UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (53 page)

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Authors: Leslie Kean

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2
into the national spotlight
Richard Price, “Arizonans Say the Truth about UFOs Is Out There,”
USA Today
, June 18, 1997.

3
“find out if it was a UFO”
The television clip from a local Arizona station is included in
I Know What I Saw
.

4
mask was removed before the cameras
A clip from television coverage of the press conference is featured in
I Know What I Saw
.

5
which could be seen for 150 miles
Senator John McCain, letter to constituent (name redacted), United States Senate, October 9, 1997.

6
were, in fact, flares
Dr. Bruce Maccabee, “Report on Phoenix Light Arrays,” 1998,
http://brumac.8k.com/phoenixlights1.html
. This detailed study concludes with the following:

“The most parsominous explanation for these lights is that they were flares (as so stated for the March 13, 1997, lights by the Maryland National Guard). This analysis is therefore consistent with that of the Cognitech Corporation (Dr. Leonid Rudin) done for the Discovery Channel documentary (November, 1997). It is also consistent with the analysis of Dr. Paul Scowen, professor of astronomy at ASU, as reported by author Tony Ortega in the Phoenix “New Times” newspaper, March 5–11, 1998, which showed that the lights were farther away than the mountain peaks in the K video. In that newspaper article the author also reported that an “Arizona National Guard public information officer, Captain Eileen Benz, had determined that the flares had been dropped at 10 P.M. over the North Tac Range 30 miles southwest of Phoenix at an unusually high altitude of 15,000 ft.” Except for the stated distance, which should be more like 60 miles (and up to 100 miles away), this statement is consistent with the analysis presented here.”

A second paper by Dr. Maccabee, “Supplementary Discussions of the Phoenix Lights Videos of March 13, 1997,” January, 2006, can be found at
http://brumac.8k.com/PhoenixSupplement/
.

7
“any evidence whatsoever of aliens or UFOs”
Dennis Roberts, reporter for the
Modesto Bee
, a Northern California newspaper, attended the press conference in Stockton, California, and taped it. He sent me a transcript in an e-mail on March 1, 2000.

8
over the Royal Air Force base at Cosford
See
chapter 17
by Nick Pope, “The Real X-Files,” for a review of the Cosford incident.

9
as Goldwater has written in his letters
See the previous chapter for excerpts from these letters.

C
HAPTER
26: E
NGAGING THE
U.S. G
OVERNMENT

1
I cofounded the Coalition for Freedom of Information
See
www.freedomofinfo.org
for more information on the Coalition for Freedom of Information, CFi.

2
as a way of saving face
MSNBC presidential debate, October 30, 2007. Transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21528787/page/22/
.

3
“for for the benefit of science”
Go to
www.freedomofinfo.org
for the full text of the International Declaration to the United States Government, first released in November 2007.

C
HAPTER
27: M
ILITANT
A
GNOSTICISM AND THE
UFO T
ABOO

1
the overwhelming evidence for its existence
Alexander Wendt and Robert Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO,”
Political Theory
, vol. 36, no. 4 (August 2008), pp. 607–33. Sage Publications has posted the paper on its website,
http:ptx.sagepub.com
.

2
a bad fairy had administered a sleeping potion
Hynek, “The Roots of Compacency,” 1985, op. cit.

3
UFO skeptics think that human beings know
The widely used phrase “UFO skeptic” can be misleading, because “skepticism” should imply doubt but openness. However, in UFO discourse it has been deformed into positive denial.

4
over 400 extrasolar planets
Dennis Overbye, “A Sultry World Is Found Orbiting a Distant Star,”
New York Times
, December 17, 2009.

5
“They Can’t Get Here”
Some of this section is reprinted verbatim from the 2008 paper, Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, op. cit., p. 616. Occasional phrases or sentences in “Militant Agnosticism and the UFO Taboo” were also used in the first paper.

6
civilizataions should have reached Earth long ago
Martyn Fogg, “Temporal Aspects of the Interaction Among the First Galactic Civilizations,”
Icarus
69 (1987): 370–84.

7
the speed of light is truly an absolute barrier
J. Deardorff et al., “Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation,”
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
58 (2005): 43–50.

8
to skip over space without time dilation
H. E. Puthoff, S. R. Little, and M. Ibison, “Engineering the Zero-Point Field and Polarizable Vacuum for Interstellar Flight,”
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
55 (2002): 137–44.

9
“Fermi Paradox”
Stephen Webb,
Where Is Everybody?
(New York: Copernicus Books, 2002).

10
UFOs are not a national security concern
Richard Dolan,
UFOs and the National Security State
, pp. 193–203.

11
reinforcing the skeptical case
Peter Galison, “Removing Knowledge,”
Critical Inquiry
31 (2004): 229–43. On UFO secrecy see especially Dolan,
UFOs and the National Security State
, and, for the official view, Gerald Haines, “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–1990,”
Intelligence and National Security
14 (1999): 26–49, and Charles Ziegler, “UFOs and the US Intelligence Community,”
Intelligence and National Security
, vol. 14 (1999), pp. 1–25.

12
a science of UFOs
One could imagine, for example, a complementary, bottom-up or “democratic” strategy centering on an Internet-funded NGO, an idea we (Wendt and Duvall) have explored elsewhere.

C
HAPTER
28: F
ACING AN
E
XTREME
C
HALLENGE

1
“a powerful desire to do nothing”
Hynek, “The Roots of Complacency,” op. cit.

2
“the dam breaks, sometimes cataclysmically”
Ibid.

3
Dr. James E. McDonald, senior atmospheric physicist
Dr. James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Washington, D.C., July 29, 1968. This report is recommended reading. For a detailed biography about McDonald and chronicle of his work, see Ann Druffel,
Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald’s Fight for UFO Science
(Wild Flower Press, 2003).

4
a 2009 memoir
Peter Sturrock,
A Tale of Two Sciences: Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist
(Exoscience, 2009).

5
on the position of the scientific establishment
Peter Sturrock,
The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence
(Warner Books, 1999). Provides all the case reports presented at the conference. Recommended reading.

6
“If it does happen, it can happen.”
Ibid., p. 160.

7
multiple dimensions, and even time travelers
See Michio Kaku,
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
(Doubleday, 2008).

8
an August 2009
Newsweek
cover story
Andrew Romano, “Aliens Exist,”
Newsweek
, August 24 & 31, 2009, pp. 50–52.

9
over 400 planets orbiting other stars
Marc Kaufman, “Search for Extraterrestrial Life Gains Momentum Around the World,”
Washington Post
, December 22, 2009. In addition to the exoplanets already discovered, the article states, “It is generally assumed that billions or trillions more are orbiting in distant systems.”

10
NASA has also developed a highly sensitive infrared space telescope
NASA release, “NASA’s Wise Eye Spies First Glimpse of the Starry Sky; Infrared All-Sky Surveying Telescope Sends Back First Images from Space,” January 6, 2010. It begins, “NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has captured its first look at the starry sky that it will soon begin surveying in infrared light. Launched on Dec. 14, WISE will scan the entire sky for millions of hidden objects, including asteroids, ‘failed’ stars and powerful galaxies.” More information about the WISE mission is available at:
http://www.nasa.gov/wise
.

11
“An extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation.”
UFO researcher and author Budd Hopkins originated this phrase in 1987 while conversing with astronomer Carl Sagan in the greenroom of a Boston TV station. For an account of the interchange, see Budd Hopkins,
Art, Life and UFOs: A Memoir
(Anomalist Books, 2009).

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books is a registered trademark and the Harmony Books colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kean, Leslie.
UFOs : generals, pilots, and government officials go on the record / Leslie Kean. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Unidentified flying objects—Research. 2. Unidentified flying objects—Sightings and encounters. 3. Public records. I. Title.
TL789.K357 2010
001.942—dc22
2010015221

eISBN: 978-0-307-71685-9

v3.0

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

FOREWORD By John Podesta

INTRODUCTION