MUFON UFO Journal- January 2005: Number 441

8/3/2019 MUFON UFO Journal- January 2005: Number 441

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http://www.mufon.com/http://www.theblackvault.com/wiki/


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Inthisissue

N ew book s o l i d i f i e sFlatwoods case, p. 11

Navy plane encountersgiant UF O, p. 7.

M U F O N Forum, p. 8.Photos from Turkeyappear genuine, p. 9."Planet" on el l ipt ica l

path discovered, p. 9.G i g a n t i c U F O r e -ported in the UK, p. 10.UFO reports shak eIsrael, p. 21Calendar, p. 22.

ColumnsDirector's Message 2Filer's Files 15Stan Friedman 18Jenny Randies 20McLeod's Night Sky 24

January 2005No. 441$4.00

A XMutual UFO Network

D r. James Deardorff D r B e r n a r d Ha i sc h

Dr. Bruce Maccabee Dr. H. E. Puthoff

Scientiststell w hyotherscientistsshouldstudyth e UFOphenomenon.

The article beginson page 3.


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January 2005 Number 441

M U FO NUFO Journal

(USPS 002-970)(ISSN 0270-6822)Mutual UFO NetworkPost Office Box 369Morrison, CO 80465-0369

T e l : 303-932-7709Fax: 303-932-9279

International DirectorJohn F. Schuessler, M.S.

Editor:Dwight Connelly, M.S.14026 Ridgelawn RoadMartinsville, IL 62442Tel: (217) 382-4502mufonuf ojournal @ hotmail.com

Advertising Director:John F. Schuessler, M.S.

Columnists:Gavin A. J. McLeodGeorge Filer, M.B.A.Jenny RandiesStanton Friedman, M.S.

MUFON on the Internet:http://www.mufon.comMUFON e-mail address:rnufonhq@ aol.com

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Director's MessageB y John F. SchuesslerCall for reportsUFO reports h a v e been coming inat a nearly record pace from all overth e world . A s mos t of you kn o w , th ehard w ork real ly starts af ter th e reportis in the hands of the state directors ,a s s i s t a n t s t a t edirectors, states e c t i o n d i r e c -to rs , a nd f ieldinvestigators.They go in tothe field to meett h e w i t n e s s e sand obtain the i rreports, photos ,v i d e o s , a n dp h y s i c a l e v i -

dence . This isprobably the mos t in te re s t ing and ex-c i t i n g w o r k t ha t is done by M U F O N .Then we brin g the results of the in-ves t iga t ions to the pages of the Jour-na l after th e inves t iga t ions are finishedand the repor ts are submi t t ed . Alongwith all of the invest igat ive information,i t helps us get the reports to the Jour-nal readers more r ap id ly if a nar ra t iveversion of the inves t iga t ion is inc luded

John Schuessler

in th e f inal report. O ur Journal edi toris s t a n d in g by ready to pr in t th e resultsof y o u r w o r k .W e hope y ou wi l l s w a m p h im withreports t h roughou t 2005.Spacing problemJournal readers m ay have n ot iced al ittle extra whi te space betwe en articlesin th e Decem ber issue. This was a pro-duct ion prob lem and shou ld n ot occuragain.Our Journal edi tor produced a prop-erly spaced layout, bu t when it was con-verted for p r in t i n g th e s pac ing w en tawry . The good new s is that th e excel -lent con ten t w as s t i l l all there.

Fund drive responseW e w a n t to t h a n k you for the excel -lent response to our reques t fo r specialc o n t r ib u t i o n s fo r M U F O N .W ith th e cost of mater i a ls , postage,an d services spiraling upwa rd, the onlyw ay we can keep m o v i n g forward isthrough th e generosity of our members .The fund dr ive runs to the end of J a n u -a r y .

(Continued on page 22 )Change of address and subscription/extra copies inquiries should be

sent to M U F O N , P .O . Box 369, Morrison, CO 80465-0369.Copyright 2005 by the Mutual UFO Network. All Rights ReservedNo pan of this docume nt m ay be r eproduced in any form wi thout the wr i t ten permiss ion of the C opyr ightOwners, Permiss ion is hereby granted to quote up to 200 words of any one article, provided th e author is credi ted,and the statement. "Copyr ight 2005 by the Mutual UF O Network. PO Box 369. Morrison. C O 80465-0369' is

includedThe contents of the MUFON UFO Journal are de te rm ined by the edi tor, and do not nece ssar ily ref lect theofficial position of the Mutua l UF O Network Opinions e x p r e s s e d ar e solely those of the indiv idual au thors an dcolumnists, and do not necessar i ly re f lect th e opinion of the editor or staff of MUFON.Th e Mutual UFO Network. Inc. is exem pt f rom Fede ral income Tax under Se ct ion 501 (c) (3) of the InternalRevenue C ode . MUFON is a publicly supported organization of the type described m Se ction 509 (a) (2) Donorsmay deduct contr ibut ions f rom thei r Federal Income Tax Bequ ests, legacies, dev i ses t ransfers, or gifts are alsodeductible for es ta te and gift purposes, provided they me et th e applicable provisions ol Sect ions 2055. 2106, and2522 of the Internal Reve nue Code MUFON is a Te xas nonprofit corporationTh e MUFON UF O Journals published monthly by the Mutua l UF O Network , Inc . Morr ison. C O SecondClass postage paid at Versai l les. MO .individual Membership S45/year U S . $55 outs ide the U SFami ly members: $10 per person additionalS tudent (18 years an d under) $35 U S and $45 outs ide the U SDonor. $100/year Profess ional $250/ye ar. Patron $500/yearBenefactor (L i fe t ime M e m b e r ) $1 000First class Journal del ivery (m envelopes) U.S and Canada only $!2/year additionalAi r Mail Journal del ivery to al l other countr ies outs ide the United State s $35/year addit ionalPostmaster Send form 3579 to advise change of address to MUFON UFO Journal, P.O Box 369. Morrison,

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Four experts explain why scientistsshould study the UFO phenomenon

B y Dr. James Deardorff, Dr. Ber-nard Haisch, Dr. Bruce Maccabee,& Dr. H. E. Puthoff.

IntroductionThe ever recurring question of whyEarth has seemingly not been visitedby extraterrestrials (ETs) ha s receivedconsiderable discussion un der the topicof "Fermi's paradox."Th e problem originated as a quip byEnrico Fermi to c o l l e a gue s in LosAlamos over lunch one day in 1950.Whether one assumes th e existenceof only one other civilization or of manyalien civilizations in our Milky W aygalaxy, an d whether on e assumes colo-nization inv olvin g interstellar travel atnear-light speed or far below, diffusionmodeling predicts colonization or atleast v isitation of all habitable planetsin the galaxy on timescales of tens ofmillions of years, far less than the ap-proxim ate 13 x 109 year age of the gal-ax y itself. Thu s the paradox: Where arethey[ l ]?Theoretical possibilities unknown toFermi make the paradox even strongertoday. One can now rationally conjec-ture about prospects afforded by adja-cent M-brane universes [2]. Indeed, ift h e m u l t i d i m e n s i o n s u n d e r l y i n gsuperstring and M-brane theory are cor-rect, there could be inhabited universesseparated from our own by minute, or-thogonal distances.Also, anthropic reasoning has re-cently been applied to inflation theory,arriving once again at the conclusionthat we should find ourselves within anenormously larger galactic civilization[3].While the "W e are alone" solutionto Fermi's paradox was once a seem-ingly valid one, this answer is now in-compatible with the infinite universean d random self-sampling assumptionconsistent with inflation theory.W e thus find ourselves in the curi-ous position that current cosm ological

(See About the Authors on page 5)theory predicts that we should be ex-periencing extraterrestrial visitation. Atthe same time, curre nt physics and as-trophysics sugg est that such visitationmay n ot be as impossible as had beenthought.

Recent scientific advancesIn recen t astronom ical d iscoveries,over 10 0 exoplanets have been cata-logued, w ith detection sen sitivity nowincreased to the point where, in one in-stance, a Jupiter-sized planet w as de -duced to be in a Jupiter-like orbi taround a Sol-like star [4].In the field of exobiology, m uch re-cent activity suggests that some of thebuilding blocks fo r life may originatein space as well as be transported bymeteorites [5-6]. The possibility ofwidespread panspermia has receivednew impetus [7-8]. These findings andstudies make plausible the hypothesisthat there is intelligent life elsewherein the universe.This is, of course, the fundamenta lassumption m ade by the proponents ofSETI, the Search fo r Extraterrestrial

Intelligence using microwave or opti-cal mean s of detection.T h e e x t r a t e r r e s t r i a l h y p o t h e s i s(ETH), that intelligent life from "else-where" in the universe could be visit-ing Earth, ha s become less implausiblet h r o u g h s u g g e s t i o n s t h a t t h evelocity-of-light constraint-"they can' tge t here from there"-is not as restrict-ing as had been assumed previously.This restriction has its origin in thespecial theory of relativity, wh ich wedo n ot quest ion. However, within th econtext of general relativity (G R) therear e three approaches which m ay per-m it legitimately bypassing this limit,given sufficiently advanced (perhaps bymillions of years!) knowledge of phys-ics and technology.O n e a p p r o a c h p o p u l a r i z e d byThorne an d Sagan concerns the possi-bility of wormholes, or cosmic sub-

Editor's NoteThis article appears in the curre ntissue of the Journal of the BritishInterplanetary Society (BIS), and isused with the their permission. Th eBIS, founded in 1933, is the w orld'slongest-established organ ization de-voted solely to support ing an d pro-moting the exploration of space andaeronautics.Dr. Bernard Haisch, one of the au-thors of this article, notes: "This ap-pears to be the first article on theUFO topic published in a main-stream scientific jour nal since the1979-1980 articles in Applied Op-tics by Maccabee on the NewZealand sightings."ways, a form of shortcut through thespace-time metric [9].Using the standard GR as a basis,certain m athematical requirements fortraversable wormholes have been de -rived and published in the scientific lit-eratu re, and it appears tha t there is thepossibility of engineering a wormholemetric, at least in principle [10].A second more recent approach pub-lished in the GR literature has beendubbed the "Alcubierre Warp Drive"[11-12]. Unlike the speed of light limitthrough space, there is no limit to thespeed at which space i t se l f mightstretch.Faster than light (FTL) relative mo-tion is part of inflation theory, an d pre-s u m a b l y th e u n i v e r s e b e y o n d theHubble distance is receding from usfaster t h a n e .It was shown that a spaceship con-tained in a v olume of Minkowski spacecould in principle make use of FTLexpansion of space-time behind, and asimilar contraction in front, with the in-convenience of time dilation an d unto-ward accelerations being overcome.A related approach involves con-

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structing a "Krasnikov tube" [13] toconnect spatially remote locales. Ofcourse so-called exotic matter wouldbe required fo r either case.If GR itself were to be reinterpretedin terms of a polarizable vacuum as firstproposed by Dicke [14], this wouldopen the possibility of a different typeof metric en gineering in which the di-electric properties of the vacuum m ightbe altered in such a way as to raise thelocal propagation v elocity of light.In effect on e would be creating a lo-cal index of refraction of less tha n unity[15].Finally, there is the conjectured pos-sibility of making use of the additionald i m e n s i o n a l i t i e s of M - b r a n e an dsuperstring theory to t ransfer into ad -jacent universes, where th e speed oflight limit may be quite different, an dreentering our universe at the desiredlocation. This is by far the most specu-lative possibility.Clearly, when it comes to engineer-ing warp drive or wormhole solutions,seemingly insurmountable obstaclesemerge, such as unattainable energyrequirements [16] or the need for ex-otic matter [17].Thus, if success is to be achieved, itm u s t rest on some yet unfore se e nbreakthrough about which we can onlyspeculate, such as a technology to co-here otherwise random vacuum fluc-tuations [18].

N o n e t h e l e s s , th e poss i b i l i t y ofreduced-time interstellar travel by ad-vanced extraterrestrial (ET) civiliza-t ions is not , as naive considerat ionmight hold, fundamentally ruled out bypresently know n physical.principles.ET knowledge of the physical uni-verse m ay comprise new principleswh ich allow some form of FTL travel.This possibility is to be taken seriously,since the average age of suitable starswithin the "galactic habitable zone," inwhich th e Earth also resides, is foundto be about 109 years older than the sun[19] suggesting the possibility of civi-lizations extremely advanced beyondour ow n .There ar e further reasons why the"We are alone" solut ion to Fermi'sparadox should perhaps be set aside infavor of the ETH.A previou sly preferred so lution, that

biogenesis is an exceedingly rare eventin conjunct ion with both panspermiaand interstellar travel being inoperative[1], is now scarcely tenable in light ofthe cosmological considerations alreadydiscussed. The ETH appears to be themost viable remaining solution, where"ET" is taken in a general non-Earthlysense that could include extra-dimen-s iona l rea lms , as in M - b r a n e an dsuperstring theory.Given th e highly advanced ET sci-ence an d technology to be expected inc o n s i d e r a b l y older c i v i l i z a t i o n s ,coupled with th e many observat ionalreports since W W n of highly advancedtechnology seemingly operating at willwithin Earth's skies, it is only logical tosearch for evidence of ET visitations inat least a fraction of the ongoing, unex -plainable reports pop ularly referred toas "UFO sightings."Reluctance to do so could result inour failure to realize that observationsof "genuine" ET visitations have beenoccurring. This approach, which w e fol-low here, explores the likelihood thatw e actually do belong to a large civili-zation, but are unaw are of that fact. [3].U.S. Air Force Response(1947-1969)Reports of unknown objects in theskies, appearing as some sort of flyingcraft and exhibiting extraordinary m a-neuvers, first became know n to the gen-eral public in 1947.

The first publicized sight ing oc-curred on June 24 of that year, afterwhich there were many hundreds ofsightings during th e following m onths.The phenomenon ha s been continu ingever si nee [20-24].At first the Air Force collected thesighting reports fo r analysis in its op-erat ion Project Sign (1948-1949) .This w as succeeded by Project Grud ge(1949-1952) an d then Project BlueBook (1952-1969) [20,25].Some 20% of Project Blue Book'ssight ings from 1953-1965 were leftunex plained , if their "insufficient data"category is included [22].Th e Bat te l le Memoria l Ins t i tute(BMI; Columbus , OH ) discovered, intheir study of 3,201 reports from 1947through 1952 that the percentage ofunknowns (unexplainable sightings) in-creased with increasing quality of the

sighting information an d reliability ofthe observers [21].A surprisingly high percentage, 30 %of the civilian sightings and an evenmore surprising 38%, of the militarysightings rated as excellent in quality,were listed as unknown.On the other h and, only about 16%of the civilian and 20% of the militarysightings rated as poor were unkn ow n.The increase in the percentage of un-know ns with increasing quali ty of there por t is an u n e x p e c t e d r e s u l t i fsightings were al l explainable as mis-takes (failure to correctly identify thes ighted phenomenon) by e i ther theobserver(s) or the scientists w ho ana-lyzed the sightings.In this co llection of 3,201 sightingsnone were listed as hoaxes, an d only1.5% were listed as caused by psycho-logical effects.This result, discovered during th eseveral year long BM I study , refutes theclaim m ade in the Condon Report [22]that UFO reports are from "less wellinformed individuals" who are "notnecessarily reliable."It is worthy of note that Condon hadaccess to the results of the BM I study,bu t there is no reference to it in theCondon Report .Project Blue Book culminated in1969 with the government sponsoredCondon Report [22]. In the openingsection of the Report its director con-cluded that, after years of investigation,th e U.S. A ir Force had found nothingt ruly ne w- no t h i ng t ha t suppor t e dclaims of new physics or the ETH-andthat continued invest igat ion probablywould not find anything truly new inth e future.Th e Report recommended that theA ir Force end its investigation p roject,which it did in late 1969.

The Condon Report (1968)In the late 1960s the U.S. A ir Forceissued a contract to the Universi ty ofColorado to carry out a scientific stud yof evidence concerning the UFO phe-nomenon.Th e director of the project was Prof.Edward U. Condon, a distinguished andinfluential physicist w ho made no se-cret of his opinion even at the outsetthat no sub stan tive evidence for extra-terrestrial visitation was liable to result.MUFON UFO JOURNA L JA NUA RY 2005


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The study was relatively brief (twoyears) and had a notably low budget(approximately $500,000) for a seriousscientific study.

When the Condon Report was re-leased in 1968, the American scientificcommunity accepted its apparentlynegative conclusion concerning evi-dence for extraterrestrial visitation in agenerally uncritical way, and to someextent even an enthusiastic way sinceit offered an end to a troublesome situ-ation.A n endorsement of the Report by theNational Academy of Sciences tookplace following an unusually rapid re-view, and the Air Force quickly usedthe Report as a justification to termi-nate any fur ther public involvementwith the topic.

The negative conclusion of the Re-port is more apparent than real, how-ever, since there is a substantial discrep-ancy between the conclusion in the"Summary of the Study" written byCondon singlehandedly, and the con-clusion one could reasonably draw fromthe evidence presented in the main bodyof the Report.

Such a dichotomy was possible be-cause the study was a project for whichthe director, Condon, had sole author-ity; it was not the work of a committeewhose members would have to reachsome consensus conclusion.

An analysis of the Condon Reportby Sturrock [26] details the many dis-agreements between Condon's dismiss-ive summary and the actual data.

Given the thousand-page length ofthe Report, one can safely assume thatvery few in the scientific communitywould have devoted the time necessaryto read the entire document.

The impact of the Report was thuslargely due to Condon's leveraging hisprestigious scientific reputation into anacceptance of his own personal viewsas representing the apparent outcomeof a scientific investigation

Indeed, as Sturrock documents,Condon actually took no part in the in-vestigations, and indicated the conclu-sion he intended to draw well beforethe data were properly examined-hardly a scientific approach.The portion of the Condon Reportthat contains its sighting analyses does

About the AuthorsDr. James Deardorff graduated fromStanford University with a B.S. in physicsin 1950, then earned a B.A.in meteorologyat UCLA in 1951.Following a tour as a Naval officer, hereceived the M.S.an d Ph.D. degrees fromthe Universityof Washington in meteorol-ogy.He worked at the National Center fo rAtmospheric Research, even tually becom-ing a senior scientist.After 16 years there, he went to OregonState Un iversi ty as a research professor inthe Department of Atmospheric Sciences,becoming interested in UFOs in the 1970s.It was about this time that he had thefirst of what would be five or six UFOsightings. In 1986 he took early retiremen tan d began to devote his time to ufologyan d New Testament research.His concentration ha s been on the BillyMeier case, w hich invo lves both UFOs an dthe Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ), w hich, if genu-ine, he believes is the source of the gospelof Matthew.From his study of the TJ came his firstbook, Celestial T eachings: The Emergenceo f the True Testament o f Jmmanuel (Jesus).He later wrote two additional books, Prob-lems o f New Testament Gospel O rigins, andJesus in India: A Reexamination of Jesus'Asian Traditions in the Light of EvidenceSupporting Reincarnation.He has also w ritten articles on UFOs.D r. B e rnard Hai s ch w as born inStuttgart, G ermany, but is a U.S. citizen. Hegraduated from Indiana Univ ersity in 1971with a BS (high distinction) in astrophys-ics, and the Ph.D.in astronomy from theUniversity of Wisconsin in 1975.He is curren tly chief science officer atManyOn e Networks. Previous employmentincludes staff scientist fo r Lockheed Mar-tin, scientific editor for The AstrophysicalJournal, deputy director of the Center fo rEU V Astrophysics, editor-in-chief of theJournal of Scientific Exploration, visitingscientist at the Astronomical Institute, an d

research associate at the Join Inst. Lab.Astrophysics at the U. of Colorado.He has written more than 130 papers invarious journals, as well as co-authoringtwo books Solar and Stellar Flares, an dThe Many F aces of the Sun: A Summary ofthe Results from NASA's Solar MaximumMission.Dr. Haisch has served as a mem ber andleader in num erous scientific organizations.Dr. Bruce Maccabee holds the B.S. in

physics from Worcester Polytechnic Insti-tute, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in physics fromThe Am erican University..He began his long career at the NavalSurface Warfare Center in 1972, and hasworked on optical data processing, gen-eration of underwater sound with lasers,and various aspects of the Strategic De-fense Init ia t ive(SDI) an d Ballistic Mis sileDefense (BMD), using high power lasers.He is the author or co-author of aboutthree dozen technical articles, and morethan 100 UFO articles. He wrote the lastchapter of The Gulf Breeze Sightings, andco-authored with Edward Walters UFOsAre Real, Here's the Proof.His more recent books include TheUFO/FBI Connection and a novel, Abduc-tion in My Life.He has been involved with UFO re-search since the 1960s wh en he joined theN a t i o n a l Inves t iga t ions Commit tee onAerial Phenomena ( N I C A P ) . He became amember of MUFON in 1975, and has servedas MUFON State Director for Maryland formany years, as well as a MUFON photoconsultant an d Sym posium speaker.In 1979 he was instrumental in estab-lishing the Fund for UFO Research, an dserved as chairm an for 13 years. He cur-rently serves on the board of the Fund.He has investigated a number of high-profile UF O cases in detail, including theMcMinnvil le photos. Gulf Breeze photos,the 1997 Mexico City video, and the 2004Mexican Air Force images.

Dr. Harold .E. Puthoff is a 1967 gradu-ate of Stanford University,and since 1985has served as director of the Institute forAdvanced Studies at Austin. ' -H i s professional background spansmore than 40 years of research at Gen eralElectric, Sperry, the National SecurityAgency, Stanford University, and SRI In-ternational.He has published num erous papers onelectron-beam devices, lasers, and quan-tum zero-point-energy effects, and has pat-ents in the laser, communications; and en-ergy fields.His current interests range from theo-retical studies concerning gravitation, in-ertia, cosmology, and energy research tolabora tory s tud ies of i n n o v a t i v e ap-proaches to energy generation an d spacepropulsion.He is the author of a textbook, Funda-mentals of Quantum Electronics, as wellas num erous papers an d articles.

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n ot suppor t th e " S u m m a r y of theStudy" writ ten by Condon [26].Many of the events presented withinits Case Studies section do fall into the"unidentified" category of UFOs, fo rwhich th e Report's definition was, inessence: "A puzz ling st imu lus for areport of something seen in the sky orlanded on the earth that could not beidentified as having an ordinary natu-ral origin."In a detailed review of this Report,however, it was noted that "The sheerbulk of the report , much of it 'scien-tific padding,' cannot conceal from any-one w ho studies it closely that it exam-ines only a tiny fraction of the reallypuzzling UFO reports, an d that its sci-entific argumentation is often unsatis-factory. Of rough ly ninety cases that itspecifically con fron ts, more than thirtyare conceded to be unexplained." [27]Four of the cases, reanalyze d an d re-ported in detail at the 1969 A A A SSymposium, disclosed ho w unscientificthe Condon R eport's treatment of themhad been; the reanalyses have sincegone unrefuted.Hence we cannot agree wi th theCon don Report's assertion that the phe-nomenon provides no new subjects fo rscience to explore, given that manysightings were left unexplained.Furthermore, in m a n y of the casesthat the Report claimed to have identi-fied, that goal was achieved merelythrough assuming that th e witnessesha d seen something differing in detailfrom wh at they had reported.Also, a committee of the AmericanInstitute of Aeronautics an d Astronau-tics in 1971 found "it difficult to ignorethe small residue of well-documentedbu t unex plainable cases that form th ehard core of the UFO controversy"[2B]. Clearly, the Condon Report wasl e f t i n a n u n s a t i s f a c t o r y s t a t e .[20,24-26,29-30]The p r i m a r y c o n c l u s i o n of theCon don panel sidestepped the main is-sue, the failure to explain ev ery sight-ing, by saying, "The evidence presentedon Unidentif ied Flying Objects show sno indication that these phenom ena con-stitute a direct p hysical threat to nationalsecu rity. [22]This is not inconsistent, however,with some fraction of unexplained re-

ports representing actual ET visitations.(To be continued in the FebruaryJournal.)References1 .S. Webb, "If the Universe is Teemingwith Aliens . . .Where is Everybody? FiftySolutions to the Fermi Paradox and theProblem of Extraterrestrial Life,"Copernicus Books, New York, 2002.2. E. Dudas, "Theory and phenomenol-ogy of type I strings and M-theory," Class,Q u a n t . G ra v . , 17, R41, 2000, (hep-ph /0006190).3 . K.D. O l u m , " C o n f l i c t b e t w e e nan th rop ic reason ing and observa t ion ,"ANALYSIS, 64,p.l,2004, (gr-qc/0303070).4. S. Udry, M . Mayor, an d N.C.Santos,"Statistical properties of exoplanets. 1. Theperiod distribution: Constraints for the mi-gration scenario," Astron. Astrophys., 407,p.369, 2003.5. B.C. Coughlin, "Searching for an alienhaven in the heavens," Proc, Nail. Aced.Sci. U.S.A. . 98, p. 796, 2001.

6. D.P. Gla vin , 0. Botta, G. Cooper, andJ.L. B ada, "Identification of amino acid sig-natures in carbonaceous chondrites," Proc.Natl. Aced. Sci. U.S.A. , 98 p.2138, 2001.7 . M.K. W a l l i s a n d N.C.Wickramasinghe , "Inters tel lar t ransfer ofplanetary microliters," Man. Not R. Astron.Soc., 348, p,52, 2004.8. W.M. Napier, "A mechan ism for in-terstellar panspermia," Man. Not. R . Astron.Soc., 340, p.46,2004.9 . M.S. M o r r i s , a n d K.S. Thome,"Wormholes in spacetime an d their use forinterstellar t ravel : A tool fo r teaching gen-eral re l a t iv i ty , " Am. J . Phys . , 56, p.395,1988.10. M. Visser, "Lorentzian Wormholes:From Einstein to Hawking, " AIP Press ,Woodbury, New York, 1996.11. M. Alcubierre, "The warp d r ive :Hyper-fast travel within general relativity,"Class. Quant. Grav. , 11 , p.L73,1994.1 2 . H.E. P u t h o f f , "SETI, th ev e l o c i t y - o f - l i g h t l i m i t a t i o n , a n d t h eAlcubierre warp drive: A n integrating over-view," Phys. Essays, 9. p. 56, 1996.13. S.V. Krasnikov , "Hyperfast Interstel-lar Travel in G eneral Relativity," Phys. Rev.D , 57 , p.4760,1998.14 . R.H.Dicke, "Gravitation without aPrinciple of Equivalence," Rev Mod. Phys. ,29 , p.363,1957.15.H.E. Puthoff , "Polarizable- vacuum(PV) approach to general relativity," Found.PhyS. , 32 , p.927, 2002.16 . M.J.Pfenn ing an d L.H.Ford, "Theunphysical nature of warp drive,"Class. Quant. Grove, 14, p. 1743, 1997.17. M. Visser, S. Kar, and N. Dadhich,"Traversable W ormholes w i th a rb i t ra r i lysmall energy condition violations," Phvs .Rev. Lett. , 90 , p.201102-1, 2003.

18. H.E. Puthoff , S.R. Lit t le , and M.Ibison, "Engineering the zero-point fieldand po lar izable v acu um fo r in te rs te l la rflight," JBIS, 55 , p. 137, 2002.19 . C.H. Linew eaver, Y. Fenner, andB.K. Gibson, "The galactic habitable zoneand the age distribution of complex life inthe Milky W ay," Science, 303, p.59.2004.20. D.M. lacobs, "The U FO Controversyin America," I n d i a n a Univers i ty P ress ,Bloomington, Indiana, 1975.21. Project Blu e Book Special Report No.14,1955.22. E.U. C o n d o n , an d D.S. Gil lmor ,"Final Report of the Scientific Study ofUn identified Flying Ob jects, " B a n t a mBooks, New York, 1969.23. R.M.Dolan, "UFOs and the Na-tional Security State," Hampton Roads Pub-l ishing Co.,Charlottesville, Virgin ia,2002.24. R.H. Hall, "TheUFO Evidence," vol.II , Scarecrow Press , Lanh am, M arylan d,2001.

Large triangular objectreported in IndiaHard on the heels of the my steriou sMiG-21 crash in the desert west ofBikaner came two sightings of a verylarge triang ular UFO in India.One of these, on Nov. 5, 2004, in-volved the Bhadha Atomic ResearchCentre (BA RC) in Trombay, a sub urbof Mum bai, India's largest city, whereworkers saw a bright light beyond the

windows of the plant's Cirrus 40-mega-watt heav y wa ter reactor building.Wh e n they w ent outdoors, into th eparking lot,they saw "a large triang u-lar UFO hovering si lently" overhead.The object then flew slowly over theplant grounds and hovered above th ebuilding containing BARC's Dhruva100-megawatt heav y wa ter reactor.T h e o b j e c t r e m a i n e d in v i e wfo r several minutes, making no noise,before it retreated in a northwesterlydirection."W e think it may have been headingback to the Himalayas," Krishnari BaiDharapurnanda, UFO Rou ndup corre-spond ent in India, reported.The BAR C p lant was built in 1957by Prime Minister Pandit JawaharlalNehru and named in honor of HbmiBhad ha, India's leading nuclear scien-tist.-Thanks to UFO Roun dup, Vol. 9,No. 47. Editor: Joseph Trainor

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Crew of N avy plane has encounter with UFOBy Major Donald E. Keyhoe

From the NICAP recordsIt was early in 1959 when I learnedof this hidden report-a startling en coun -ter with a UFO. The lead came in a briefm e s s a g e f r o m A d m . D e l m a r S .Fahrney, former Navy missile chief,whom I had k n o w n fo r years. "Capt.James Taylor, USN, Ret., has an im-portant UFO sighting made by a nav alp i lo t a n d h i s c r e w . Call h i m a tSpacetronics, Inc., in Washington, Dis-trict 7-9481."That night, when Cap t. Taylor gavem e this dramatic Nav y report, I couldsee why it had never been released tothe public. Later, Ad m. Fahrney and Imet at the Army-Navy Club and dis-cussed the details. Fahrney knew, aswell as I did, of other hidden UFOcases-some of them highly significant.But this one stood out in im portance.It ha d happened in 1956. Cruising at19,000 feet, a Navy R7V-2 transport-a four-engine Super-Constellation-wasflying west across th e Atlantic Ocean.The next stop was Gander, Ne wfo und -land. Final destination, Nav al Air Sta-t ion, Patuxe nt , M D.The night was clear, visibility unlim-ited. In the senior pilot's seat, Com-mander George B enton was checkingthe dimly-lit instrum ents. At 34, Ben tonha d a decade of N a vy flying behindhim. He had made the Atlantic cross-ing more than two hun dred t imes.Back in the cabin were two extraNavy air crews, enroute home fromforeign duty. Most of these men wereasleep. Inc luding Benton 's regular andrelief crews, there were nearly 30 air-men-pilots, navigators and flight engi-neers aboard th e Constellation.As Cm dr. Ben ton finished his cock-pit check, he glanced out at the stars.Then he leaned forward, puzzled. Afew minu tes before, the sea below hadbeen dark. Now there was a cluster oflights, like a village, about 25 milesahead.Benton looked over at his co-pilot,Lt. Peter J. Mooney. "What do youmake of those lights?" Moon ey peereddown, start led. "Looks like a smalltown!"

"That's w h a t I thought ." Bentonquickly called the nav igator, Lt. AlfredC. Erdman. "We must be way of fcourse. There's land dow n there.""It can ' t be land." Erdman hurriedforward from his map table. "That laststar sight shows" He broke off, star-in g dow n at the clustered lights."Well?" said B enton.'They must be ships," said Erdm an."May be a rendezv ous for some specialoperation.""They don't look like ships," saidB e n t o n . H e ca l led rad ioman JohnWiggins. No word of any unusual shipmovements, W iggins reported. And nosignals from the location of the lights.If they were ships, they were keepingradio silence."Wake u p t hose o ther crews,"Benton told Erdman. "Maybe some-body can dope it out." In a few mo-ments, two or three airmen crowdedinto the cockpit. B enton cut off the au-tomatic pilot, an d banked to give theman d the men in the cabin a better view.As the transport bega n to circle, thestrange ligh ts abruptly dimmed. Thenseveral colored rings appeared and be-gan to spread out. One, Benton noticed,seemed to be grow ing in size. Be hindhim, someone gave an exclamation.Benton took another look. That lu-minous ring wasn ' t on the surface-i tw as something rushing up toward th etransport. "What the devil is it?" saidM o o n e y . "Don't k n o w ," m u t t e r e dBenton.He rolled the C ons tellation out of itsturn to start a full-power climb. Thenhe saw it was useless. The luminousring could catch them in seconds. Theglow, he now saw, came from the rimof some large, round o bject. It reachedtheir altitude, swiftly took shape as agiant disc-shaped machine.Dwarfing the Con stellation, it racedin toward them. "It 's going to hit us!"said Erdman . Benton had know n nor-mal fear, but this was a nightmare:Numbed , he waited for the crash.Suddenly the giant disc tilted. Itsspeed sh arply reduced, it angled on pastth e port wing . The comm ander let outhis breath .

He looked at Mooney's wh ite face,and saw the others' stunned expres-sions. W atching out the port wind ow,he cau t ious ly s t a r t ed to bank . H estopped as he saw the disc. It hads w u n g a r o u n d a n d w a s d r a w i n gabreast, pacin g them at about one hu n-dred yards.For a moment he had a clear glimpseof the monster. Its sheer bulk w as am az-ing; its diameter was three to four timesthe Con stellation's w ing span.At least thirty feet thick at the cen-ter, it was like a giga ntic dish inv ertedon top of another. Seen at this distance,the glow along the rim w as blurred anduneven.Whether it was an electrical effecta series of jet ex hau sts or lights fromopening in the rim, B enton could nottell. But the glow w as bright enough toshow the disc's curving surface, givinga hint of dully reflecting metal.Though Benton saw no signs of life,he had a feeling they were being ob-served. Fighting an impulse to diveaway, he held to a straight course.Gradu ally, the strange machine pulledahead.Tilting its massive shap e upwa rd, iquickly accelerated and w as lost againstthe stars. Com mander B enton reachedfor his microphone, called G ander A ir-port and identified himself. "You showan y other traffic ou t here?"he asked thetower."We had something on the scopenear you," Gander told him. "But wecouldn ' t get an answer." "W e saw it,"Ben ton said grimly. "It was no aircraft."He gave the tower a concise report, andback at Gander teletype messages wererushed to the U.S. A ir Defense Com-man d, the Com manding Officer, East-em Sea Frontier, the Director of AirForce Intelligence, and the Air Techni-cal Intelligence Center.When the Constellat ion landed atGander, Air Force intelligence officersmet the transport. From the start, it wasplain they accepted the giant disc sight-ing as fact. For two hours, Ben ton andthe rest were carefully interrogated [de-briefed], separately and together.From the answers to scores of ques-

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The first photo, with insets of other photos taken.

Distant, cold object discoveredin elliptical orbit of Sun

W h e n astronomers .from Caltech,Gemini Observatory, and Yale Univer-sity announced the discovery of the cold-est, most distant object known to orbitthe Sun, some observers concluded thatthis "planet" in an elliptical orbit mightbe the elusive Planet X.The object was found at a distance90 times greater than that from the Sunto the Earth-about three times furtherthan Pluto, the most distant known"planet."Even more interesting, the orbit ofSedna is extreme elliptical, in contrast toall of the much closer planets, and it takes10,500 years to circle the Sun.The discovery was made on theSamuel Oschin Telescope at thePalomarObservatory east of San Diego.Because of its frigid temperatures, theobject has been named Sedna, after theInuit goddess of the sea from whomallsea creatures were created.Sedna is the most distant solar sys-te m object ever discovered. It is twiceas far from the Sun as any other solarsystem object, and three times fartherthan PlutoorNeptune.Discovery images of Sedna showonly a point of light, so scientists cannot

.Elliptical path of Sedna. The Sunis in the middle of the swarm of so-lar system objects at the top of thedrawing.directly measure the size of Sedna fromthis point. The light that we see has trav-elled from th e Sun, and been reflectedoff th e surface of Sedna,Sedna is at most abouthalfway in sizebetween Pluto and the largest knownKuiper belt object, Quaoar.Sedna is not a planet, according tosome definitions of planets, bu t then nei-ther is Pluto.

Photos from Turkeyappear to showgenuine UFOTwo amateur mountaineers, CemArat and MehmetSafak. both 20 years

of age at the time, took a series ofpho-tos in 1996 w h i c h st i ll a wa i t detaileda na lys i s by M U F O N , bu t w h i c h havebeen declared authentic in two tests con-ducted in Turkey.The photos were t aken on Feb. 19,1996, a t Y a m a n l a r M o u n t a i n P a r k ,Karagol, near Izmir, Turkey.The two e x p l a i n e d t h a t t he y h adt a k e n a camera w i t h t h e m to shoot"memory" photos of each other,as theyanticipated being called into theArmy.The UFO reportedly appeared sud-denly, they told UFO investigator MichaeHesemann when he interviewed themin 2001. They said the object startledthem, and "was definitely nothing builton Earth."They said the object could hoyer onthe spot, increase to tremendous speed,shoot up and down, and rotate aroundits axis-all very fast and completelysoundless. Thesighting lasted about twominutes before the object disappeared"in the blink on an eye."The sighting was investigatedby theSirius UFO Space Sciences ResearchCen ter in Istanbul. Founder and chair-man Haktan Akdogan reports that thephotos were analyzed by Dr. AhmetImancer of Egean University,whocouldfind no evidence of a hoax.Thephotos were also analyzedby ONKodak Photo Labs in Istanbul by AhmetBayramusta , w ho reported in June 2002that the 35mm negative film image "isoriginal, and the photo developed out ofthis film is not manipulated. Also, the

negat ive and the photo have not beenmanipulated in a computer environment."Efforts by the Journal to obtain thenegatives fo r analysis by MUFON havebeen unsuccessful.Mr.Akdogan reportsthat he contacted the two witnesses onbehalf of MUFON, and that they "can-not send the negatives overseas."-Thanks to Esen Sekerkarar,MUFON representative for Turkey.

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Motorist reportsgigantic UFOnear Cardiff, U KOn Oct. 14.2004, at 10 PM. Mark A.w as driving about four miles (7 kilome-

ters) west of Cardiff , South Wales, UK,when he had a most unus ua l encounter."I was driving along a fairly busy road

heading west jus t outsideof Cardiff city,"Mark reported. "Something caugh t m yeye, so I pulled over. I also noticed tha tother people, about 15 other drivers,haddone the same, and were n ow outsidethe i r vehicles looking up a t w hat I ustc ouldn ' tbelieve."A t ab ou t 3,000 feet was the largestf l y ing object that I have ever seen-something like, say, the new AirbusA380, not yet in service, or a Boeing 747,would have been dwarfed byit.

- ' "The crazy t h ing was-absolute si -lence ! Westood dumbstruckas this thingmoved slowly through the air almost di-rectly above us. There was alsocomplete silence from everyone observ-ing this amazing event from the road-side.

"Other driverswere now stopping, andpeople were getting out of their cars totake a look. I am a pilot, and have a fairlygood idea of how motions of normal air-craft can 'trick' people into seeing aUFO. This was in no way normal."There is an international airport lo-cated about four miles westof the sight-ing site. My next move was to telephonethe control tower at the airport and askif anything unusualhad just taken off.

"Air t r a f f i c control said that a(Boeing) 737 had just departed a fewminutes ago. This object was too big andtoo silent to be a 737.1 then asked ifthey had anythingon radar. 'Nothing,'they said."

Mark then called the Cardiff RAFbase. Hereports, "Again, 'nothing.' Thisthing was almost the size of a very largecontainer ship. It didn't haveanyvisiblewings or any other way of showing howit could stay in the air."If I saw it on the ground, I would betmoney that it was not able to fly. The

D R A W N & QUARTERED

weather was good with tenmiles visibil-i ty . There were light clouds at 500feet (150 meters) and very light winds."I watched this object keep the same

speed and altitude, and then it passedbehind some mountains to the northeastof Cardiff."

Two days later, on Oct. 16, Markadded, "I saw a friend and told himaboutthe sighting. He was almost speechlesswhen I started todescribe the same thingthat he had seen moments after me.

"He had been out witha girlfriend, onOct. 14 and was driving home when she

spotted the object from her passengerseat. They both got out of the car, alongw i t h the other road users who hadstopped their cars."This was almost a reconstruction ofwhat had happened five minutes earlierwith me, only it was happening now tothe northeast of Cardiff city.

"His account is identical to mine inthe size of the object, the height of theobject, and its speed. I would love toknow what I and everyoneelse that nighhad seen."

Sasquatch or Skunk Ape creaturereportedly sighted in Florida

Jennifer Ward, 30, says she was driv-ing on Moore Road in the GreenSwamp area in northern Polk County,near Lakeland, Florida, a few days af-te r Hurricane Charley's passagethrough the area when she glanced toher left and saw something she says hashaunted her ever since.She describes it as a creature with ahuman form that was covered with darkhair or fur, with whitish rings aroundits eyes. Ward says the mysterious ani-mal stood erect in a drainage ditch alongthe road, and she estimates its height at8 feet.Based on her description,it might have been foraging in the ditch

w h e n she surprised it, as she says ilooked like it was doing something. "Iwas focused on something," Ward says"Whenever it saw me, it probably tookon the facial expression I had on, because I was dumbfounded. It juswatched me as I drove by."

Asked if it might have been a bearshe replied, "No chance at all." Wardsays she didn't stop because her twodaughters were sleeping in the backseat, and she feared the animamight attack her Toyota 4-Runner igiven the chance.She went back to the scene later tosearch for hair or footprints, but shedidn't f ind any conclusive evidence.

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.IpIlilaS^ V 5 f f 1; C*,, . ' , - " > ' ' ; . ' , ' , ' . , < . - - . . - . . _ " - . - _ , _ _ ' " - ' - , / . _ '7 .-w -

T he Braxton County Monster-TheCover-up of the Flatwoods MonsterRevealed by Frank C. Feschino, Jr.,Foreward and Epilogue by Stanton EFriedman, Pictorial Histories, 1125Central A ve., Charleston, W V 25302,www.f la twoodsmonster .com, 6 x 9hardback , 3 52 pages, $29.95 plus$3.50 shipping.Reviewed by Dwight ConnellyThis book reve als details about th eFlatwoods, Brax ton Coun ty, W est Vir-

ginia, "monster" which should havebeen f u l l y documented years ago byufologists-but hasn't been.Although ufologist Gray Barker wason the scene soon after the 1952 event,interviewed some witnesses, an d wroteabout it in the first issue ofSaucerian,the investigation was superficial.Also on the scene early was natural-ist and anomaly investigator Ivan T.Sanderson , who provided a reasonablyaccurate, bu t quite incomplete, descrip-tion of the encounter.Both Barker and Sanderson missedat least four ke y witnesses.Local jou rnalist A Lee Stewart, Jr .covered much of the sighting soon af-ter the encounter, recording and quot-ing witnesses in a straightforward m an-ner, but, publicly at least, did not coverseveral importan t details.Respected ufologist Stanton Fried-man , who w rote the Foreward and Epi-logue of this book, has long defendedthis en counter as worthy of serious con -sideration, bu t even he did not find timeto do the detailed research necessaryto make this an impressive case.B ut author Feschino, w ho spentmore than ten years researching the keyencounter and w hat he believes are re-lated events, has finally pulled enoughevidence together to make this a solidcase-and he completed his research jus tin time, as one of the key witnesses,National Guard Capt. Dale Leavitt, hassince died.

This book has already received quitea bit of publicity in the media, due inpart to Feschino's public appearancesin promoting it . Unfortunately, manyof the recent media reports have fo-cused-and negatively commented-onthe least docume nted and most contro-versial part of thisbook-alleged en -counters betweenm i l i t a ry a i rc ra f tan d UFOs.W h a t c o u l dhave been simply abadly-needed re-investigation andrepor t on t heF l a t w o o d s e n -counter has thusbeen weakened by the author's unsub-stantiated specu lation that the Brax tonCounty object had been damaged dur-ing an encounter with military aircraft.While the object which landed atFlatwoods may ha ve been damaged, assuggested by oil and metal pieces at thesite, there is no evidenc e that this dam-age resulted from an encounter with amilitary aircraft.Feschino seems to have come upwith this theory after discovering sev-eral reports of fiery objects mo ving intrajectories that suggest they originatedjus t off the east coast, wh ere he specu-lates an air battle ensued.These objects were not meteors, asno meteors w ere recorded on that date,but Feschino's conclusion that these fi-

ery objects were showing damage froman encounter with military planes is alsonot warrarited-and speculation thatthere were rescue UFOs, plus otherUFOs gu ardin g the rescue activities, isjust that, speculation.The author does not documen t anymissing military planes off the eastcoast, nor any reports of encounterswith UFOs, but he does spend severalpages trying to turn an explainablemissing plane incident over the Gu lf of

Mexico into an unex plainable encoun-ter with a UFO, despite the lack of anyreal evidence.Feschino describes as fact a blow byblow encoun ter between Air Force jetsand UFOs, as.well as a background ac-counting of wh at President Trum an wasallegedly doing-all without evidencebeing presented.It should be noted that the author 'sextensive search of newspaper files andBlue Book did result in locating an im-pressive number of meteor-like fieryobjects-as well as at least one reportof an object described as a "flying sau-cer"-around the time of the Flatwoodsencounter, and over a w ide area of theeastern U.S., but not over the Gulf ofMexico.Unfortunately, there is another prob-lem in making this case as impressiveas it should be with the general public,an d that is the continuing descriptionof the object encountered by witnessesas a "monster," even after Feschino haspresented impressive evidence that itwas a mechanical device.While "monster" was apparently theterminology used by at least some ofthe frightened witnesses and the mediaback in 1952-and probably by those inthe Flatwoods area even today-there isnow no reason to keep using that de-scription-at least without quotationmarks.Unfortunately, "monster" is used notonly in the title of the book (withou tquotation marks), but also by the au-thor throughout the book. It is even thetitle of his website. Perhaps he feels thatth e terminology has become so in-grained that it wou ld confuse m attersto simply use "Flatwoods encounter."Bu t adding to the early sen sational-izing of the encounter was the widelypublicized drawing of the "monster" bya TV artist, complete w ith arms, claws,an d other monster-like characteristicswhich were no t described by witnesses.Fortunately, the author is an excel-

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lent illustrator, and he presen ts a veryrealistic an d accurate rendition of theobject on the cover of the book.In spite of the shortcomings noted,Feschino has now provided enou ghimpressive informat ion that this caseshould take it s rightful place amon g le -gitimate encounters .The m ain i nc iden t began for theFlatwoods w itnessesas a bright object(the au thor suggests there m ay h a vebeen more than o n e ) w as seen m o v i n gacross th e countrys ide around dusk onSept. 12,1952, and apparently landingon a small mountain or hill j u s t outsideth e little town of Flatwoods.A m o n g th e witnesses uncovered byFeschino w as Jack Davis , described asa prominen t businessman in the area,w ho says he saw a lighted object th esize of a garage, not t ravel ing at an ex-cess ive speed an d a p p a r e n t l y c o n -t rolled, s i lent ly m o ve j us t above thetrees, slow dow n, and apparently land.He says th e object "had a clearer,brighter i l lumina ted light from th e top,and kind of an orange-red. The top ofit had the reflection of a l ight that Iwould describe today as a mercury va-por l ight. It did not resemble a meteorto me. To me, the object tha t I saw wasa craft."A report was also made to thesheriff 's office by W oodrow Eagle ofD u c k Creek, who was traveling to -wards Flatwoods wh en he saw wh a t hethought was an .airplane on fire crash-in g into th e mountains .What were to be some of the key wit-nesses, how ever, were 10 boys playingfootball in Flatwoods who saw a fieryobject move over their heads and ap-parently land on the mou ntain top.Most of the boys took off in the di-rection of the landing site, creatingenough noise to cause people to com eout of their houses to see wh a t was hap-pening. W hen they came to the Lemonhouse, they rushed in to report wh atthey had seen to Mrs. Kathleen May,the mother of one of the boys.She decided to accom pany some ofth e boys up to the landin g site, as didyoung Eugene Lemon, w ho took hisdog along, and six-year-old TommyHyer. It was now about 7:40 PM, anddarkness w as closing in . Mrs. M aygrabbed a flashlight, as did L emon.

Led by Lemon, the group made theirway up the mountain to the Fisher farm .Eventually they found themselves on apath with a fence line and a pear or-chard to their right. Some of the older,taller members of the group said tha tat that point they could look off into avalley and see a f iery spherical ly-shaped o bject abou t the size of a barnsitting an d pulsating.Other members of the group, suchas little Tommy Hyer, were appa rentlytoo short to see beyo nd the vegetationan d into th e valley. The author doesnot say whether M rs. May saw the ob-ject in the valley, and it seems strange

that the entire group was seemingly noalerted to this significan t observationsince this was apparently the main object they w ere looking for.A s th e group moved a little fartheup the mou ntain they became aware oa fog-like mist, along w ith a pungennauseating odor that affected their nosean d throats.Mrs. M ay describes th e odor a"kinda metallic," saying, "It affected min th e throat and chest area." FreddiM ay said th e gro up also heard a noislike an electrical com pressor be ing shud o wn . Suddenly Lemon's dog begato growl, then ra n ahead of the group12 MUFON UFO J OUR N AL JANUARY 2005


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Sketch of tbc ttatwooda Momurrby Hunt Fortdno.Jr.offld FrriMle May.

The correct version, as drawn by the author usingwitnesses' description.

The sensationalized version asdrawn by a TV artist.an d began to bark loudly.Mom ents later it ran back dow n th emountain an d raced past th e group. Itwas later reported that the dog had goneall the way back to the village, vom itedall over the veran da, and subsequen tlyd i e d , a c c o rd i n g to r e s e a r c h e rSanderson.With Mrs. May now leading the way,th e group came up to a large oak treenear th e path, where they heard w hatsounded like bacon being fried, com-bined with the sound of "flipping a sil-ver dollar or something aga inst a pieceof canvas."Seeing what they at first thought wasan animal w ith bright eyes up in the tree,they directed their flashlights on it andwere horrified to see wh at appeared tobe a towering figure, about 12 feet high.Th e dully glowing "eyes" of the objectli t up brilliantly, then p rojected an ee-r i e o r a n g e l i g h t o u t w a r d , c u t t i n gJANUARY 2005

through the fog and i l luminat ing th earea.The object seemed to be dark-col-ored, bu t also appeared to be heatingup an d beginning to glow. It then rosea bit from the ground an d glided tow ardthe path and the group. Lemon droppedhis flashlight and fell to the ground, bu tquickly got back up.As the object moved past th e group,Mrs. May was closest to it. As it madehissing an d frying noises, it sprayed oilon Mrs. Ma y's nurse's uniform, but noton her skin.She says the top of the monster be -hind the lighted "eyes" was like the aceof spades, the middle body w as roundan d smoo th, like metal, and the bottompart flared out like a series of tubes,which she believes provided the pro-pulsion th at allowed the object to glidealong the ground.Between the upper part and themiddle part was "something like anten-nae sticking out from it," says Mrs.MUFON UFO JOURNAL

May. An artist for a TV show depictedthese antennae-like devices as armswith claw-like hand s. The tubes weredepicted on TV as a flowing skirt, andthe smooth middle section w as madeto look like the upp er body of a w itch-like creature, creating the "monster."Everyone began runn ing back downthe hill, not stopping un til they reachedthe Lemon home, and some not evenstopping there. Mrs. May, a nurse, triedto tend to the traumatized y oung sters.Some ha d cuts an d scrapes from th erun back home, whi le others werecoughing and vomiting, includin g Eu -gene Lemon, who reportedly vomitedoff an d on al l night.Mrs. M ay called the sheriff's office,bu t w as told that all the law enforce-ment people were out looking for areported plane crash. The sheriff 's of -fice contacted state trooper Ted Tribett,who also could not go to Mrs. May'shome, but he did send a journalist w howorked closely with the police, A. Lee13


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Stewart, Jr., from the Braxton Demo-crat, who did go to Mrs. May's hometo interview the witnesses.Stewart was one of the key witnessesthat Feschino w as able to track down ,even though th e journal i s t ha d left th eBraxton area six years after the inci-dent and moved to North Carolina.Stewart confirmed to the author that"it was sheer turmoil" at Mrs. May'shouse. "Three boys were very sick," herecalls, "and all of them were w heez-in g and coughing. Mrs. May 's eyeswere as red as they could be, and sortof weepy."Stewart conv inced two of the olderboys to accompany him back up themountain to the area where the objectwas seen. Three or four other indiv idu-als, includ ing Mrs. M ay's father, alsowent. All carried firearms.Near th e site, Stewart discoveredthat some of the odor described by thewitnesses still lingered near the ground.The group made a sweep of the area,an d located "skid marks," which weretwo paths runn ing roughly parallel, eachabout 30 feet long, ten or eleven feetapart, and 24 to 30 inches wide. Theyled from the valley up to the area w herethe frightening object had been seen.Feschino also tracked down anotherkey individua l involved in the incident,Col. Dale Leavitt, who was a formerparat rooper and commander in theW est Virginia Nation al Guard.Initially reluctant to talk, Col. Leavitt,who had been a captain at the time ofthe incident, even tually accompaniedthe author to the sighting area.He said that National Guard mem-bers from throug hout the area had beenalerted that night, and that he had beenasked by the Air Force to assist in lo-cating a reported dow ned aircraft.He and about 30 troops had arrivedin the Flatwoods area at about 1:30AM . They were later joined by about20 to 30 additional troops. He said hehad remained at the actual location ofthe landing for about 45 min utes, butthat the troops stayed in the area therest of the night "to see if somethingelse was going to happen."He said he had two specific missionsto accomplish: (1) to prevent una utho -rized entry into the area, and (2) togather samples of leaves an d dirt and

uwW ty A.U*

Sketch of pieces of metal found.any other material he could locate. Hesaid he sent what he gathered to the AirForce, but never heard any results.Col . Leavi t t says th e leaves hesampled had not been burned, "but Igot some of this oil." He apparently alsofound at least one piece of m etal.In describing w hat appears to havebeen the landing site, he says, "I sawal l this stuff pushed over an d every-thing, and it landed right here. Well, itlanded gently because it didn't go dow nin the dirt or anything like that." Hesaid the landing area covered abou t 20feet, and it was not burne d.Col. Leavitt ha d also discovered theskid marks or t racks, saying, "Thetracks jus t stopped here, and tha t's allthere was to it, and it got out jus t thesame way." Leavitt acknowledged thatthere was o il in the area where the ob-ject had sat down.He also men tioned another incidentreported that evening inv olving a UFOshutting down the engine of an auto inthe Duc k Creek area. Levitt concluded,"Something was a cover-up. There wassomething dow n below, too, but I don'treally know what it was."Asked by Feschino if he thoug ht itwas an experimental craft or if it camefrom someplace else," Col. Leavitt re-plied, "No, I think it came from some-place else, personally."At about 7 AM on the day after thesighting, S tewart was back at the scene,the first to v iew it in day light. Like Col.Leavitt, he also noticed the apparentlanding area with the grass pusheddown; "round and I'd say about 20 feetacross."Stewart walked the "skid marks,"and, says Feschino, noted that eventhough there was apparently no groundcontact made in creating these tracks,some outside force ha d turned oversome rocks.Feschino suggests that the evidence

indicates that the main object had initiallylanded on top of the moun tain, then tookoff an d landed a second time in the val-ley. . . - -Th e "tracks" or "skid marks" wereapparently made by the frightening ob-ject encou ntered on the mo unta in as itcame an d went from the larger, barn-sized object in the valley.W hile checking out the skid marks,Stewart realized he w as gettin g oil onhis clothes, as he had the nig ht before.But he also found something else as hewalked the skid m arks: a piece of metal."It looked like somebod y had taken asoldering iron an d jus t dripped solder,"he explain s. "The piece'of metal wasshiny and silver, very easy to see in thedaylight.. .ragged on the edges like anydripped metal would be."Stewart says he later tried to melt themetal with a soldering torch, "and Icouldn't melt it." He sa ys he took it to awelding shop, and they couldn't melt iteither.Three people who said the y workedfo r th e Treasury Department, but whoclaimed they were not representing thegovernment, came to his home to inquireabout the metal and the oil that Stewarthad on his clothing.Usin g tin snips , he cut off a piece ofthe metal for them, and placed the restin a vial. H e also allowed them to scrapethe oil off his clothing. The n ext day,while he was at the newspaper, the restof the metal disappeared .Mrs. M ay was also visited by two in-dividuals claiming to be journalists-aclaim sh e later felt was false-and theytook oil samples from her uniform. Shekept the uniform for awhile, then appar-ently discarded it as unwea rable.Feschino covers much, much more inthis book, including other sightings in thearea, n ume rous illustrations, and addi-tional details suggesting not on ly interestin the case by the governm ent, but alsoevidence of a governmen t cover-up.There is so much material-and it soscattered-that the lack of an index is re-grettable.This book is well worth reading an dpurchasing. Feschino ha s done an ex-cellent job in locating key witnessesmissed by other researchers, a nd in giv-ing credence to this historic case.



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through a thin layer of clouds. But asth e clouds passed, I saw the entireshape of th e UFO."Suddenly, th e s ta t ionary objectswiftly moved away to the south, andIt seemed to ride on the clouds and wasdescending."It was like watching a speedboat onth e water. Thanks to Bill Bean http://ufoman 104.tripod.comCalifornia object photographedNIPOMO-Mike, an electrical engi-neer with a fair knowledge of satellites,reports walking outside to assist hiswife un load groceries. H e looked upand saw a VERY bright light in clearskies on Dec. 9, 2004 at 6:39 PM .His wife indicated it was a possiblesatellite w ith a very blue center an d avery green ring around the exterior. Hereports, "Ten minutes later the l ightswere still there, so I waited another 20minutes and returned with my cameraan d took a series of still images with a5MP and 3.5 M P camera of lights 5 to-10 miles away ."The object appeared to hover atspecif ic locat ions , and the imagesCLEARLY indicate a blue and greenobject flying at 1000 to 2000 feet. Imanaged to get some ex cellent still im -ages. There appears to be a green ringaround a circular object." Thanks toUFOC.Lights play in the UKLONDON-The observer was outjogging wh en he saw three lights goingback an d forth constantly and at a veryquick rate abov e th e scattered cloudson Nov. 21 , 2004, at 10:14 PM. Thelights reportedly flew "a mile per sec-on d or more and stopped instantly."The witness says, "They would goback, split into three, m erge, and playwith each other."A police car with flashing lightstried to go through some red trafficlights, and the lights in the sky noticedan d came directly above the police ca ran d stopped, and flashed as quick ly asthe police cars lights."They seemed to mock the police carlights until they drove off. Then the"three lights continued their back andfor th movement ." Thanks to PeterDavenport ,UFOC.

Michigan flying triangleCLIO-The witne ss reports seeing aflying triangle w ith three w hite lightson each side on Nov. 22 , 2004, at 7:30PM .He states, "M y Radio in my car cutout, and my phone didn ' t have a signalin a place where it should always hav eone. A ll it did was h over over the inter-

section like a bobber floating in a lake.I parked my car and watched it forabout five min utes. I reached for a penan d paper to draw the object, an d whenI looked back up, it was gone." Thanksto Peter D avenport.Minnesota cylinderM I NNE A PO LI S-Th e witness re -ports, "O n Nov. 12 , 2004, at 1:15 PMI was t raveling east on Hw y 55, and asI approached 46th S treet I saw a silvercylinder-shaped object without an y tailand w ings traveling very slowly."A t times it was hovering withoutmotion above Waigreen's Drug Store.Then the silver metallic cylinder m ovedslowly from east to west . I turned th eca r around at 50th Street, and by thet ime I reached 46th i t was gone."Thanks to Peter Dav enport.New Jersey ovalsRIDGEWOOD-The w i t n e s s re-ports, "Our 8-year-old son noticed'UFOs' an d called us out to witnessfour oval-shaped lights flying in forma-tion on Nov. 16 , 2004, at 6 PM. Theywere flying around in circles."There were three others that joinedin, so a total of seven oval-shaped lightsflew in formation for ten minutes, ma-neuvering overhead. They may have lefttrails since there were contrails in thesky, but these m ay not be related. Theythen disappeared." Thanks to PeterDavenport.New Jersey circle formationMENDHAM-On Nov. 18 , 2004, alawyer stopped to get the mail at 6 PM,and noticed four separate ro und lightsin sort of a circle form ation flying wellbelow an airplane.They moved counterclockwise in -credibly fast, then moved in towardeach other, an d then away.Th e witness says, "I then noticed an -

other set of lights over my neighbor'shouse, an d drove down m y road two-tenths of a mile and noticed the left se tof lights followin g right above m y car,causing me to panic."I turned around an d sped back tothe top of the drivew ay and tried to dialth e police on my cell phone, but I wasnot able to get it to work. I went to myneighbor, who is also a lawyer, an dasked her to come outside."She was in disbelief as she saw thelights. There w as nothing w e couldthink of that could explain what wewere seeing." Thanks to Peter Daven -port, Director, www.UFOCenter.com.Indiana flying triangleBLOOMINGTON-Lynn Taylor re -ports, "A t 7:10 PM, the witness w assouthbound on W alnut Street on N ov.13,2004, approaching th e intersectionof State Highway 45, when she ob-served a large triangle-shaped objecttraveling southeast, toward the busyintersection ahead."As the object approached, th e wit-ness could see two red lights, one onthe tip of each trailing edge."She also described the center of thecraft as hav ing an amber-colored lightor lights that constantly changed shape."As the object crossed th e intersec-tion, the witness momentarily lookedaway to check the traffic conditions.When sh e looked up again to observethe craft, only a single red light was vis-ible."She w as insistent that the objectwas triangle-shaped, and was not an ad-vertising blimp."The witness indicated her confi-dence in the object's shape because itslighting partially illuminated the und er-side. She further offered that the objectwas much too fast and low to be a blimpanyway."Fromher conversation an d descrip-tion of the sighting and my familiaritywith the area, I wou ld estimate the ob-ject was flying approximately 120 feetabove th e ground." Thanks to LynnTaylor Sentinel Files.Florida gold objectCEDAR KEY-Eric reports, "I waslocking my gate to my property in Ti-ge r Island on State Road 374 about 9



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miles from Cedar Key at 9 PM on Nov.22, 2004. I looked up j u s t as a verybright welders-like light lit up the for-est on a state preserve."It was a wh ite hot light the size of aVolkswagen, and was about 50 yardsin off the paved road. It had a smoketrail exiting out the bottom, and wasabout 40 feet off the ground jus t belowth e tree tops."I t il luminated the woods from leftto right as far as I could see! It wentout in two seconds! Having tw o closeencounters in 1995 in the same place, Ididn 't even lock the gate-and drove offat 100 mph." Thanks to Eric. Hawaiian sighting of an ovalHONOLULU-On Nov. 28,2004, at10:30 AM, two witnesses spotted threeflying football-shaped objects. The wit-ness states, "M y friend arid I saw threemysterious looking objects g liding lit-erally right above Waikiki Beach. Itlooked as if they were c reating an arc,flying a mile away from th e beach an dgliding back an d forth."The objects then grad ually gainedaltitude as they were still mov ing backand forth: Eventually, those three ob-jects got high enou gh to hide behind theclouds. These w ere not commercial air-craft, but funny oval-shaped orangelights." Thanks to Peter Davenport.Tennessee triangleKINGSPORT-On Dec. 9, 2004, at9 PM, three w itnesses described a verylarge triangular craft passing over ,slowly illuminated by the city lightsagainst clouds. It was nearly black, withfour blue lights arranged in a diamo ndshape and a large single appendag e onthe bottom which w as glowing reddish-orange.It was circled by m any smaller red,blue, an d green strobing lights. Theback of the craft had a long appendagewhich produced an eerie bluish light.The witness ' wife noted several oddmarkings on the bottom, and the craftmade a slight hum m ing sound.Several small, fast, red and blue il-luminated ball-like objects playfullyflew around the sky in all directions.The craft was the size of a large televi-sion set at arm's length. We can assum ethe object w as quite low and large.

Another Tennessee triangleBRISTOL-The witness reportedthat on Dec. 9, 2004, at 9:10 PM , hewas carrying his camera w hen he sawa s t range t r iangular shape movingacross the sky. He used his digital cam-era to take a series of photographs.The objec t w as qui te large an dmoved behind a nearby mountain to thewest, which is the area of a sightingreported earlier tha t night in King sport.This photo (above) has not been en-hanced and the witness stated tha t th ebright spot between th e three smallerlights was not visible when he took thephotographs. Thanks to Kim Shaffer,MUFON TN SD.

Iowa flying triangleO TTU M W A-The witness reportsseeing a triangular object w ith red andblue lights. Th e lights were turning in aclockwise man ner while the object wasmoving from northwest to southeast onNov. 29 , 2004, at 11:47 PM .It was abou t as far up as a small air-craft wo uld travel. As it passed over, itseemed to be standing still.The witness states, "I was standingnext to a fire, and it seemed to be watch-ing wh at was going on. It had no blink-ing ligh ts at all. It had n o tail, no wings.

After a few seconds it continued on tothe southeast and did not make a soun d.It seemed to be quietly gliding on theair. The craft stopped right over myhead as I had to tilt my h ead a ll the wayback to see it. It was NOT an airplane."Thanks to Peter Davenport.Pennsylvania orb sightingMCKEESPORT-The witness w asoutside his house wh en he saw a brightlight in the sky. He states, "I called m y

Bristol, TN, .photoshows amiliar triangleshape.

wife out to see, and we watched fortwenty minutes around 1PM on Nov.28,2004. The light changed directionsfive times, then jus t shot of f very fast."Thanks to Peter Davenport.Canadian Sasquatch reported

BRITISH COLUMBIA-BobbieShort. B.C.T.V. Global News, reportedon Dec. 9.2004. that two wom en driv-ing in a car on the Island H ighw ay at8:30 PM , between Port Alberni an dTofino narrowly missed hittin g a largeSasquatch that had stepped on to theroadway in front of them.Ac c o r d i n g to the witnesses , theSasquatch stood its ground directly infront of the vehicle unt i l it becamescared by other approaching cars andquickly ran into the forest. This is thesame area where there was a sightingby the Frank family in 2002.The wo men described the animal ascovered in dark fur and between six andseven feet tall. They stated it lookedmore hu ma n than ape-like.Veteran Sasquatch investigator andbiologist John Binderriagel did an in-terview for BCTV News show ing vari-ous tracks castings he an d his wife ha dfo u n d near Great Central Lake onVancouver Island.He also mentioned that he believedit would only be a matter of time be-fore a Sasquatch is hit by a car, provid-ing proof to the scientific communitythat North America's Great A pe doesexist. Thanks to Bobbie Short.

Case reportsInvestigators. Please send acopy of you r case reports d irectlyto the Mt/FCW U FO Journal.JANUARY 2005 MUFON UFO JOURNAL 17


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PERCEPTION;By Stanton T. Friedman

Absence of evidenceI really goofed in the column in theNo vem ber issue. I said 18 Sept., 1952as the date of the Eisenhower BriefingDocument . The actual date was 18Nov., 1952. My only ex cuse is that mydaughter 's birthday is Sept. 18.Over th e years I have often recitedthe four basic rules for debunkers ofUFOs (and most other topics): 1. Wh atth e public doesn ' t know, I w o n ' t tellthem. 2. Don 't bother me with the facts,my mind is made up. 3. If you can ' tattack the data, attack the people. 4. Doyou r research by proc lamat ion , ratherthan investigation. Sometimes I h a veadded a corollary: 5. Absence of e v i -dence is not evidence of absence.There are many examplesof this lat-te r approach, such as Phil Klass sayingt h a t t h e r e c o u l d n o t h a v e b e e n aRoswell crash or a Majestic 12 Groupbecause the 900 pages of UFO mate-rial released by the CIA in response toa legal action in 1980 said nothing abouteither.Of course he neglected to mentionthat there were no formerly TOP S E-CRET documents in the pi le . KarlPflock took a similar approach in hisbook on Roswell. There are many otherexamples. But one of the most egre-gious exam ples of this false reasonin garrived in the m ail in No vem ber 2004.The author of this 35-page tract isJames T. Westwood of M ilitary Scienceand Defense A nalytics, who does "his-torical research" for various clients, in-cluding some UFO researchers.

He claims to have show n, using "his-toriographical" methods and primaryhistorical resources, that a UFO did no tcrash, an d thus was not recovered, inNew Mex ico in July, 1947.His subject is "Proving a Negative:The Ruse That W as Roswell."The three sources are Truman in theWhite House: The Diary of EbenAyers, R.H. Ferrell ed . 1991, U. ofMissouri Press; The Forrestal Diaries,W alter M illis, V iking Press 1951, an d

Stan Friedman

a small diary kept by Truman himself,but not found unti l 2003.The lost diary can be found atw w w . t r u m a n l i b r a r y . o r g / d i a r y /transcript.htm. JW also places greattrust in an unnam ed source who claimsto have been engaged in military dutiesin Forrestal'so f f i c e u n t i lmid-Septem-ber 1947, and"there n e v e roccurred in hisk e e p i n g a n yp r i n t e d o rvoiced m a t e -r i a l , d a t a , o rother informa-t i o n w h a t s o -ever concern-ing the crashrecovery of as p a c e s h i pfrom a distant planet."No reason is given fo r thinking hewould have been aware of everything,no matter ho w classified, that happen edin the office.O b v i o u s l y W e s t w o o d h a d n ' tchecked the web or he would havenoted that Trum an's journ al about hisdecision to use the atomic bomb "waskept even from Eben Ayers, who hadbeen directed to prepare an ac cou nt ofthe atomic bomb decision during theP o t s d a m C o n f e r e n c e " ( se ewww.he.net/-douglong/guide3.htm).Ayers was a press secretary. W ouldhe be expected to have access to ev-

erything? H ardly likely. The first prob-lem with JW's conclusions is that thethree written sources are all unclass i-fied. Certainly one w ould n't expect tofind TO P SECRET or TOP-SECRETCode W ord material in them .Some say that surely all the materialf rom 1947 has been declassif ied!NONSENSE. The Eisenhower Librarytold me in 2003 that they still hav e about300,000pages of classified m aterial.JW himself notes that th e Forrestal

material had been carefully reviewedbefore being released in 1951. Th e second problem is: why should we expecthat any of the sources cover every thingthat happened during th e time periodthat was covered?I did an article in 2003 about thTruman diary. It only contained 42handwritten entries.The first 160 pagecontain member listings and advertisements from the Real Estate Board oNew York, which had given him thdiary. It was N OT classified.The July 2003 press release abouthe diary notes that Truman was an erratic diarist. Ind eed. There are no ent ries be tween J a n . 16 and March 2between March 31 and J u n e 27; between Oct. 1 and Nov. 17; and betweenNov. 17 and Dec. 13.Would Westwood have us believthat Truman di d nothing during thesperiods? In actuality, 1947 was a verybusy year, w hat with the Marshall Planth e growing cold w ar with the SovieUnion , the formulation of the DefensDepartment, the conversion of the C entral Intelligence Group into the CIA, thestablishment of the US A ir Force separate from the Army Air Force, the establishment of the NSC, etc, etc, etc.According to George Elsey, whworked fo r Truman th e entire time hwas in the White House, from Apri1945 until January 1953, Truman wavery security conscious. Elsey walkein on e time when Truman w as chewing out a senator for being carelesabout security.

The dia ry entries seemed to be briemostly personal, notes such as a fewwhich led press people to think thaTruman was anti-Semitic wh en talkinabout a meeting he had with HenrMorgenthau about refugees.W estwood says nothing about having visited the Truma n Library in Independence, M O, or the Firestone Librara t P r ince ton Univers i ty where thForrestal papers are housed.Hav ing spent time at both, I can at18 MUFON UFO JOURNAL JANUARY 2005


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test to the fact that there are huge pa-per collections, inclu din g daily calen-dars in which are mentioned variousmeetings. Frequently th e entries giveno clue as to the subject of discussion.W estwood says nothing at all aboutthe eyewitness testimony of people whowere directly in volv ed in the Roswellcrash such as M aj. Jesse A . Marcel, In-telligence Officer for the 509 th Com-posite Bom b Group; his son (now Dr.)Jesse Marcel; ret i red Gen. ThomasJefferson DuB ose, chief of staff in 1947to Gen. Roger R amey, head of the 8 thA ir Force, to wh om reported Col. Wil-liam B lanchard, head of the 50 9 th.He m akes no men tion of the rancher,Mac Brazel, or his son Bill , or neigh-bo r Loretta Proctor. A re these all liars?H e doesn' t mention th e contemporarynewspaper coverage in front-page sto-ries in evening papers from Chicagowest on July 8,1947.I am surprised he doesn't try to useabsence of an article abo ut Ro sw ell inth e NY Times on July 8 as evidence forthe absence of the crash. The press re -lease had gone out too late to make theNYT .Westwood can ' t be bothered refer-encing th e books, wh ich note th e testi-mo ny and results of serious investiga-t ions, such as my and Don Berliner'sCrash at Corona: The Definitive Studyof the Roswell Incident. (Autographedcopies still available).Westwood's f inding is : "The threediaries make no men tion, direct or byinnuendo, of such a bizarre, sensational,and unlikely even t as an ET 'hardware'crash and recovery in July, 1947, sen-sat ional books by such au thors asRandle, Friedman, Moore an d Berlitzand others since 1980 to the contrary.A ll of the diaries are frank . . .Ayersspoke with the President almost everyday...." :Surely Westwood is well aware ofthe need not only for high level secu-rity clearances, but a need-to-know fo rthe inform ation for the person invo lved.One m ight hope he would provide evi -dence that people with such clearancesand need to know wou ld discuss highlyclassified matters in unclassified en-tries, books, and comments.Often^ most people in a particulargroup w ould have a clearance-but no

need to know-for particular TS Codew o r d i n f o r m a t i o n . A m a z i n g l y ,Westwood gives no example of suchsituations.P res iden t Truman became VicePresident in January of 1945. He wasnot informed about the very expensiveManhattan Project to develop n uclearw e a p o n s unt i l well af ter becomingPresident upo n the death of PresidentRoosevelt in April 1945. He hadn' t ha da need to know.President Eisenhower in his bookMandate for Change describes a meet-ing that he, as President Elect, had w ithPresident Trum an at the White Houseon Nov. 18,1952, two weeks after th eelection, but two mon ths before his in-auguration. Ik e makes no ment ion ofth e fact that he and his advisors wentdirectly to the Pentagon from the W hiteHouse for a briefing on high level na-tional security m atters.W e know the meeting happened, notonly because of an article in the N YTimes, but because of desk calendarentries from others w ho were there,such as Army Chief of Staff Collins andUS A F Vice-Chief of Staff an d Majes-tic 12 member G en. Nathan Twining.The entries, of course, give no clas-sified inform ation as to wh at was dis-cussed. That Ik e didn' t mention it cer-tainly does n' t mean that i t didn ' t hap-pen.Nov. 18,1952, is, of course, the dateof the Eisenhower B riefing Documen tdescribing Operat ion Majest ic 12.There surely we ren't contemporary un-classified documents about the veryhighly classified Project Solarium inJuly, 1953, which set national policy visa vis the USSR for m any years.Westwood can't be bothered tellingthe reader why he considers th e crashand recovery of ET hardware "bizarre,sensational or unlikely." There were2000 sightings of flying saucers duringthe summ er of 1947. W hy w ould it besurprising if some of them crashed?Plenty of our aircraft have crashed.The first clue that the US govern-ment had that the Germans were de-veloping rockets during the early yearsof W W n came from analysis of a pieceof "bizarre" wreckage from a Germantest rocket that had crashed or explodedin Sweden.

Westwood chastens those of us whohav e written in-depth investigations ofth e Roswell incident: "None of theeminent ufologists that have written andspoken at insuffera ble length abou t theRoswell UFO event have ever men-tioned yet the Ayers an d Forrestal dia-ries and wh at they do not reveal." Thisis true, but truly absurd.There are literally millions of pagesat th e Truman an d Eisenhower Librar-ies and a mult i tude of other archivesthat say nothing about Roswell. G oldore is worth mining if there is an ounceof gold in a ton of ore. On ly one of hun -dreds of natura lly occurring isotopes isfissionable.Should we say there is no gold inthem thar hills or that no isotopes arefissionable? It is the evidence w e havethat matters, not that which we don' t

have.Westwood brags that even the AirForce reports on Roswell didn' t takenote of his "sources," but makes th eclaim that "they do make much of his-torical research and historiographicalmethod."Quite frankly both government re -ports are loaded with false an d mislead-ing statements an d lies, and are easilyshown to be splendid examples of pro-paganda-such as I hav e described in apaper, "The Roswell Incident , TheU S A F , and the N ew York Times"(27pg.l994, $4. Postpaid from me atFOB 958, Houlton, ME 04730-0958).Remember that th e U S A F "CaseClosed" tried to explain reports of smallbodies noted in connection with NMcrashes as crash test dummies, none ofwhich were dropped unti l at least si xyears after Roswell, and all of whichwere 6' tall an d weighed 175 pounds.This isn 't research. It is baloney.Most scientists that I know sa y thatone shouldn ' t try to prove a negative.Westwood brags about doing so, andcomplains that others don 't. If this rep-resents historiographical research, thenI wa nt no part of it.I don 't feel m y visits to 20 Archivesan d discussions with dozens of wit-nesses h ave been in v ain. My goal hasalway s been to find out w h a t did hap-pen, not to determine w hat didn ' t .Stan Friedman, [email protected]

JANUA RY 2005 MUFON UFO JOURNAL 19


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B y Jenny Randies

Jenny Randies

P oo Fighter legacySixty years ag o this win ter markedin m any w ays th e starting poin t of themodern UFO mystery. The w orld wasstill in the final throes of war, an d therewas a heady mix of fear, dread, hope,an d anticipation in the air.Amidst all this, th e bomber crewsflying from the UKinto France, Ger-m a n y , and othero c c u p i e d E u r o -pean l ands w eres e e i n g s t r a n g elights that seemedto play ta g w i t htheir aircraft an dthen just zip away.They were giventhe name foo fight-ers, and rem ain thesource of mu ch fascination an d debate.It seemed to me a good idea to pon-de r those early UFO reports from 1944/45 and see how they have influencedthe way we approach matters today.

Also to see if we can learn an y usefullessons, as history is at its most instruc-t ive when we apply its message to theworld that we confro nt today.What is going on?

I have met a few witnesses who weredirectly inv olved in the foo fighter situ-a t i o n . One o f these w as M i c h a e lBentine, who became well known inBritain as a come dian (part of the groupof young wits that inspired th e laterMonty Python era on radio an d earlyTV , and went by the name of "TheGoons.")During the war Bentine was an in-telligence officer who had the job ofdebriefing the crews tha t returned to theUK from free Polish bombin g missionso n th e G e r m a n rocket p l a n t a tPeenem unde. It was they who told himof these strange lights in what weresome of the very first sightings.Ben tine, describing to me his reac-tions, illustrates we ll how the m indsetof human beings is always shaped by

the circumstances that we face. His firstquestion, of course, shou ld hav e beenwhat these lights were.B ut this was not phrased in the con-text of scientific endeavor, despite hispersonal scientific training.Yes, he briefly considered an d dis-missed the standard options, such as StElmo's Fire or similar atmosphericelectrical discharges that might causeweird glows to form near aircraft.B ut his concern w as pr incipal lywhethe r these l ights were targeting th ebombers, and whether that meant thatthey were weapons, presumably devel-oped by the Nazis.A s w i th h is col leagues , Bent inephrased his quest ions to the puzzledwitnesses entirely from the frameworkdictated by this presumption. W hat didthe lights do, he asked? Nothing, w asth e mystified reply. So they were notmuch use as a weapon then, was hisrelieved conc lusion.This did not h elp to solve the riddlesposed by the foo fighter sightings, asBentine well knew. But he had a veryspecific remit: to assess them as athreat. A nd once it was clear that theywere not a threat, then it was really nolonger important to the war effort toknow what else they might be.A s he told m e years later, they areprobably wha t we now call UFOs. B utunless UFOs were interfering with th eaim to defeat the Nazis, then they werenot a priority.This might seem almost absurd,given our personal interest in UFOs, bu tit is perfectly reasonable if we put our-selves into the context of 1944.

Sixty years laterShift forward six decades and we seeth e reason, I think, that modern UFOreports are treated with equal lack ofimagination or application by both thepowers that be and the scientific com-munity.Put bluntly, they do not seem to be apriority to either source, because theyare neither a threat nor an obv ious cau se

of real exp ectation that they mig ht fther progress.I think that UFOlogy suffered enomously from the legacy of the foo figers when the sigh tings that we regaas part of our my stery began to be colected in the late 1940s.The question posed .again was oof threat potential. W ere they Russ iweapo ns, or, a little later, alien probeA lwa ys these m atters w ere pursuwith a view to assessing the potentto disrup t. This perspective d rove boofficial and scientif ic study into thands of military an d intelligence agecies, leavin g them to make these threassessments with very little recoursee i t h e r k n o w i n g o r c a r i n g w h a t tUFOs otherwise really were.So long as they were not causing clear an d immediate dangers, then thwere not to be of much concern.The problem was that outside threjection th e sightings went on, awere not just witnessed by easy to cotrol people such as military bombcrews, but by everybody w ho coumerrily talk to the growing m edia community.W hatever the assessments made military an d intelligence officers tUFOs themselves remained real amystifying.The self imposed secrecy

Documents

MUFON UFO Journal- January 2005: Number 441