Military Brass go public with Information

 
Top brass go public with UFO information
 
 
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 believersí 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 worldís peoples from what may be the
most important and potentially dangerous news ever to surfac
ó that we are not alone in the universe.
 
The most significant military UFO recruit is Nick Pope, the
British governmentís appointed investigator of UFO sightings
who headed Britainís 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.
 
ìAfter rigorous investigation,î Pope says,ìI 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.
 
ìThere 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.î
 
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.
 
ì(What lay behind the resistance) was the closed-minded
attitude,î he says.ìIt was peopleís 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.î
 
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.)
 
Mitchellís 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,ìThe evidence has
accumulated to the point that it can no longer be ignored. There
is a body of solid, powerful, credible evidenceó surrounded by
a whole lot of disinfo rmation, misinformation and silliness.î
 
Solid evidence
 
Mitchell has tried to gather up as much first-hand data as
possible.ìI 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
canít reveal these people, because they are under security
restriction.î
 
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 occupantsó 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.
 
ìWe saw these objects coming over at quite a good altitude,
flying in fighter formations,î he says.ìWe tried to get up to them,
but we couldnít get anywhere near as high as they were. They
continued for about two days, coming over in great numbers.î
 
With so many reports of strange happenings, UFO types trained
in military culture are astounded at governmentsí apparent
indifference to the possible strategic implications of all these
unexplained phenomena.
 
Thatís 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 governmentìsays that the matter is investigated,î he says
from his home near London.ìThey admit readily 300 or 400
reports a year, which they investigate. The ministryís official line
is this is not of any defence interest. This is silly talk, of course.î
 
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 bookís focus is on the potential defence risks posed by
UFOs. Good notes,ìThey 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.
 
ìThese 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.î
 
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.
 
ìIt is this large quantity of evidence of the existence of something
completely baffling,î the document says,ìwhich 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.î
 
With all this ferment, itís somewhat sobering to note that the
Canadian government is utterly uninterested.
 
In Winnipeg, at the Canadian forcesí aerospace control and
surveillance centre, staff officer captain Jim McLean tells me that
our air force gathers reports of UFO sightings, but little else.ìIn
essence, what this office does is accumulate all the files and
reports, and keep them on fileó we donít assess or investigate
them.î
 
McLean says the government used to look into unusual
sightings, butìit 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 whoís interested.î
 
© 1996 NOW Communications Inc. NOW and NOW Magazine and the
    NOW design are protected through trademark registration.
 
 
There's also a sidebar that ran with the piece, concerning the implications
of extraterrestrial contact, and featuring quotes from Stanton and others,
but NOW chose not to put it online. Luckily, I have a copy!
 
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. 
 
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."