UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (34 page)

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”

A
RTHUR
C. C
LARKE

CHAPTER 21

Fighting Back: A New UFO Agency in America

D
espite the astonishing yet rational deduction that the extraterrestrial hypothesis should be considered to explain some UFOs, as our experts have just pointed out, governments have an aversion to addressing that point or its implications. They are not motivated to pool resources and find out if this hypothesis can be proved, ignoring the popular interest in the subject and its potential for revolutionary discovery. In fact, the discomfiting quality of the extraterrestrial hypothesis—again, we’re only talking about a
theory
, not a fact—likely explains why many governments want to keep a safe distance from the whole messy business. The difficulty of researching something as evasive and unpredictable as UFOs is also a problem—though not an insurmountable one. The agencies that
are
attempting to face the challenge have accomplished a great deal, as was demonstrated in the previous section, but ultimately they lack the resources to fully resolve the UFO mystery on their own. Even after many decades of focused research in France, exploration of defense implications in the UK, and field investigations in the Brazilian Amazon (to take three significant examples), we still don’t know what the objects actually are. In their respective countries, some government agencies continue to collect case reports and look into sightings, adding more data to the heap but not solving anything, as the rest of the world looks away.

When asked, most military officers who have been personally involved with UFO incidents refrain from interpretation or speculation, yet privately many have a keen, persistent interest in getting to the bottom of the problem. They want to know what it was they themselves have seen, or what their trusted military colleagues have encountered, and this desire does not diminish over time. These witnesses and insiders recognize the extraterrestrial, or maybe interdimensional, possibility; once you have observed one of these bizarre manifestations at close range, your mind is newly opened, through no choice of your own. Even those who were prior debunkers, who would have scoffed at the mere notion of a UFO, are forced to recognize the once inconceivable. They often feel isolated, afraid of ridicule, unsupported by the world around them. But collectively, they may be able to make a difference.

Credible witnesses and government investigators have documented thousands of compelling case reports and first-person accounts. We now have accumulated enough data to establish the reality of some kind of consistent physical phenomenon
without a doubt
. Still, the American government lags behind, refusing to acknowledge any of this, leaving us American citizens stuck in a perpetual stalemate.

How can we overcome this? In terms of finding a workable model, we can look to France’s UFO agency as the mother of them all, because, as we have seen, its office within CNES has been diligently working on the problem for over thirty years, from a research perspective rather than a military one. By seeking knowledge purely for its own sake, the French have been open to a wide range of explanations for UFOs, as scientists should be. The historic COMETA Report of 1999 broke a barrier when its generals, admirals, and engineers, along with a former head of CNES, brought the issue into the military realm and declared with great authority that even though it had not yet been proved, the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most likely explanation of the phenomenon.

Will we ever be able to find out, to the satisfaction of scientists in the world community, what UFOs are and where they come from? Is this something we, as a planetary society, would be capable of deciding to do? If so, we would have to be proactive, rigorously seeking a resolution to this problem, making it a priority. Alternatively, would we prefer to sit back and wait for the seemingly all-powerful flying objects to reveal themselves more fully to us? Nearly all of the most concerned, most credible, and most serious of the government and military officials I have talked to agree on three basic points, when it comes to moving the issue forward:

• that further scientific investigation is mandated, partly because of the impact of UFOs on aircraft and aviation safety
  

• that this investigation must be an international, cooperative venture involving many governments and transcending politics
  

• that such a global effort cannot be effective without the participation of the United States, the world’s greatest technological power
  

We are locked in by the stifling UFO taboo, which has served to protect us from the deeper, underlying issues and even threats—both perceived and unconscious—inherent in the most basic acknowledgment of a shocking and unexplained physical phenomenon. Now we need to rattle that cage. In this section, we will explore these crucial political questions with the help of a former high-level FAA official, a former state governor, and, more theoretically and philosophically, two leading political scientists. Yet, the final determination about our country’s potential role in the future will have to be decided by all of us.

Logically, the first step in moving toward a solution is the establishment of an office or small agency within the U.S. government to handle appropriate UFO investigations, liaison with other countries, and demonstrate to the scientific community that this is indeed a subject worthy of study. In order to achieve these goals, we must consider where—under what branch of government—the United States should create this modest “UFO office” to get the process started. Using other countries as a model, there are many options. Often it is the Air Force that handles these investigations, as we have seen in Belgium and Brazil, even though neither government had established a special department within the Air Force for this purpose. However, in both cases, the generals involved have stated that a specific unit tasked full time with UFO investigations would have greatly aided the process, and they advocate for that necessity. Perhaps America needs to open a new Air Force office, being extremely careful to avoid repeating the many mistakes of Project Blue Book. General De Brouwer of Belgium recommends that the Air Force be the location for the American agency, because it is responsible for airspace security and has the means to intervene if required. The work of the office, he adds, must be objective, open-minded, and transparent, and private civilian groups could assist in this effort.

Four specific agencies described previously—the GEIPAN of France, the CEFAA of Chile, the OIFFA of Peru, and the Ministry of Defence office in the UK—were set up in four distinctly different bureaucratic departments within each of their respective countries. The French agency was founded within the equivalent of our NASA, while the Chilean authorities established theirs within the equivalent of our FAA, stressing aviation safety. The Peruvian office is an Air Force agency, and the British UFO office resided within their Ministry of Defence, like our DoD, with a mandate to protect the defense interests of the UK. This diversity of both locations and emphases has much to teach us, showing that within our own country we have a number of structural options.

Many of our contributors, such as Jean-Jacques Velasco of France, Dr. Richard Haines of the United States, General Bermúdez of Chile, and Brigadier General Pereira of Brazil, stress the importance of establishing some kind of centralized database—“a serious global organization that is objective, connected to agencies around the world, and committed to respond in a scientific and responsible way to the larger questions raised by the UFO issue,” as Bermúdez describes it. “Without this, we are stuck.” Some have therefore proposed that the United Nations might be a logical focal point for the further study of UFOs, since the phenomenon occurs worldwide, transcending national boundaries. Theoretically that makes sense, but its effectiveness would be highly unlikely, given the many preoccupations and bureaucratic headaches of today’s world body in a time of increasing danger and hardship.

However, at an earlier time, in a relatively simpler world, an approach
was
made at the United Nations for just this purpose. Seven years after Project Blue Book was shut down, J. Allen Hynek and others attempted to establish an international investigative body within the halls of the UN.

In 1978, Sir Eric M. Gairy, then prime minister of Grenada, proposed to the United Nations General Assembly that the UN establish “an agency or a department of the United Nations for undertaking, coordinating, and disseminating the results of research into Unidentified Flying Objects and related phenomena.”
¹
With his associates Dr. Jacques Vallée and Lieutenant Colonel Larry Coyne, a U.S. Army pilot whose helicopter almost collided with a UFO in 1973, Dr. Hynek requested—in a UN hearing—that the United Nations provide a framework in which the many scientists and specialists around the world working on the UFO phenomenon could share their studies. He pointed out that UFOs had been reported in 133 member states of the UN and that there existed over one thousand cases where “there appears physical evidence of the immediate presence of the UFO. In significant numbers, these reports had been made by highly responsible persons—astronauts, radar experts, military and commercial pilots, officials of governments, and scientists, including astronomers.”
²

Despite these concerns, State Department teletypes show that the United States delegation at the UN was dismissive of Gairy’s effort, calling it a “blitzkrieg sales pitch”
³
and attempting to prevent his resolution from ever passing. A confidential message sent to the U.S. Secretary of State from the UN mission made an “action request” seeking “instructions on U.S. position to be taken in this matter as well as desired level of visibility. Last year Grenada requested our support and Misoff had to scramble hard behind the scenes to water down the resolution and, in effect, delay a vote for one year. Another consideration is whether to issue a disclaimer on statements made by U.S. nationals on the Grenadian delegation.”
⁴

Later, U.S. members conducted “negotiating sessions” with delegates from other missions, “in an attempt to arrive at a mutually acceptable compromise solution to the problem.” The plan was devised to refer the Grenada resolution to the Outer Space Committee without a mandate to engage in a study. This would alleviate “the need to vote on a resolution and gamble on the results.”
⁵
Despite U.S. efforts to block the vote, the General Assembly eventually adopted a draft resolution submitted by Grenada. It all fell apart in 1979, when Gairy was ousted during an internal communist takeover that tragically led to his execution.

Hynek had also informed the UN committee about a study inaugurated by CNES, the French national space center, carried out by scientists from many disciplines. He remarked that the resulting case studies were “exemplary and far superior to the previous studies in other countries … the implications for science and the public at large of this French investigation are profound.”
⁶
The official French government agency GEPAN had just been formed within CNES under the direction of Yves Sillard, as part of a natural and logical response to a scientific, space-related problem that needed more research. At the same time, efforts were also under way in America to create a new UFO investigation within our own national space agency, NASA. But in America, it wasn’t so simple—even when the request came to NASA from the very highest office in the land: the president of the United States. Unbeknownst to most Americans, even President Carter could not get the publicly funded agency to look at the UFO evidence and see if perhaps, just maybe, an investigative body within NASA was warranted.

Carter had had his own UFO sighting in 1969, before he became governor of Georgia. In 1973, while governor, he filled out a two-page reporting form by hand, in response to a request from a civilian UFO research group. According to his report, he was just about to give a speech at a meeting in Leary, Georgia, on an early October evening. He and ten members of the Leary Georgia Lions Club watched a bright, self-luminous object, at times as large as the moon. For over ten minutes, it changed colors and “came close, moved away, came close and then moved away,” and at other times stood still; then it “disappeared.”
⁷

A year and a half after Carter’s election as president in 1977, his science advisor, Frank Press, wrote to NASA administrator Robert Frosch recommending that NASA set up a “a small panel of inquiry” to see if there were any “new significant findings” since the Condon report. “The focal point for the UFO question ought to be NASA,”
⁸
Press wrote, and Frosch’s initial response was enthusiastic. “A panel of inquiry such as you suggest might possibly discover new significant findings,” he replied in September. “It would certainly generate current interest and could lead to the designation of NASA as the focal point for UFO matters.” He suggested that NASA name a “project officer”
⁹
to review UFO reports from the last ten years and make a recommendation. The White House concurred without delay.
¹⁰