exclusive" club and my doubting and skepticism ended. I know that UFOs are real and have no idea whose they are, what they are and where they come from. But I am still a skeptic and will always demand irrefutable evidence. And belief exists only where there is no evidence. Evidence cancels or neutralizes belief. Skepticism has no room for belief. A skeptic's life can be a joy when research blows a claim out of the water. My life is a joy.

You make skepticism sound so sweet and innocent, but unfortunately in ufology skepticism is rarely that and often has agendas behind it.

I'll reserve judgement as to whether or not my previous comment applies to this thread as I'm not completely familiar with the topic. However I have seen the video where Cooper talks about the incident and I must admit that, like a few other people in this thread, my first thought was that he said he saw the UFO land himself. I can accept that I might have remembered that bit wrong without trying to find the video and watching again. On the other hand I cannot accept that fact alone completely discredits what may have happened, before anyone can do that they need to know why he lied in the first place. Maybe he just felt that telling the story from a second hand perspective made it less believable to others? Who knows? I certainly can't think of any reason why he would completely fabricate a story such as this.

Anyway, the important thing to remember is that we absolutely should be wary of skeptics, and such things as the swamp gas incident in michigan and the flying lighthouse at rendlesham forest (amongst others) can serve as reminders of that fact.

If folks still want to give so much credibility to stories about Cooper and UFOs, I wonder if there's anyone who seriously thinks Cooper saw a UFO on his Mercury-9 space flight? That story is all over the Internet, Richard Dolan seems to like it [Day Before Disclosure], who else gives it a shred of credence?

a reply to: jamespond

You make skepticism sound so sweet and innocent, but unfortunately in ufology skepticism is rarely that and often has agendas behind it.

When considering if an object is of extraterrestrial origin and intelligently controlled skepticism is important.

Anyway, the important thing to remember is that we absolutely should be wary of skeptics

Even though skeptics aren't the ones filling youtube with bogus UFO videos.
Both sides of the coin are needed , without skeptics the subject is finished , without believers the same applies.

and such things as the swamp gas incident in michigan and the flying lighthouse at rendlesham forest (amongst others) can serve as reminders of that fact.

Michigan I agree , Rendlesham not so.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: jamespond

When considering if an object is of extraterrestrial origin and intelligently controlled skepticism is important.

Maybe so, but like I said, skepticism with an agenda should be treated with caution. And trying to make it sound all kooky that there may be extraterrestrial life that would be interested in us and at the same time have technology to monitor us, in a universe that's nearly 14 billion years old and holds more stars than we can count, is skepticism with an agenda imo.

Even though skeptics aren't the ones filling youtube with bogus UFO videos.
Both sides of the coin are needed , without skeptics the subject is finished , without believers the same applies.

Perhaps you have never heard of disinformation. Which is a shame since US Government agencies have been caught out filling UFology with it.

Michigan I agree , Rendlesham not so.

I'm OK with that as long as you're not going to tell me you believe the lighthouse story

Gordon Cooper wrote his book Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey Into the Unknown, published July 3 2000. Half is about his life, the other half concerns the UFO conspiracy. He did comment about the "incident" in 1957. Does anyone know what he says? Is it worth getting the book just to read what he says about this case and the sighting over germany?

I also know he says in the book he believed a lady was in telepathic communication with the aliens. This was in the early 1970's, I think. This really clues you into his mindset. Cooper was really off his rocker!

But I guess if you thought you'd seen UFO's and you thought they were aliens, maybe it blows the lid open to possibility? If aliens can be flirting with our airspace and the government attempting to keep it quiet, maybe the world is crazier than we ever thought?

Kenneth Arnold also experienced a transformation. He had a couple UFO sightings. His daughter says her parents claimed to witness a ball of light in their house (in the 1940's, I think?). He started to believe crazy things, if I recall right, trying to figure it all out. I think he started to think it was supernatural. This all contradicts what I previously thought of him. His daughter was on some radio shows about it.

So seeing a UFO or think you saw one or something similar makes you crazy? Is recurring theme in what little research I've done. I say all this because it might help explain Gordon Cooper's later behaviour. If he thought UFOs were alien, maybe he lost his ability to be critical. He opened his mind too far and his brains spilled out.

EDIT: Correct me if I'm wrong, but J Allen Hynek I believe also started to think UFOs might be supernatural, or at least speculated it.

Here's a link to the audio for a radio show Kim Arnold was on. She tells the ball of light story somewhere around 30 to 50 minute mark:
hiddenexperience.blogspot.com/2012/02/kenneth-arnolds-daug hter-talks-about.html
(the link to the audio is on that page)

It aired on the Race Hobbs & Royce Fitzgerald 'Eye Witness Radio' show. The website is no longer online. The show isn't active anymore, either. However, the person(s) behind the show are still going:
en.wikipedia.org - KGRA-db...

The daughter had a website--no longer existing--here:
www.kennetharnoldufo.com/

a reply to: jonnywhite

Here's the telepathic warning story. Needless to say, there was no such flaw and no such fix.

www.jamesoberg.com...

Is this the case where the UFO landed on Edwards AFB and was filmed - and then a short clip of the UFO was included in a documentary I believe.

I read that these guys had permission and support from the USAF to make a UFO documentary - but then the USAF went cold and changed their mind, but a clip of the UFO was supposedly included anyway, I saw the Doc - heard about it on ATS I think, can't remember the name of it?

originally posted by: JimOberg
a reply to: jonnywhite

Here's the telepathic warning story. Needless to say, there was no such flaw and no such fix.

www.jamesoberg.com...

Before making this thread I could have agreed with the "needless to say" qualifier.

However, after making this thread, and seeing how many people still want to believe Cooper's unverifiable claims, I think you needed to say it, so I'm glad you did.

a reply to: Soapusmaximus
That's the myth.
For the reality, read the story linked in the OP, or the investigation by James McDonald, or the investigation by Brad Sparks, take your pick, all of which came to the same basic conclusions.

a reply to: FireMoon
That's quite a rant. All I can really ascertain about the topic is you questioned the provenance of the Nicap photos so I gave you the link directly to the 41 photos on project blue book archives for case 4715, and I have yet to see your response to those. Are you saying all 41 of those photos are fake and there's no proof they were from Edwards on the date of this case?

If you have some problems with specifics then discuss specifics but general slurs only paint you as someone who seems to be incredibly biased against skeptics, when in reality we should all be skeptical at least to some degree, if we are seeking the truth.

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8
snip
Now, because I've looked into Jim Oberg comments to verify them for myself, I've come across members on other message boards, sometimes from years ago, with the same attitude. An attitude I can only describe as being strangely personal with anger vented at him. As if Jim has struck a deep emotional chord with them, as I said.

Perhaps I did misread your comments and you make it sound as if I did and for that I apologize.

I could never equal myself to Oberg - he's mentally universes away from me. But I also know what it feels like to be attacked personally primarily on this forum (the other forums were not as hostile as this one) to which I lost my cool (something Oberg hasn't done, to my knowledge, and lowered myself to their level which resulted in my being temporarily banned.

I think what gets these people to think that insulting and name-calling is the proper way to communicate when they're up against other members who know how to deal properly with threads' content by using logic, common sense and reason, whereas the believers are easy to satisfy. You don't get hostile reactions from like-minded members such as Arbitrageur, Sage and others whose names I can't remember at the moment but their informative replies are what make reading some threads worthwhile.

Since I'm also a skeptic but a UFO-seeing one I burst many bubbles also when I solved puzzles that most believed was as stated. I picked up a host of attackers. Nothing has changed and this forum is a nest-egg of members that are not here to enjoy and contribute to the forum's name, they're here to show us that they have nothing constructively to add but they feel that they have to feel their presence known.

If there is on topic that really set off members' anger at Oberg is his explanation of what he feels happened as shown on STS-48. Even I disagreed with him but I never felt that insulting him was the way to go just because he had/has a connection to NASA and a lot of forum members who for one reason or another didn't like or trust NASA and felt that because Oberg knows his stuff, he was still a NASAer and not to be trusted.

Of course, he is a respected individual and you could say he's a teacher who, unbelievably, lends his presence to this and other forums imparting the kind of info that is enjoyable to read which results in improved minds. But not everyone wants their mind improved and the forum has to support members such as Scdfa, who has become a PITA.

I wonder how Oberg feels about the hostility aimed at him but I don't think we're going to find out here 'cause he likes to stick to the thread topic and not siderail a thread with non-thread replies.

I gotta learn to be as understanding as he is.

Aside from learning an awfully lot of interesting stuff hereabouts, the value and worth I gain is in what it teaches me about communications -- you can't just broadcast your views and assume they will carry the day from their inherent sensibility. You've always got to be aware of the actual people who will be receiving these messages and how they can interpret or misinterpret them based on their existing knowledge base [which for everyone also includes a portion of misknowledge too], and how you can help them see clearly what you are trying to say.

Sort of an un-Bill-Nye type, maybe, I hope.

Feedback here of all varieties sharpens my awareness of that. Also, being justifiably corrected on style and substance is a continuing learning process.

By the way, I'm not nearly as even-tempered and imperturbable as you so graciously portrayed my style, I've been petty and mean too often, foolishly feeling justified. It helps keep this in check by realizing my own grandkids will be reading these exchanges soon!

originally posted by: TheParanormalScholar
Interesting research. I do always wonder how such important photographs, films and records can just "vanish". It reminds me of the Apollo mission telemetry tapes, with all but those from Apollo 9 mysteriously disappearing. NASA themselves, in a report, claim that they no longer exist - anywhere. It does make you wonder. Are they really so forgetful as to consistently misplace such important tapes? Probably not.

Gordon Cooper is certainly an interesting case when it comes to UFO sightings by astronauts. He and Buzz Aldrin have to be my favourites, as far as their credibility and what they have to say goes.

Perplexing!

Wonder no more, the answer to your question is in the attached photo courtesy of Indiana Jones.

If you pick a box and magnify it 1,000 times the pixels will spell out the contents of the box! I've found a box with ROSWELL on it. Another is NASA (Moon structure photos). And so on. If it's missing, misplaced, confiscated, etc., this place has 'em!

originally posted by: FireMoon
So here we all are, conforming to one of the absolutely typical stereotypical ATS threads. Page after page dedicated to what? Well actually, not a lot. We don't have the film, we don't have any true verification of the tiny number of frames we have been shown. Arby, to give him his due, is very rare breed on this forum, unlike the vast majority of his cohorts, he does at least have the bottle to mix it up on the cases where he's often, on hiding to nothing and furthermore, Arby does have the bottle to make himself look a bit of a "believe any old cobblers, so long as it's not a UFO", type.

Meanwhile in his batcave, I have little doubt that, Mr Oberg will be planning his next thread about some incident, the vast majority of people already have decided wasn't a UFO and already has a perfectly acceptable prosaic explanation. At the same time Mr Oberg will not be appearing on any thread where there is substantial evidence something genuinely strange happened. That's perfectly in keeping with his media appearances, which are all carefully orchestrated so that, he never crops up in shows that don't tow his party line.
snip

I wanted to reply to your comments which I deleted because the thread is titled "Found? Gordon Cooper's 1957 UFO film "sent...to...Washington...never to be seen again" and you don't address the topic preferring, instead, to say nothing anyone wants to read. Ad hominem attacks are not the way to go.

How about, instead, you give us your 2 cents on what "Found? Gordon Cooper's 1957 UFO film "sent...to...Washington...never to be seen again" means to you and can you add new thoughts?

originally posted by: ZetaRediculian
a reply to: Ectoplasm8

An attitude I can only describe as being strangely personal with anger vented at him. As if Jim has struck a deep emotional chord with them, as I said.

Do you think it's possible that he might be Satan? This was one of the first things I noticed when I was new to this site. Jim takes a lot of abuse for simply presenting information that anyone can fact check.

But the really suspicious thing is his very noticeable absence in the Blue Avian thread...in fact, I haven't seen many of the more well known believers challenge the information there. Its like they all just run for the hills. Curious.

Jim Oberg Satan? I didn't even know he was Jewish! Boy, that one gets you a cigar, takes the cake, etc. I don't see the disclaimer "tongue in cheek" so I'm wondering if you're serious or throwing a curve. To use the biblical myth for Jim instead of Stanton stuns me.

I visited the Blue Avian thread and found it insulted intelligence, at least mine. When you see stuff such as this posted in the UFO forum, or anywhere, you have to wonder at the sanity of the person and of those who share the same thoughts. This stuff doesn't come from a mentally stable person but one who took the wrong path. The following is not for minors!

"Amazing interview heralds the beginning of disclosure? Whistleblower reveals.... + updates"

OP - PlanetXisHERE: However, I have changed my mind after reading after watching these videos and reading the info on the website. Massive changes and disclosure could happen by the end of the year!

The information deals with what has been going on in our solar system for the past decades as well as the past hundreds, thousands, and millions of years. Many answers that many have been searching for.

For example:

Who is doing human abductions, why, and what has happened and will happen to some of these abductees who are no longer free,

What ET and ancient civilizations are currently interacting with earth, which ones have negative agendas, which have positive agenda's, which are ambivalent - also, I should add this note from the "whistleblower"

Where do these people get this stuff or are they just being inventive hoping some H'wood or Documentary exec will see it and turn into a big screen epic, or for the "small" screen?