Leslie Kean: UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record (new book)

UFO researcher Leslie Kean has a new book coming out (August 10 release date):

www.amazon.com...

An Air Force major is ordered to approach a brilliant UFO in his Phantom jet over Tehran. He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

With a foreward by JOHN PODESTA!

www.amazon.com...


MOD EDIT: Added in description.
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[edit on August 15th 2010 by greeneyedleo]

Cool, been waiting for this since she was talking about it on the paracast a while back.....

Thanks for the head's up OP. I just pre-ordered. This looks good based on the reviews and I'm curious to see what Podesta has to say.

I am VERY interested to read John Podesta's foreward. He must have wrote it recently, perhaps within this year...

Who published it -- I can get it straight from them. Thanks!

reply to post by JimOberg
You might be interested in Kean's summary of the court case against NASA to gain access to the files of 1965. NASA were instructed to make available any files relating to the aerial phenomena above and around the Kecksburg area in '65.

Despite dozens of news articles across the USA and Europe that described UAP, they couldn't find a single reference to any meteorological event in that period. Apparently an ex-employee, Paul Willis, withdrew the relevant box and never returned it.

If you haven't already read it...THE CONCLUSION OF THE NASA LAWSUIT
Concerning the Kecksburg, PA UFO case of 1965

Hopefully it will be substantive, with clues that lead us on a path of larger revelations and not little more than a compendium of dead-end anecdotes, as such books tend to be.

reply to post by JimOberg


Crown is the publisher.

To those who say only drunks and farmers see UFOs, I highly suggest you purchase a copy of this book to find out for yourself just how many high level Government and Military personal have seen UFOs. The media has spun this subject for too long and need to read books like this one to get the facts.

[edit on 31-7-2010 by ufo reality]

A good interview with Leslie Kean from a recent TV program:
www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by ufo reality
To those who say only drunks and farmers see UFOs, I highly suggest you purchase a copy of this book to find out for yourself just how many high level Government and Military personal have seen UFOs. The media has spun this subject for too long and need to read books like this one to get the facts.

And who might they be? Late-night comedians and university professors? Not anybody we know around here. Straw-man argument. Kean's book is even nastier -- she seems to say people who don't believe in the reality of UFOs are showing signs of mental illness. Sweet.

Kean's big problem in the book, widely shared here, is her insistence that pilots are the BEST observers of anomalous aerial apparitions, instead of -- as research has indicated -- the WORST, for very good and honorable (and safe) reasons.

Originally posted by JimOberg


And who might they be? Late-night comedians and university professors? Not anybody we know around here. Straw-man argument. Kean's book is even nastier -- she seems to say people who don't believe in the reality of UFOs are showing signs of mental illness. Sweet.

Speaking of straw men,ad hominems, etc,.. Kettle = Pot..=...Black...

Kean's big problem in the book, widely shared here, is her insistence that pilots are the BEST observers of anomalous aerial apparitions,

(rightly so by critical thinkers and good reasoning)

instead of -- as research has indicated

(only by the few select researchers you continually use to skew any debate your way)-

the WORST, for very good and honorable (and safe) reasons.

...and throw in a semi-coherent half sentence at the end to pretend to be playing nice and equal....


Your whole argument points to argument from unqualified authority. If pilots cant identify, or at least point out what they are seeing in the skies, you sir can't identify space piss from a space shuttle flight...well, that's your logic anyways....

Originally posted by Toxicsurf
...(only by the few select researchers you continually use to skew any debate your way)-

The National Transportation Safety Board prefers non-pilots to pilots as witnesses to aviation accidents because pilots tend to subconsciously interpet and explain to themselves what is happening, which leads them to editing raw perceptions to be consistent with what their expertise concludes has happened.

And of course, regarding UFO reports, Allen Hynek is not some 'random researcher', he spent the 'years before the mast' so his opinions deserve respect -- and if you want to disagree with him it better be based on equivalent research, not whim and whimsy.

The link also includes two detailed accounts of gross pilot misperceptions of an unrecognized spaceflight event. These indicate that it CAN happen -- the debate is over how OFTEN it happens.

www.zipworld.com.au...

Experienced UFO investigators realize that pilots, who instinctively and quite properly interpret visual phenomena in the most hazardous terms, are not dispassionate observers. Allen Hynek wrote: "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses..." The quote is from "The Hynek UFO Report", page 261 (Barnes and Noble reprint). (271 in original Dell, Dec 1977) He found that the best class of witnesses had a 50% misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88% for military pilots, 89% for commercial pilots. the worst of all categories listed. Pilots could be counted on to perceive familiar objects -- aircraft and ground structures -- very well, Hynek continued, but added a caveat:

"Thus it might surprise us that a pilot had trouble identifying other aircraft, but it should come as no surprise that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects."

Dell page 271






[edit on 16-8-2010 by JimOberg]

Here's a good example of why Kean may have it backwards.

pp. 136-7: Refers to a catalogue of 1305 pilot cases compiled by French investigator Dominique Weinstein, www.project1947.com... “cases for which adequate data is available to categorize the [cause] as unknowns.”

Writes Kean,

One crucial point I have noted, which is shown in Weinstein’s study, is that a UFO’s behavior tends to depend on whether the encounter involves a military aircraft or a civilian passenger plane. Neutrality usually seems the general rule with commercial airlines or private planes, whereas an active interaction often occurs between UFOs and military aircraft. Military pilots usually described the movements of UFOs as they would air maneuvers of conventional aircraft, using terms such as follows, flees, acute turns, in formation, close collision, and aerial combat. Twenty-two military cases in the Weinstein catalogue involve near misses, and six include reported ‘dogfights,’ or combat maneuvers, between the UFOs and the military aircraft. I conclude that these incidents clearly demonstrate that in no way are these examples of natural events, but rather that UFOs are phenomena with a deliberate behavior. The physical nature of UFOs has been proved.

May I suggest an alternate explanation to why two different classes of pilots report UFOs so differently? Because they perceive the UFOs based on their experience and training and interpret unidentified visual phenomena in terms of what they expect to see?

Kean's view, that the UFOs deliberately behave differently when they know the type of pilot they are being seen by, seems a 'stretch' to me.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by Toxicsurf
...(only by the few select researchers you continually use to skew any debate your way)-

The National Transportation Safety Board prefers non-pilots to pilots as witnesses to aviation accidents because pilots tend to subconsciously interpet and explain to themselves what is happening, which leads them to editing raw perceptions to be consistent with what their expertise concludes has happened.

And of course, regarding UFO reports, Allen Hynek is not some 'random researcher', he spent the 'years before the mast' so his opinions deserve respect -- and if you want to disagree with him it better be based on equivalent research, not whim and whimsy.

The link also includes two detailed accounts of gross pilot misperceptions of an unrecognized spaceflight event. These indicate that it CAN happen -- the debate is over how OFTEN it happens.

www.zipworld.com.au...

Experienced UFO investigators realize that pilots, who instinctively and quite properly interpret visual phenomena in the most hazardous terms, are not dispassionate observers. Allen Hynek wrote: "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses..." The quote is from "The Hynek UFO Report", page 261 (Barnes and Noble reprint). (271 in original Dell, Dec 1977) He found that the best class of witnesses had a 50% misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88% for military pilots, 89% for commercial pilots. the worst of all categories listed. Pilots could be counted on to perceive familiar objects -- aircraft and ground structures -- very well, Hynek continued, but added a caveat:

"Thus it might surprise us that a pilot had trouble identifying other aircraft, but it should come as no surprise that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects."

Dell page 271

What? So by your screwy logic, their expertise in identifying aerial phenomena is the reason why they shouldn't be considered reliable witnesses? That's the most backwards reasoning I've ever heard.

That whole "Misidentification of astronomical objects" line is a tired tossaway dismissal that no longer convinces anyone. You'll have to do better than that.






[edit on 16-8-2010 by JimOberg]

[edit on 8/16/2010 by warpcrafter]

Kean refers to the Weinstein list as 1300 “cases for which adequate data is available to categorize the [cause] as unknowns.”

She's bluffing. Nobody collected such data or analyzed it. Weinstein listed what are mostly raw, unverified reports -- running my eye over the list I found many of my own 'favorites', UFOs in Russia caused by missile and space activity.

For Kean, this is all "evidence" for the reality of UFOs.

Admittedly, by no means are all, or even MOST of such reports 'solved' [who has the time and resources]. The issue is this -- when researched, many of these 'unknowns' turn out to not be unknowable at all. But superficially, the pilot reports look just as convincing as others. The existence of gross perceptual and interpretative garbling is demonstrated -- enough to shake the solid faith in the utter accuracy of all the other reports from the same eyewitness category.

Suggestive and intriguing? Doubtlessly. Possibly ET? Un-disprovably.

But a slam-dunk case FOR 'real UFOs'? Not hardly.

[edit on 16-8-2010 by JimOberg]

Originally posted by warpcrafter
What? So by your screwy logic, their expertise in identifying aerial phenomena is the reason why they shouldn't be considered reliable witnesses? That's the most backwards reasoning I've ever heard.

Then I suggest you widen the intellectual horizons of what you allow yourself to hear.

The better witnesses to an unexpected event are precisely those intelligent 'normal people' who do NOT interpret the meaning of the event as they are perceiving it. The subconscious perceptual editing process of that real-time interpretation is a well-known problem with testimony.

Even moreso, as a tale is retold and interpreted over subsequent time, the details become edited -- some accentuated, some suppressed, some dropped, some imagined and added -- to support the tale that the teller intends to deliver. Also, as a tale is multiply retold, the narrator often tends to migrate his own role in the events closer and closer to the center.

As you learn a little more about this process -- a normal progress in education -- you'll see how unjustified some of your certainties are. And you'll be a better reasoning being, for that awareness. Please give it a try.

reply to post by JimOberg


You've read the countless UFO reports from sane/competent observers such as military, pilot, and law enforcement personal coinciding with multiple radar tracking of solid objects defying the laws of physics as we currently know them. Yet you still don't believe the data. Follow the data, theory be damned I say. I'm sure you and Dr. Ed Condon would have got along quite well...

Originally posted by ufo reality
reply to post by JimOberg

 

You've read the countless UFO reports from sane/competent observers such as military, pilot, and law enforcement personal coinciding with multiple radar tracking of solid objects defying the laws of physics as we currently know them. Yet you still don't believe the data. Follow the data, theory be damned I say. I'm sure you and Dr. Ed Condon would have got along quite well...

What theory? I've done original investigation and publication. Enough to realize that some factual assertions in Kean's book are inconsistent with checkable reality.

[edit on 17-8-2010 by JimOberg]

After reading through her conclusion on the lawsuit with NASA, thanks to Kandinsky's link above, I feel convinced that this Leslie Kean is a class act in the world of ufologists. She does not seem interested in personal fame or unfounded speculation, but simply points out consistent loopholes in the statements and actions of organizations like NASA regarding UFO's. I would even say she reminds me a bit of Dr. Ellie Arroway from Sagan's "Contact" -- only in the context of ufology, rather than SETI.

Just my two cents. Maybe I'll use them to buy the book.