UFOs and Halfhearted Media Coverage

A few nights ago I was interviewed on Richard Hoagland’s radio show and we spent a lot of time discussing one of my recent articles here at Mysterious Universe. It was the one on UFO Disclosure, the complete and utter naivety of those who support it, and my “seen it all before” comments. It was this article that led us into another, somewhat related, topic. Namely, how come the media – given its attention to breaking and/or understanding Watergate, Iran-Contra, the WMD situation, and the Edward Snowden affair – has never been able to blow the lid off the UFO secrecy and secure the disclosure so many seek and hope for?

The skeptics and debunkers would say – and they have said – that this glaring issue of the world’s leading journalists not having cracked something like Roswell, is because nothing of an extraordinary nature occurred back in the summer of 1947. That’s not true. And the outrageous thing is that those same skeptics and debunkers know exactlywhy the mainstream, influential press has not solved Roswell. They prefer, however, to spin and weave as they see fit.

The answer as to why the media hasn’t resolved something like Roswell is extremely simple and has nothing to do with a lack of potential data to be found. To put it bluntly, the media has never solved Roswell because it has never gone after Roswell (or any other major case of a UFO nature) in the same way, and on the same scale, that it has with the “Big Four” above: Snowden, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Yes, there’s no doubt that the media – of numerous nations – has extensively covered the UFO controversy, and has done so since 1947. The number of articles written by the press, since the 1940s, must surely be well into the thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. But, the typical type of UFO story that the media generally provides its readers/viewers with is not on a par with what one would expect to see on the four above. Some might say the subject is not worthy of such similar coverage. I would suggest otherwise.

President Richard M. Nixon

There may be those reading this article who take the view that when it comes to UFOs, “the government is silencing the journalists.” Really? Well, “the government” didn’t stop the press from breaking one of the biggest stories of the 20th century: the Watergate affair, which led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. Nor was the press stopped from revealing the fact that there is a massive NSA-controlled data-collection program focused on the online activity and phone calls of US citizens. The persistence of the press meant that the facts came out – even if there were those who wished it didn’t.

The very same might happen for Roswell – in theory. An aggressive, lengthy, and wide-reaching study of Roswell by one of the world’s leading news outlets could well do for Ufology what it did for the “Big Four.” That’s to say, extract the genie from the bottle. And regardless of whether the genie wants out or not. But the media hasn’t done that with UFOs and Roswell. And it won’t. Here’s why.

As I pointed out on the Hoagland show, being able to show people you are the person who broke something like the Watergate story, or the Snowden case (etc., etc.) is something that many journalists would give their right arm to achieve. Developing a reputation for being the journalist who chases after little green men has far less appeal for those who want to climb the journalistic ladder. But, if they would only develop a pair of balls, care less about reputations, and actually spend major time (and I do meanmajor time) on Roswell, they might just find – to their amazement – that there really is something there.

The S-4.

As another example: Bob Lazar. When, in the late 1980s, Lazar came forward with his claim to have briefly worked at a Nevada-based facility called S-4 (at which, he also claimed, recovered alien spacecraft were stored), it made many heads turn within Ufology. It also made George Knapp’s head turn. Knapp, to his lasting credit, and as a respected journalist, dug deeply into the Lazar controversy. But he was one of barely a handful.

If Lazar’s story is nothing but a hoax, then it’s of no consequence and we should move on. And, yes, some have done that. On the other hand, if the story is true, then Lazar is a whistle-blower on the scale of Edward Snowden. Maybe even a bigger scale. Can you imagine what the outcome might have been had the world’s media gone after Lazar in the late-1980s in the fashion they did with Snowden? Okay, maybe Lazar’s claims would have been shown to have no merit. On the other hand, it could have resulted in the startling revelation that Uncle Sam has a fine collection of shiny UFOs and a motley collection of dead, pickled aliens. No surprises: it didn’t happen.

Certainly, the media commented on Lazar’s claims on more than a few occasions. But, a new Woodward and Bernstein, with major media backing and funding, to pursue the Lazar story as far as it could conceivably go, and for months or even years? Nope, no such new team was anywhere in sight. It still isn’t. But it is/was when it comes to the likes of Watergate, Snowden and so on.

On the matter of UFOs, the mainstream media is very good about entertaining us, vaguely intriguing us, making slightly fun-poking comments about Ufology (granted, some of which are deserved; even I have to admit that much), and preparing a couple of columns of text to be placed at the foot of page five. On the other hand, however, that same media is downright hopeless, impotent, and lacking in vision when it comes to getting behind the UFO subject and to a degree that history just might be made in the process.

 TAGS: media, Roswell, UFOs, Watergate

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“Close Encounters in Afghanistan

Long before Afghanistan became associated with the “War on Terror,” strange and mysterious things were going on in the skies of the country. And, to the extent that the U.S. Department of State got interested in the matter. We’re talking about UFOs. We’re also talking about files on the matter which have been declassified under Freedom of Information legislation. On February 4, 1981, a Mr. Archard – reporting to the American Embassy in Aslamabad, Pakistan – prepared a document titled “Close Encounters in Afghanistan.” It’s a document that has a distinct UFO theme to it, but which also addresses the matter of the “UFOs” being secret devices/technologies of the former Soviet Union. Whatever the truth, it all began in 1980 and continued to concern U.S. authorities into 1981.

Archard wrote: “I am convinced that there is substance in the many travelers’ reports from Afghanistan that the Red Army is using a type of very powerful, high intensity light there. The light may be used in connection with perimeter defense and/or road security. We have heard and reported accounts of this phenomenon since September, primarily from journalists and adventurers. These have described strange lights illuminating large portions – typically as much as or more than one quarter – of the Afghan sky. The locations of the sightings reported to us have been Ghazni (August 1980), Nuristan (Sept. 1980) and Khost (Jan., 1981).”

The Department of State documentation continues with the following: “Accounts have in common the brightness of the lights, the distances from which they are discernible, and the size of the areas they appear to illuminate (more – perhaps much more – than 5 miles in diameter). Accounts differ in that some speak of narrow beams which are compared with laser or search lights, as a part of the phenomenon. Most, though, speak of more diffused illumination. Accounts differ as to whether lights slowly wax and wane, or reach maximum intensity and turn off instantly.”

Archard took keen notice of this strange state of affairs: “I had been skeptical about the stories, which have a UFO cast, until NBC producer Joe DeCola returned from Paktia last month. I have gotten to know DeCola well and consider him an accurate, careful observer. While he was passing near Khost (Matun) about Jan. 1, DeCola and his crew ‘saw the light.’ At the time, they were about 12 miles south of the Khost Garrison. When they became aware of it, the light seemed to be at full intensity.”

Archard added that the first impression of both DeCola and his team was that “…it was borne by a helicopter which was searching for them. It did not move, however, nor was any aircraft (or other) motor noise discernible. They left the area as quickly as possible but were sure that the light remained visible and stationary for at least 20 minutes. DeCola’s impression was that the light was generated from an airborne source at an altitude of some hundreds of feet. Because it did not move, and there was no motor noise, he thinks it may have been suspended from a balloon. Like other witnesses, he reports being unnerved by the intensity and magnitude of the lights and wonders if it is intended primarily to frighten potential attackers.”

Archard asked DeCola if he – DeCola – thought it possible that the light could have come from “…something like the hand-held magnesium flares such as are used by the U.S. Army. He was quite sure not, as there was no movement and the duration was much too long. As for mortar-launched flares, there was no explosion and again no drift.”

Moving on from the sighting of Joe DeCola, Archard had the following to say from early February 1981: “Another more specific story came Feb. 3 from Frenchman Dominique Vargas based on a sighting near Asadabad, Kunar, in September. Vargas, a professional photographer who seems to have some science as well as military background, claims the light he saw was ‘colder and whiter’ than that from a tungsten source ‘which would burn at 3,500 degrees Kelvin.’ At first sighting, the light illuminated a minimum diameter of 5 to 10 kilometers, in what he described as a perfect and clearly outlined hemispherical shape. The period of illumination was about 15 minutes, with the period of greatest intensity beginning instantly and lasting for two or three minutes. Subsequently, the size of the illuminated hemisphere expanded dramatically, while the intensity of the light within it diminished gradually to nothing. Vargas thought the light source was not airborne, as this would have produced a more than hemispherical shape. As with DeCola, Vargas heard no noises associated with the light.”

Archard signed off with the following: “Interestingly, a night light phenomenon overIslamabad’s Margala Hills was seen by diplomats and others a few months ago and reported in the press. We think this was probably of the moving light, classic UFO school, and not related to the Afghan sightings.”

Genuine UFOs? Some kind of secret weapon or device of the Soviets? Whatever the answer, it’s not to be found in the files of the Department of State. The entire matter remained unexplained.

 TAGS: Afghanistan, close encounters, UFOs

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Eyes Only: How the CIA Kept Tabs on a Civilian UFO Research Group

As most of us know by now, the CIA has indeed kept tabs on the UFO problem in the past, particularly during the 1950s and 60s. This is common knowledge for most these days, particularly thanks to the PR staff at the CIA, and what might be viewed as a “cooperative promotional effort” on their part in advance of the recent X-Files reboot. Namely, the CIA featured a number of their previously declassified UFO files on a page at their website, leading many media outlets to proclaim that the the CIA had “just released its UFO files.”

Not so fast. The files in question had actually been released back in 1978, as their website states. “The CIA declassified hundreds of documents in 1978 detailing the Agency’s investigations into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs),” the statement reads. “The documents date primarily from the late 1940s and 1950s.” That, of course, didn’t keep the press from jumping and running with a host of cheerfully misleading headlines about the sudden release of the CIA’s “real X-Files”.

Many historians would actually assert that the closest thing to “real” X-Files would actually have been the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which oversaw the official collection of UFO reports by government until 1968. Despite being a “legitimate” government UFO study, Blue Book left a lot to be desired, resulting in dissatisfaction from many involved, including the project’s former science advisor, J. Allen Hynek. In fact, Hynek’s dissatisfaction with Blue Book’s handling of UFO reports led him to believe that some other organization may have been receiving and studying a number of UFO reports, altogether bypassing the Air Force and its operations. “There were many times during my twenty years as a scientific consultant to Blue Book,” Hynek wrote in 1977, “that I also wondered whether the very best reports were being kept from Blue Book.”

In likelihood, there were a number of different agencies that were keeping tabs on the UFO subject, and as we have already established, the CIA had indeed been one. More specifically, the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and its Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) became the departments that oversaw the CIA’s secret UFO inquiry. At the urging of Weapons and Equipment Division head Edward Tauss, the CIA’s UFO study group was advised to keep its interest in UFOs under wraps, “in view of [the public’s] probable alarmist tendencies.” In other words, it was believed that the CIA’s role in UFO research, if made public, might result in legitimization of the phenomenon, and thus actually encourage belief in it.

Former CIA Chief Historian Gerald K. Haines covered this period in his essay, “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90: A Die-Hard Issue” (the article can be read at the CIA’s website). Haines noted that the CIA’s initial report on UFOs prompted Robert Amory, Jr, then Deputy Director for Intelligence, to appoint further UFO studies to the OSI’s Physics and Electronics Division, with A. Ray Gordon in charge during this period. Among the aims and objectives of the CIA’s UFO studies during this time, it was hoped that the relevant OSI divisions could, “coordinate the intelligence effort required to solve the problem.” Haines further notes that, “[Walter B.] Smith also wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts.”

This is a particularly interesting statement. Rather than suggesting an indirect relationship between world affairs and UFO sightings, employing wording along the lines of “what role the UFO phenomenon may have played in connection with US psychological warfare efforts” (or something to that effect), Haines’ historical overview of the CIA’s internal UFO studies suggests it might have hoped to exploit UFOs. One might consider that a funny thing for an agency to want to do, amidst taking such great care not to appear to be too interested in the subject in question!

Haines goes on to summarize the cooperative effort between the CIA and the USAF, and how the CIA’s concealment of their operations would later help fuel accusations of a coverup:

[T]he CIA Study Group met with Air Force officials at Wright-Patterson and reviewed their data and findings. The Air Force claimed that 90 percent of the reported sightings were easily accounted for. The other 10 percent were characterized as “a number of incredible reports from credible observers.” The Air Force rejected the theories that the sightings involved US or Soviet secret weapons development or that they involved “men from Mars”; there was no evidence to support these concepts. The Air Force briefers sought to explain these UFO reports as the misinterpretation of known objects or little understood natural phenomena. Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. This concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of a CIA conspiracy and coverup.

Returning to J. Allen Hynek, the former Blue Book advisor had written about his suspicions of involvement by parties outside the USAF in 1977 — one year prior to the first batch of UFO files being released by the CIA. While they may not have been theonly other group involved (Stanton Friedman has, for instance, frequently referred to the UFO files kept by the NSA), it is clear that the CIA very well may have been behind some of these operations, of which Hynek had maintained such suspicions.

Hynek wasn’t alone, however. Jim and Coral Lorenzen, founders of the Wisconsin-based Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), had long suspected control from a party outside the Air Force, and had even gone so far as to specify their feeling that this agency was the CIA. In their book UFOs Over the Americas, the Lorenzens devoted an entire chapter to possible CIA involvement in UFO studies, in which they wrote the following:

In Flying Saucer Occupants  we presented the dual hypothesis the CIA is conducting an undercover intelligence gathering program relating to UFO phenomenon, and that, for intelligent reasons, it has been for sixteen-odd years the architect of Project Blue Book (the Air Force investigation project on UFOs) and the general Air Force public information policy–the latter being a “cover” program designed to hide the fact that the former exists.

The Lorenzens offered nine points, as featured in their aforementioned previous publication Flying Saucer Occupants, which gave their rational for why the CIA had likely been involved in UFO research at that time (something that, to reiterate, wouldn’t become public knowledge for a number of years). Later in the chapter, they also share a rather telling story about how one of the early members of their fledgling organization had seemingly been spying on them, possibly in conjunction with the kind of CIA surveillance they had suspected.

This individual, a man who had purportedly worked hard to steer the Lorenzens toward metaphysical interpretations of the UFO phenomenon early on, had sent a letter to them dated February 22, 1953, which Coral read, and “flipped it into a file basket on her desk.” Doing so allowed the light to hit the paper in just such a way that faint depressions from the typing of an earlier document (which had been typed on a separate sheet of paper, using this one as a platen) were revealed; in particular, Coral had seen her own name illuminated on the document! Rubbing lightly over the impressions with a soft lead pencil revealed the beginning of “an abbreviated intelligence report”, and after confronting this individual about the apparent memo he had written about Coral, he claimed it was merely something he did “to formalize his feelings about people he met and to define his impressions and that it was strictly a report for his own files.”

Needless to say, this wouldn’t be the best of ways to gain the confidence of others, whether then, or now. The Lorenzens went on to note the possible (or likely?) connection this man had to the CIA, further noting how the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel later in 1953 would go on to name the APRO specifically among organizations that should be watched “because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur.”

As we have examined throughout this article, the CIA’s past involvement with UFO research is well established by now. UFO researchers like J. Allen Hynek suspected the involvement of parties outside the USAF early on, and the Lorenzens and APRO managed to take their assessments so far as to specifically name the CIA amidst their similar suspicions. Whether or not they had been the “architects” behind the USAF’s Project Blue Book, we certainly know that the CIA’s study group was meeting with Air Force officials at Wright Patterson AFB, hence proving that the two groups were in communication on the subject of UFOs.

“Certainly APRO has been watched,” the Lorenzens would conclude. “And, probably, other UFO groups as well.” The words of Joseph Heller come to mind here, where he famously quipped, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” A true statement indeed, and the APRO affair is no doubt only one of many instances where the CIA — and probably other groups as well — have kept tabs on civilian UFO groups for various reasons.

 TAGS: APRO, CIA, J. Allen Hynek, ufo

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