UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (19 page)

McDonald testified that no other problem within their jurisdiction compared to this one. “The scientific community, not only in this country but throughout the world, has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance.” He indicated that he leaned toward the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation, due to “a process of elimination of other alternative hypotheses, not by arguments based on what I could call ‘irrefutable proof.’”
²⁰
Dr. Hynek recommended that a congressional UFO scientific board of inquiry set up a mechanism for the proper study of UFOs, “using all methods available to modern science,” and that international cooperation be sought through the United Nations.
²¹

Extensive research has been done and books have been written on the tumultuous process which eventually produced the Condon committee report, “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,” released in 1968. The approximately 1,000-page tome begins with the conclusions and recommendations by Condon himself. He declared that further scientific study of UFOs was unwarranted and recommended that the Air Force shut down Project Blue Book. Nothing should be done with UFO reports submitted to the federal government from then on, he believed. He wrote that no UFO has posed a national security or defense problem, and that there was no official secrecy concerning UFO reports. Condon’s two-page summary of the report, released to the press and public, actually contradicted the findings contained within the body of the volume, which most people did not bother to read.

In fact, Condon himself did not participate in the analysis of the carefully researched case studies that made up the bulk of the study, and it appears he also didn’t bother to read the finished product. The lengthy study
did
provide some excellent scientific analysis by other members of the committee, buried among many tedious case analyses of marginal importance which dragged on, page after page. Other key cases were left out altogether. Some reports actually verified the reality of still unsolved and highly perplexing UFO phenomena. For example, investigator William K. Hartman, astronomer from the University of Arizona, researched two extraordinary photographs from McMinnville, Oregon, and stated that “this is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical, appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within the sight of two witnesses.”
²²

Regardless, Condon’s summary stated, “Nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past twenty years that has added to scientific knowledge.” And the National Academy of Sciences endorsed Condon’s recommendations. “A study of UFOs in general is not a promising way to expand scientific understanding of the phenomena,” it concluded seven weeks later.
²³
Condon added insult to injury by telling the
New York Times
that his investigation “was a bunch of damn nonsense,” and he was sorry he “got involved in such foolishness.”
²⁴

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) was among those registering objections after its panel spent over a year studying the actual 1,000-page text of the Condon report. The AIAA stated that Condon’s summary did not reflect the report’s conclusions but instead “discloses many of his [Condon’s] personal conclusions.” The AIAA scientists found no basis in the report for Condon’s determination that further studies had no scientific value, but declared instead that “a phenomenon with such a high ratio of unexplained cases (about 30% in the Report itself) should arouse sufficient curiosity to continue its study.”
²⁵

Behind Condon’s and Low’s disdain and closed minds, along with those of others in that camp, lay, once again, the problem of confronting the extraterrestrial hypothesis. As Hynek pointed out at the time, Condon and his supporters mistakenly equated the notion of UFOs with something extraterrestrial, believing that if UFOs were acknowledged as a genuine phenomenon, an implicit acceptance of the extraterrestrial hypothesis would ensue. This was clearly unacceptable to them. As Low pointed out in his memo, the simple act of admitting such a possibility was “beyond the pale,” and any professional doing so risked losing prestige within a scientific community not open to such a radical concept. Even after twenty-two years of Air Force accumulation of data, along with independent studies made by various scientists such as McDonald, an overwhelming number of scientists and government officials still felt profound unease with entertaining even the remote possibility of such a hypothesis. That aversion was strong enough that its purveyors didn’t mind that it completely undermined the accuracy and effectiveness of an expensive, years-long scientific study on which so much depended, and which everyone knew would have a huge, historical impact.

Instead, the final nail was in the coffin. In December 1969, the Air Force announced the termination of Project Blue Book—our government’s only official investigation of UFOs—effective the following month. From then on, scientists could justify their dismissal of UFOs by citing the conclusions of the Condon report. The government could refer to the Air Force decision to end its investigation to justify its disinterest in UFO cases. The media could enjoy the ride while making fun of UFOs or relegating them to science fiction. Now, no more direct action was required by those carrying out the mission of the Robertson Panel because the seeds had all been planted and the momentum would be self-generating for decades to come. The “golden age” of official investigations, congressional hearings, press conferences, independent scientific study, powerful citizen groups, best-selling books, and magazine cover stories had come to an end.

In the decades following, many dedicated researchers carried the torch and devoted their lives to documenting cases and adding to our knowledge of the phenomenon. Their capable and extensive work has been crucial in carrying us forward. But once an issue galvanizing concern on the national stage, the UFO question now shifted to the margins. The taboo against UFOs was fixed, and today, forty years later, that ban on taking UFOs seriously is thoroughly embedded in our society, like an efficiently metastasized cancer.

CHAPTER 12

Taking the Phenomenon Seriously

I
n order to evaluate the U.S. government’s actions and put them in perspective, we can learn a great deal from examining the activities of other governments and their handling of military and aviation UFO encounters. Since the close of Project Blue Book, the United States has become somewhat of a pariah on the international scene when it comes to official UFO investigations, which is especially a problem since as a superpower it has unique potential to influence scientific progress on issues of global significance. Other nations have behaved admirably when UFO events occurred within their airspace. Some have collected useful data when anomalous objects appeared on radar or left marks on the ground, as has happened in France and the UK. These two countries were especially well equipped to handle events as remarkable as a UFO touching down, because they had in place government agencies specifically tasked with taking UFO reports and conducting investigations. Even after the United States bowed out of the UFO business in 1970, other countries kept at it, and still others formed new investigative offices later on, approaching the problem straightforwardly and responsibly.

During the years following the United States’ shutdown of its only public UFO agency, those moving forward elsewhere have done the best they could, while sometimes struggling for funding and resources. Thankfully, they have not modeled themselves after Project Blue Book. Rather than devote themselves to disseminating false explanations and other propaganda, these agencies have been willing to conduct honest investigations and acknowledge, particularly in cases documented by pilots, the presence of something unidentified that could not be explained. Pilots and air crews in other nations are not pressured to keep quiet, as their American counterparts were during the O’Hare incident, and are not nearly as wary of ridicule as are their American peers. Elsewhere, military and commercial pilots go on the record about their encounters, and press conferences are held to release information. Aviation safety issues are addressed in connection with UFO events. In general, although the U.S. government hasn’t budged since 1970, much of the rest of the world has been moving increasingly in the direction of taking UFOs more seriously.

The UK’s study of UFOs began in 1950 within the Ministry of Defence, making it one of the longest running official programs in the world. The MoD had a designated agency, or “UFO desk,” that handled UFO reports and investigated cases. In December 2009, the staff became so overwhelmed by the volume of UFO reports from the public, which were at a ten-year high, and the endless stream of FOIA requests about the subject that it closed down its public reporting program. The MoD had not found a way to solve these cases, which, it stated, did not represent a national security threat. It did acknowledge, however, the obvious: that any “legitimate threats”—cases involving military pilots, air defense installations, or objects tracked on radar—would still be dealt with accordingly.
¹
The UK had also already begun the lengthy process of releasing all the files accumulated during the years the UFO desk was in operation.

In South America, Chile and Peru set up new government agencies tasked with studying UFO cases in 1997 and 2001, respectively. The Brazilian military has conducted UFO investigations since the late 1940s. Russian cosmonauts, scientists, and high-ranking military officials have spoken publicly about UFO events there. And for the first time, the Mexican Defense Department provided data on an unsolved sighting by an Air Force crew to a civilian researcher in 2004, an important step in government openness within that country.

The French government is generally recognized for maintaining the most productive, scientific, and systematic government investigation of UFOs in the world, continuing without interruption for over thirty years. The agency, now called GEIPAN
²
(Group for the Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena), is part of the French national space agency known as CNES,
³
the French equivalent of our NASA, and serves as a model for other nations that have consulted with it over the years. Particularly remarkable is the network of scientists, police officials, and other specialists that are linked to GEIPAN, ready at a moment’s notice to assist with the investigation of any UFO case. Its purpose has always been purely as a research agency, not primarily concerned with defense issues as was the MoD in England or with aviation safety like Chile. It was set up seven years after the close of Project Blue Book, and states its mission as simply to investigate “unidentified aerospace phenomena” and make its findings available to the public.

Jean-Jacques Velasco of France, Nick Pope of the UK, and General Ricardo Bermúdez of Chile have all headed small government agencies within their own countries that worked full-time on investigating UFO cases. They, among others writing in the pages that follow, describe their innovative work on behalf of their governments, and the impact such close-up work with the UFO phenomenon has had on their lives. In countries around the world, witnesses and investigators such as these are very aware of the need for greater participation by the United States, and are now coming together to address that problem.

Whether they have set up specific offices for UFO investigation or not, many governments have accumulated massive amounts of UFO case documentation over the decades and the public has placed great emphasis on gaining the release of these official files.

In recent years, as if part of a trend toward greater transparency, unprecedented numbers of these documents have been declassified and made public for the first time. Since 2004, the governments of Brazil, Chile, France, Mexico, Russia, Uruguay, Peru, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom have released once-secret files, and in 2009 even Denmark and Sweden joined the trend by releasing over 15,000 files each. However, none of these new records have changed our overall understanding of the phenomenon, beyond confirming that the same events occur around the world and that the behavior of the objects, and often of the governments responding to them, has been repeated over and over. Unfortunately, there has been little forward motion in terms of actually solving the mystery, and the acquisition of even more documents is not the answer.

In fact, government investigators have by and large been limited by the fact that all they’ve been able to do so far is learn as much as possible after a single event is
over
. Without greater resources, not much can be done except for the filing of reports, year after year. Letters from civilians about isolated, often questionable sightings are also added to the aggregate, making up a large proportion of the released pages. Although often fascinating, government documents no longer reveal anything new, and the thousands and thousands of pages have not led to a major breakthrough in understanding. The most sensitive files—the intelligence reports that are concerned with more serious national security implications and likely deeper investigations and analysis—will not be declassified and released. No long-awaited “smoking gun” document has surfaced.

I believe that a demand for the release of yet more files—even in the United States—is no longer a useful focus. It’s an interesting sidetrack, but it does not speak to the heart of the problem. Undue emphasis on seeking further release of documents could even prolong the international stalemate we now face, and give governments a way out through claims that they have done their part by declassifying files or will be doing so in the near future.