Military brass go public
with explosive new
information
By COLMAN JONES
While for most people the subject of UFOs and aliens arouses no more
than mild amusement, if not outright derision, the recent recruitment of
high-profile former doubters to the believers=92 side is shaking up a
new round of dissonance.
In recent weeks, some of these converts have joined a long list of
credible UFO enthusiasts who have been featured in a flurry of
television and radio programs in the U.S. and England, programs that are
no longer treating the extraterrestrial issue as a comedic interlude.
These newcomers to the cause wonder how long we will continue to stand
idly by and let deliberately evasive governments shield the world=92s
peoples from what may be the most important and potentially dangerous
news ever to surface that we are not alone in the universe.
The most significant military UFO recruit is Nick Pope, the British
government=92s appointed investigator of UFO sightings who headed
Britain=92s secretariat air staff 2A division between 1991 and 94.
Unlike his predecessors, who merely rubber-stamped sighting reports,
Pope contacted witnesses and civilian UFO researchers, checking aircraft
movements, airship flightpaths and weather-balloon launches and ordering
radar tapes to be impounded and sent to him for analysis.
After rigorous investigation,=94 Pope says,=93I uncovered conventional
explanations for around 90 per cent of sightings. But 10 per cent simply
could not be explained, and it was my belief that some of these were
extraterrestrial in origin.
There were too many cases where we were obviously not just talking about
lights or shapes, but we clearly had evidence that there were structured
craft, where the technology went way beyond even the cutting edge of our
own.
Not pleased
Pope is still working as a major for the UK ministry of defence,
although his higher-ups have been none too pleased with his work and
have attempted to discourage publication of his book, Open Skies, Closed
Minds, due for publication in June by Simon and Shuster.
"(What lay behind the resistance) was the closed-minded attitude,=94 he
says.=93It was people=92s embarrassment that perhaps I was going to talk
about cases where we had visual sightings and radiation readings and
where we could show that, unfortunately, the end response of the
department was to do nothing."
Another high-ranking addition to the UFO cause is Edgar Mitchell, the
65-year-old Apollo 14 astronaut and the sixth man to walk on the moon.
In 1971, he and Alan Shepard spent 33 hours roving the desolate lunar
hills. It was here that Mitchell first courted an avant-garde
reputation, conducting mental telepathy experiments by transmitting
symbolic images to an acquaintance in Chicago.
Shortly thereafter, he left the astronaut corps and founded the
Institute for Noetic Sciences in an effort to integrate various
scientific disciplines into the study of human consciousness. (Noetics
comes from the Greek work for mind.)
Mitchell's upcoming book, The Way Of The Explorer, addresses his latest
research, including his conclusions about extraterrestrial intelligence.
Speaking from his home in Florida, he says,=93The evidence has
accumulated to the point that it can no longer be ignored. There is a
body of solid, powerful, credible evidence=97 surrounded by a whole lot
of disinfo rmation, misinformation and silliness.=94
Solid evidence
Mitchell has tried to gather up as much first-hand data as possible. "I
have personally gone out of my way to interview government people I can
have some respect for, who have given firsthand accounts of
(extraterrestrial) contact of different sorts. I can't reveal these
people, because they are under security restriction."
Their accounts have convinced the former astronaut to join the growing
campaign to press for lifting the gag orders on talking about UFOs. He
is also pushing, along with 20,000 others, for an executive order to
declassify any U.S. government-held information on the stirring 1947
affair at Roswell, New Mexico, where the U.S. air force allegedly
retrieved the remains of a crashed spaceship complete with alien
occupants' a tale that continues to fascinate millions.
Mitchell is only one of several astronauts to go public with what they
know about UFOs. Another is major Gordon Cooper, one of the original
seven astronauts who helped pioneer space exploration efforts. But
unlike most of his colleagues, Cooper has said for decades that he
believes at least some UFOs are alien spacecraft, testifying to that
effect in front of the UN in 1978.
Cooper, who today runs an aerospace management company in Van Nuys,
California, had already been a firm believer before he flew into space.
Ten years earlier, in the early 50s, he was assigned to a jet fighter
group in Germany. While stationed there, he remembers sighting an entire
formation of circular metallic objects as he piloted his F-86 Sabrejet.
"We saw these objects coming over at quite a good altitude, flying in
fighter formations,=94 he says. We tried to get up to them, but we
couldn't get anywhere near as high as they were. They continued for
about two days, coming over in great numbers."
With so many reports of strange happenings, UFO types trained in
military culture are astounded at governments' apparent indifference to
the possible strategic implications of all these unexplained phenomena.
That's the concern of retired British admiral of the fleet Lord
Hill-Norton, former chief of the defence staff and chair of the NATO
military committee during the mid-70s.
The government says that the matter is investigated,=94 he says from his
home near London. They admit readily 300 or 400 reports a year, which
they investigate. The ministry's official line is this is not of any
defence interest. This is silly talk, of course.
The security aspect of such sightings has been exhaustively explored by
British writer Timothy Good, whose definitive 1987 book Above Top Secret
soared up the best-seller lists. His latest entry, Beyond Top Secret:
The Worldwide UFO Security Threat, with a foreword by Hill-Norton and
published just last week, is a fully revised edition, citing over 100
new sightings reported by military and civilian pilots around the world.
The new book's focus is on the potential defence risks posed by UFOs.
Good notes, "They interfere with aircraft communications systems and
military weapons systems and jam radars. There have been quite a number
of aircraft which have gone missing during close encounters with UFOs,
in countries as far apart as the U.S. and Iran."
These devices have been seen over nuclear missile bases and atomic
energy commission installations in the U.S. since the 1940s. They have
been known to paralyze launching systems of guided missiles. Here in
Britain, at the famous Woodbridge case in 1980 (where U.S. military
officers reported a bright triangular-shaped object landing in a field),
at least one of the witnesses has confirmed that beams of light were
shone down at a nuclear weapons storage area. Surely this poses a
security threat.
Lobbying friends
The latest figure to enter the fray is the 85-year-old environmental
activist and venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller, son of John D.
Rockefeller Jr. and brother of Nelson. For the last few years,
Rockefeller has been lobbying his friends in political circles for any
information they may have on extraterrestrial life. More recently, he
agreed to fund a research report presenting the strongest proof of alien
visits.
The 169-page document, entitled Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing
Document: The Best Available Evidence, has the support of the three
major American UFO organizations and has been sent to U.S. president
Bill Clinton, Congress and other world leaders.
The report, a copy of which has been obtained by NOW, includes case
histories of UFO sightings.
"It is this large quantity of evidence of the existence of something
completely baffling," the document says, "which motivates many of us to
urge the governments of the world to release all they know about UFOs so
that the people of the world, and especially scientists, can begin to
come to grips with a mystery that has far too long been subjected to
secrecy and ridicule."
With all this ferment, it's somewhat sobering to note that the Canadian
government is utterly uninterested.
In Winnipeg, at the Canadian forces' aerospace control and surveillance
centre, staff officer captain Jim McLean tells me that our air force
gathers reports of UFO sightings, but little else. "In essence, what
this office does is accumulate all the files and reports, and keep them
on file=97 we don't assess or investigate them."
McLean says the government used to look into unusual sightings, but "it
took up too much time for things that used to prove to be natural
events, i.e. meteor showers. It took up many, many man-hours. We hold
them on file, and can copy everything and send it off to anybody who's
interested."
=A9 1996 NOW Communications Inc. NOW and NOW Magazine and the NOW design
are protected through trademark registration.
SIDEBAR
What would happen IF...?
by Colman Jones
On January 1, 2000, Bill Clinton enters a Rose Garden press conference,
accompanied by other world leaders.
Staring straight into the news cameras, the U.S. president solemnly
declares, "I have an important announcement to make: we now have reason
to believe that this planet has been visited by extraterrestrial beings
who are studying our race. Their ultimate intentions are unknown."
What if this unearthly scenario were actually to transpire? How would
the world's peoples react?
It's a question that some of the world's best minds have long been
contemplating, and their conclusions may shed light on why governments
have not been more forthcoming on the subject of UFOs and aliens -
namely, the fear of the public reaction that such a blatant declaration
would provoke.
For example, according to a 1960 report prepared for NASA by the
Brookings Institution, a Washington thinktank, discovery of life on
other worlds could cause the earth's civilization to collapse.
Citing anthropological studies, it noted, "societies sure of their own
place have disintegrated when confronted by a superior society, and
others have survived even though changed."
"Clearly, the better we can come to understanding the factors involved
in responding to such crisis the better prepared we may be."
But at a special 1972 symposium on extraterrestrial intelligence held at
Boston University, Nobel Prize winner George Wald took a more
pessimistic view. "I can conceive of no nightmare so terrifying as
establishing such communication with a so-called superior technology in
outer space," he testified.
A 1975 report produced by the Library of Congress for the House
Committee on Science and Technology also warned against automatically
assuming that open contact with other life forms, if discovered, would
benefit humanity. "Since we have no knowledge of their nature, we may be
aiding in our own doom", it said, and went on to speculate about a
foreign civilization's possible negative views on a lower technological
society, seeing it as a threat.
"It's a huge unknown", agrees Michael Michaud, a former U.S. State
Department career diplomat for 32 years, serving at U.S. embassies all
over the world, specializing in environment, science and technology. He
has written extensively on the implications of extraterrestrial contact.
In an article published in the journal of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Michaud noted that discovery of
extraterrestrial life by military authorities might not necessarily be
made available to the public.
Reached at his home in Geneva, Switzerland, the now retired diplomat
cites a late 1970s incident, in which he was personally involved, in
which a nuclear-powered Soviet satellite was discovered by the U.S. to
be losing its orbit, descending towards the earth with a nuclear reactor
on board.=20
Michaud recalls "this was discussed intensively between ourselves and
the Soviets, and later with certain other governments, long before any
public release of the information was made. That affair was classified
until it was announced publicly after the satellite came down, so it's
entirely conceivable that a government might handle the [discovery of
extraterrestrial life] the same way, if it were done only through
governmental means."
Michaud has frequently argued that one of the most profound effects
would be the feeling of common identity that might be generated by
contact. Bringing his 32 years in diplomacy to bear on this, Michaud
says the outside identity contrasting with our own might be potentially
very useful. "I'm not sure it will solve all our squabbles, but it will
make them seen a lot less important, and there will be larger context in
which they will be placed."
Stanton Friedman, considered by many the grand-daddy of ufologists, says
there are plenty of reasons for a UFO coverup. Interviewed at his home
in Fredericton, New Brunswick, the 61-year-old nuclear physicist points
out that military considerations would override all others, especially
as concerns the technology underlying alien spacecraft - "you want to
figure how the damn things work. Say you've got wreckage, you set up
your secret project - the basic rule for security is that you can't tell
your friends without telling your enemies."
For this reason, Friedman says, military authorities would have a vested
interest in keeping recovery of alien vehicles under wraps. "What if the
other guy figures out how they work before you do?"
Obviously, such a revelation would also pull the rug under from many of
our most cherished institutions, be they religious, economic, or
political. As Friedman notes, "the biggest implication here is loss of
power to people who have it. What would happen is that the younger
generation would immediately push for a new view of ourselves, instead
as Canadians, American, Russians, Chinese, etc., but as earthlings."
"That would be splendid, until you realize that there's no government on
this planet that wants its citizens to owe ther primary allegiance to
the planet instead of that individual government. Nationalism is the
only game in town."
(end)