The Fab 50's: UFO Investigations and The "Debunkery" Agenda

originally posted by: data5091


If your talking about that 5% of ufo sightings that cannot be explained,.

I think the general consensus was around 20% mate (and that's not including explanations for incidents where the USAF just made them up).

There's a good interview with Dr Hynek below where he discusses the numbers annd states that patterns in UFO behaviour appear globally (he also states that the Condon report was a 'travesty on science').

Historic Film Stock

The Amazing World of Kreskin (1972-1975) Show No. 43

Video Link

Can I firstly applaud a well written and laid out thread. I know it takes a bit of effort to put one together and so this deserves starring and flagging.

The Robertson Panel really did recommend that the UFO subject was glossed over and the public be discouraged from reporting 'flying saucers'. Their conclusion was basically that it was in the interest of the U.S. Government to suppress speculation and coverage of UFO sightings.

There are various ways people have looked at it. Of course one conclusion is to jump straight in and believe that means there was a cover-up of the ET issue. There is also the possibility that the military did not want the public to know that they had no means to defend themselves against these 'saucers' even if they didn't know what they were. So a policy of ignoring unsolved cases and ridiculing witnesses slowly took hold.

There is nothing to substantiate that the US military had any proof that the saucers were from outer space.However they were spooked by the UFO incidents over Washington DC in July 1952 and there was deep concern that a hostile power could flood the U.S with false UFO reports leaving North America open to a surprise attack. The Soviets had already developed their own atomic bomb and cold war paranoia had existed for some time.

For those who have an open mind that UFOs are not always ET then there is also the work of Leon Davidson to consider.

“ECM + CIA = UFO or How to Cause a Radar Sighting”

He was implying that Electronic Counter Measures were the work of the CIA and being tested on radar operators without their knowledge.

"Since 1951, the CIA has caused or sponsored saucer sightings for its own purposes. By shrewd psychological manipulation, a series of 'normal' events has been served up so as to appear as quite convincing evidence of extra¬terrestrial UFOs... (Including) military use of ECM on a classified basis unknown to the radar observers who were involved."

If you follow the document trail then the conclusion would be that an American/NATO UFO 'cover-up' started in the early to mid 1950s. This was more to do with the paranoia that a Soviet intrusion would be missed amongst too many UFO reports rather than the worry of an ET invasion. In later years using the UFO topic would also provide a nice smokescreen for secret aircraft testing. Finally there is also some proof that the governments of this world do hope to glean novel weapon technologies from studying UFOs without knowing what they actually are.

What the document trail does not prove is that the US government (or any other government) has proof of extra-terrestrial visitation. Perhaps the subject is the best kept secret in the whole world? I dare say that the possibility of an extra-terrestrial craft entering Earth's atmosphere or being found buried somewhere is never ruled out. But if anything has been confirmed as ET then it still eludes us common folks.

originally posted by: data5091

originally posted by: ZetaRediculian
a reply to: boncho

The leading theory, at the current time....being the ET or Visitation Hypothesis

Is that the leading theory amongst ufo experts on the Internet?

Obviously it's not the leading theory in any main stream science that I know of.

If your talking about that 5% of ufo sightings that cannot be explained, I would say from what I have read, and seen from some high profile people, many of whom are either PHd's, like this one. or Physisists like this guy who believe like I do and many others do, think we are being visited, and watched.

Sure there is no doubt that there are people that believe in ET that also have some credentials in some field but that doesn't make it "the leading theory". It's the leading theory amongst those that believe in ET maybe. I could list a number of psychologists that would say it's purely a psychosocial thing and I would venture to guess that the psychosocial Hypothesis is the actual leading theory in main stream science.

originally posted by: data5091

originally posted by: ZetaRediculian
a reply to: boncho

The leading theory, at the current time....being the ET or Visitation Hypothesis

Is that the leading theory amongst ufo experts on the Internet?

Obviously it's not the leading theory in any main stream science that I know of.

If your talking about that 5% of ufo sightings that cannot be explained, I would say from what I have read, and seen from some high profile people, many of whom are either PHd's, like this one. or Physisists like this guy who believe like I do and many others do, think we are being visited, and watched.

First guy Don Donderi on alien abductions:

Don Donderi said that these cases were "evidence of psychological processes" that did not "have anything to do with a physical alien abduction,"

Source
Second guy Stanton Friedman:
Spent only 14 years working in industry as a Nuclear Physicist (masters degree) then "retired" and went into ufology for the following 46 years.
Meh. He's not a physicist, he's a ufologist.

You simply have chosen to believe what I regard as bunk.

Harte

originally posted by: karl 12
a reply to: ZetaRediculian


The thread below goes into more detail about the true number of Bluebook's 'unexplained' reports and studies carried out for the U.S. Government by organisations like the Battelle Institute.


Official UFO Unexplained Report Percentages.

Thanks. I should probably update my shtick and I appreciate you keeping me honest but the general point I am attempting to make is that the body of evidence should include the cases that have been identified also whatever the ratio.

When it came to the findings of Bluebook Special Report 14 they concluded 'the better the quality of the sighting report, the more likely it was unexplainable'; that 'UNKNOWNS were observed for longer than KNOWNS' and that less than 2% of reports fell in the hoax category..

Yes, this is accurate from what I recall. The "better quality" stat is definitely interesting but I never really understood the significance of it other than it being an anomaly of some sort. Was there any explanation ever?

Apparently about 30 or 40 per cent of Bluebook cases may have been 'miscategorized' by the USAF as 'identified' and the true number of credible cases grossly underestimated -also, there were serious claims that the Bluebook team from the 1960's went back and sutbstituted official summary cards for unexplained cases 'to reduce the number of unknowns at any cost' so when it comes to the actual stats they all may be a bit fudged.

Yeah, there are a lot of problems with the Bluebook data. I view it as an interesting historical document rather than an accurate study of UFOs. It's definitely dated material. One of the issues I have is that they had a category for "Crapckpot" cases. It's not a very scientific term for one and it also implies that someone was making a determination on which cases were acceptable. I have to brush up on this but keep me honest if you need to.

originally posted by: shawmanfromny
As far as Government agents intimidating witnesses and confiscating evidence, this article also provides great insight into this issue. The article discusses the 1986 UFO case reported by the crew of a Japan Airlines 747. They were flying over Alaska when they spotted two unidentified objects keeping up with their plane. The pilot then witnessed a huge, bright, circular craft that he described as being four times larger than the 747 he was flying.

“When the controller checked with military people, they said they did have a target [on radar] — not just one target, but a double primary target,” said John Callahan, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Accidents, Evaluations and Investigations Division in the 1980s. “When the pilot first reported the UFO, he said it was a huge ball of light and about four times bigger than the 747 he was flying,” Callahan told The Huffington Post. The more than 30-minute close encounter ended when the UFO vanished. But the most telling part of this case is the aftermath when Callahan was contacted by the CIA. “I get a call from this guy in the CIA who tells me he wants to talk to me about the UFO. I said, ‘What UFO?’ He said, ‘The one that was in Alaska.’” The next day, Callahan found himself at a meeting with individuals from Pres. Ronald Reagan’s scientific staff, the CIA and FBI, where he was told to hand all the materials about the case over to them. “After I showed them the materials three times, one of the scientists stood up asking questions about the radar. Finally, another man stepped forward and said, ‘OK,’ and he pointed to the screen and said, ‘This event never happened. We were never here. We’re confiscating all this data and you’re all sworn to secrecy.’

www.huffingtonpost.com... hannel_n_935847.html

I think the above case offers some strong circumstantial evidence proving the Government is covering up evidence that prove these are unknown alien craft, by intimidating witnesses and confiscating all pertinent evidence.

Contradictory Witness Statements

At this point, Callahan’s credentials and story has never actually been independently confirmed. In fact, back in 2007, as we were attempting to verify his claims, we contacted CIA Science Analyst Ron Pandolfi. Ron admitted that both he and Maccabee had in fact attended an FAA meeting like the one Callahan described. However, he did not recall anyone making any statement that the meeting never happened, or that the data should be covered up.

Pandolfi stated, “I don’t recall trying to ‘keep the sighting hushed’ since it was already widely publicized.”

In fact Pandolfi turned over all the data to Maccabee to conduct a full investigation and report (which Maccabee published in 1987).

Pandolfi did say that he recalled John Callahan being present at the meeting, and that all discussion regarding “delaying dissemination of information” was between Bruce and Callahan. This implies, of course, that Callahan could have mistaken Maccabee for a “CIA guy,” when he was actually only there as a private contractor.

We contacted Maccabee and he also confirmed that he was at such a meeting and received all of the data for his analysis and report, but he also did not recall anyone at the meeting trying to cover it up.

We reported this contradiction to Leslie Kean of the Coalition for Freedom of Information – the only listed contact for Callahan – and she initially did not believe us. Therefore, I put her in direct contact with Pandolfi and Maccabee, who both told her exactly what they told us. Kean refused to let us speak directly with Callahan to resolve the discrepancy, and eventually refused to cooperate regarding getting any clarification from Callahan.

www.realityuncovered.net...

JAL 1628 is pretty well documented and Callahan has been pretty outspoken about the case so the intimidation and confiscating of evidence seems to have been pretty ineffective in this case. I actually wish that there were more cases like this that were this well documented.

a reply to: mirageman

There are lots of reasons for government coverups of UFOs which are not related to ET's!

Soviet missile tests, Corona film pickups, ECM, etc. And anti-Soviet psyops: convince Them that We had help from crashed ET saucers or something.

At some level something like this worked: The 1980's "Star Wars" missile defense. All the serious US scientists said, correctly, it was an engineering impossibility. And the Soviet scientists in 1984 told their own leadership exactly the same thing: no way it will work, nothing to worry about. But the Soviet Communists were not so bright thugs in general, and they distrusted their own scientists as being unreliable liberals and Jews. [This was told to my father by a top Soviet scientist.]

They were scared of magic American technology, which didn't exist.