Message of this article--or publicity release?--seems to be: you can take UFOs seriously now. Govt.s and 'serious' people have seen them and (radar registers them and so on). Given the release of various govt. official files/reports on them in recent months and years, I'm guessing we announce official contact within the next 5 years.
Still, whatever the hidden agenda(s) might be, I thought these UFO accounts were interesting and pretty solid-sounding.
Remember--you heard it here first.
(Unless someone already said it somewhere else that you know of.)
UFOs 'On The Record': Generals, Pilots And Government Officials Talk About What They Know
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/23/ufo-on-the-record_n_689518.html
The subject of UFOs -- of intense interest to the general public -- is no longer something that reputable journalists will feel they need to avoid or dismiss as silly. Popular culture has distorted the facts about this compelling mystery, and a new book sets the record straight. "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record" (Harmony Books / The Crown Publishing Group) by journalist Leslie Kean pulls back the curtain on the incredible occurrences of unexplained behavior by unknown objects over many decades.
"UFOs" includes a foreword by John Podesta and riveting, first-person accounts written by over a dozen military and aviation witnesses and official investigators from around the world. Contributors include a former governor of Arizona, the former head of the FAA's Accidents and Investigations Division, military generals from five countries, a retired senior research scientist from NASA, Air Force and commercial pilots, and government officials from agencies investigating UFOs in their respective countries.
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Jean-Jacques Velasco was the director of the French government’s program to investigate and analyze unidentified aerospace phenomena (now called GEIPAN) from 1983-2004. He writes in "UFOs": “It is possible to show, using data from established cases officially listed throughout the world, that UFOs - material objects - exist and are distinct from any ordinary phenomena. These cases are few, but their extraordinary characteristics and physical effects demonstrate this fact without ambiguity. On the basis of well established cases, the existence of UFOs is without question.
UFOs seem to be ‘artificial and controlled objects,’ and their physical characteristics can be measured by our detection systems – particularly radar. They display a physics seemingly far different from that which we employ in our most technologically advanced countries. Ground and on-board radar show that their performances greatly exceed our best aeronautical and space capabilities. These capabilities include stationary and silent flights, accelerations and speeds defying the laws of inertia, effects on electronic navigation or transmission systems, and the apparent ability to induce electrical blackouts. When encountered by military aircraft, these objects seem able to anticipate and neutralize pilots’ defensive maneuvers. In such encounters the UFO phenomenon appears to behave as if it is under some kind of intelligent control.”
Photo: Costa Rica, 1971
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Backing up from the close-up of the disc in the previous image to see it in context, the larger photograph shows the object over a lake (the darker area) with the terrain to the left. The sun is reflecting off its upper surface. This UFO was photographed in 1971 by a mapping aircraft of the Costa Rican government flying above it. The camera ran automatically under the fuselage, shooting the terrain every 17 seconds; the disc appeared only in one frame. Extensive scientific analysis has been performed on this image of an opaque disc with no visible means of propulsion. © Collection of Bernard Thouanel
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A series of sightings occurred in a more than two year “wave” over Belgium, beginning in late 1989. Thousands of people including numerous police officers observed silent gliding or hovering objects, usually triangular, which were investigated by university scientists and government officials. The objects sometimes accelerated at extremely high speeds. They left imprints on film, and although virtually impossible to detect on radar, the Air Force launched Air Force F-16’s in anxious pursuit.
This picture was taken on April 4, 1990 in Petit-Rechain, while the photographer stood underneath the craft, and captured four lights on its underside as it banked to the left. © 2010, SOFAM/Belgium
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When the Belgian image was slightly overexposed, the object’s triangular outline was clearly visible with a spotlight on each corner and a central light. The photo was retrieved by the Belgian Air Force and its authenticity has been further determined through scientific studies in France and the United States. Numerous independent witness drawings at different times and in different locations depict a very similar craft. © 2010, SOFAM/Belgium
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Major General Wilfried de Brouwer (Ret.), then an Air Force colonel, was tasked to handle the UFO wave by Belgium’s defense minister for the Air Force, and to coordinate with other branches of the government and civil aviation. De Brouwer wrote a detailed account for "UFOs" about his effort to identify the intruders, which included inquiries to the United States as shown in official documents. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the Air Force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” he states. “The Belgian objects have still never been explained.”
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We know that of all UFO sightings reported, 95% can be explained as ordinary phenomena, and therefore discarded. However, within that remaining 5%, spectacular well-documented UFO events have been officially investigated by government agencies, witnessed by pilots, and confirmed by Air Force generals. No conventional explanations were found despite extensive efforts by experts to do so. These are the cases explored in "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record." Photo: U.S. Coast Guard, Salem, MA; 1952
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No bona fide investigator yet knows or claims to know what these unidentified objects are. I write in my Introduction:
“Neither I nor the other writers are claiming that there are alien spacecraft in our skies, simply because we do not deny data showing a physical presence of something there. The term ‘UFO’ has been misused and has become so much a part of popular culture that its original (and accurate) definition has been nearly completely lost. Almost everyone equates the term ‘UFO’ with extraterrestrial spacecraft, and thus, in a perverse twist of meaning, the acronym has been transformed to mean something identified rather than something unidentified. The false but widespread assumption that a UFO is, of necessity, an alien spaceship is usually the reason the term generates such an exaggerated and confusing range of emotional responses. Recognition of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being a valid, although unproved, possible explanation worthy of further scientific scrutiny is something entirely different from approaching the subject of UFOs as if this discovery had already been made. “ Photo: McMinnville, OR, 1950
(Note the location of image 7--McMinnville, OR. Interestingly, there's another McMinnville-related story on Huffpo: dozen or so high school football players from McMinnville, who were hospitalized due to either overexertion in a too-hot weight room, or use of 'creatin' supplement. Ladies, that's as close to a 'locker room' discussion as I hope this thread ever gets. I don't see anything more to the name coming up twice in two stories than coincidence, but maybe someone can explain otherwise.)
McMinnville Football Disaster: 18 Players Hospitalized After Workout
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/22/mcminnville-football-disa_n_690481.html
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This is a close-up of the disc in the previous photo, taken by farmer Paul Trent with his wife in 1950. The Trents were impeccable witnesses, and their two pictures of this object are among the most thoroughly analyzed in UFO history. No evidence of a hoax has been found. The famous Condon Report, a 1968 University study by a team of scientists commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, stated that the investigation of the Trent case indicated that “an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.”
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In 1976, General Parviz Jafari of the Iranian Air Force (Ret.) was a major and squadron commander when he was ordered by the Air Force Command to approach, in his Phantom F-4 jet, a large, multi-colored UFO observed over Tehran. In his chapter in "UFOs", Jafari details the wild cat and mouse chase during which he attempted to launch a Sidewinder missile at a series of objects, and describes the ability of the UFOs to repeatedly disable his firing mechanism at the last moment. He also reports on his de-briefing by US Lt. Col. Mooy, who wrote a three-page, secret memo about the incident for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which was later declassified. In his assessment of the case for the DIA, Col. Roland Evans stated that "This case is a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon."
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Captain Ray Bowyer was piloting an Aurigny Air Services three-engined aeroplane over the Channel Islands in 2007 when he spotted two large, brilliant yellow UFOs shaped like thin cigars, with dark bands on one side. Witnessed also by his passengers and another pilot in a different location, the objects registered on radar.
After landing, Bowyer immediately filed a report, including the above drawing, sent to Jersey Air Traffic Control, the Ministry of Defence and the Civil Aviation Authority in London. Shortly thereafter, he loaded his plane with passengers and began his return flight. “It was then, on this trip back to Southampton, that I had time to take stock on how big the objects actually were,” he writes. “It was then that I received confirmation of the radar traces, and the distances were established (in my mind anyway). From that data I learned that I was approx 55 miles away from the first object, not the ten miles or less that I had originally thought. Seeing a reasonably large town from 55 miles would have been comparable to the size of this object. It was at this point that the massive size of the object became clear, and I estimated it to be up to a mile long.”
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John Podesta writes in his foreword:
“Kean and her distinguished co-writers call for the establishment of a small US Government agency to cooperate with other countries which are already formally investigating, reviewing and releasing information relevant to UFOs. This new agency would handle release of documents and any future investigations with openness and efficiency. It’s an idea worth considering and it is definitely time for government, scientists and aviation experts to work together in unraveling the questions about UFOs that have so far remained in the dark. It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. The American people – and people around the world – want to know, and they can handle the truth. 'UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record' represents a pivotal step in that direction, laying the groundwork for a new way forward.”
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Former Arizona governor Fife Symington III opens his chapter as follows: “Between 8:00 and 8:30 on the evening of March 13, 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I witnessed something that defied logic and challenged my reality: a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigated over the Squaw Peak Mountain Preserve in Phoenix, Arizona. A solid structure rather than an apparition, it was dramatically large, with a distinctive leading edge embedded with lights as it traveled the Arizona skies. I still don’t know what it was. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can say with certainty that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I had ever seen.”
The same incident was witnessed by hundreds, if not thousands of people in Arizona. Symington made inquiries to the Department of Public Safety, the Air National Guard, and the lead officers at Luke Air Force Base as to the origin of the craft, but the incident remains unexplained. “I would not want to see another governor go through what I did in 1997, and it’s only a matter of time before it will happen again,” he states. © Randall Nickerson
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A brief historical overview excerpted from my Introduction: “UFOs became a national issue in the late 1940’s, when there were many sightings of great public interest and concern which were covered widely by the media. The US Air Force took the lead in addressing these events, complicated by the onset of the Cold War, publicly attempting to explain away as many cases as possible in order to divert public attention from the mystery. Behind the scenes, the topic was of great concern at the highest levels, and the Air Force was not equipped to protect the public from an entirely unknown, but apparently technological phenomenon that could come and go at will. In the early 1950’s, it established Project Blue Book, a small agency to receive reports from citizens, investigate them, and offer explanations to the media and the public. Blue Book gradually solidified as largely a public relations effort intent on debunking UFO sightings. Hundreds of files accumulated, and the Air Force closed down the program in 1970, ending all public official investigations without finding an explanation for many shocking UFO incidents.”
Investigations continued behind the scenes, and the US continued to file classified reports on cases affecting national security, and on important UFO events overseas. The cases presented by the contributors to "UFOs" all occurred after the close of Project Blue Book, between 1976 and 2007.
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In the mid 1980s, we had our own UFO wave over the Hudson Valley in upstate New York and parts of Connecticut. Despite recurrent sightings by thousands of people, our government did nothing and said nothing. U.S. government non-reaction to UFO events stands in stark contrast to the response of other countries such as Belgium, France, the UK, and Brazil, which investigate cases and acknowledge that the unexplained objects exist. This image shows lights from an unidentified craft photographed by a state police officer over Rt. I-84 near Waterbury, Connecticut in 1987, during the Hudson Valley wave. Analysis shows the object was huge and that the lights were flashing rapidly in some sort of sequence.
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Northwestern University Astronomer J. Allen Hynek was scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book – its agency receiving UFO reports and investigating cases - for over twenty years. In 1977, he wrote: 'I had started out as an outright ‘debunker,’ taking great joy in cracking what seemed at first to be puzzling cases. I was the arch enemy of those ‘flying saucer groups and enthusiasts’ who very dearly wanted UFOs to be interplanetary. My own knowledge of those groups came almost entirely from what I heard from Blue Book personnel: they were all ‘crackpots and visionaries.’ My transformation was gradual but by the late sixties it was complete. Today I would not spend one further moment on the subject of UFOs if I didn't seriously feel that the UFO phenomenon is real and that efforts to investigate and understand it, and eventually to solve it, could have a profound effect – perhaps even be the springboard to mankind’s outlook on the universe.” Photo: Collection of J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies
ALSO--interesting that there was a Channel Islands sighting and also sightings in Belgium. Again--to me, seems like just coincidence/can't see enough of a pattern or a reason to try to confuse those locations (where serious PTB connections with horrific sexual abuse of kids happened) with UFO activity. But if someone sees more of that pattern, have at it.
