A List of Best UFO Sightings?

While we’ve ragged on Paul Kimball for his filmed list of the best UFO sightings ever, we came across a list by former flying saucer “expert” William Spaulding, who provided his take on some top UFO sightings and events for The People’s Almanac’s The Book of Lists #2 by author Irving Wallace and family [William Morrow and Company, NY, 1980, Page 417 ff.].

His first offering was the McMinnville/Trent photos which we deem as bogus.



His next sighting was the 1952 Nash-Fortenberry Pan-Am encounter, over Norfolk, Virginia.



The third listing was the 1952 Washington D.C. incidents.



The fourth episode was the Ralph Mayher [sic] film of 1952.



Fifth was (another) 1952 radar/visual sighting of a USAF B-29 training crew over the Gulf of Mexico



Six on Spaulding’s list was the Kimball/Sparks B-47 incident, so there is some consensus that the sighting was and is significant.



Seventh in Spaulding list of eight is a November 1957 on the outskirts of Levelland, Texas where witnesses had encounters with a large UFO.



And eighth on Spaulding’s list was the 1976 Iranian encounter.



We won’t elaborate on Spaulding’s list, as we see lists as entertainment rather than edifying information.

But we note that Kimball and Sparks are not the only UFO aficionados to see the RB-47 event as a significant UFO encounter.

Again, the RB-47 sighting is interesting, but so are dozens of other sightings, including the B-29 sighting (number five, above) which has as many or more technical accoutrements as the RB-47 incident.

UFO hobbyists, each, have their favorite UFO sightings or stories – mine include the 1966 Ann Arbor/Dexter/Hillsdale sightings; the infamous “swamp gas” sightings.

But have any of these classic sightings given us a clue to the UFO enigma? Nope. So listing them is a futile, silly endeavor, that passes for research for some “ufologists” but they are fun to read, right?

UFOs, String Theory, Quantum Gravity

Physics has become as discombobulated and goofy as “ufology.”

String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones and Daniel Robbins [Wiley Publishing, Indianapolis, 2010] presents a pithy overview of string theory and quantum physics; an overview that shows just how crazy the study of physics has become, and how physicists have resorted to mathematics as a kind of abracadabra to help them find an answer to the mysteries of the Universe that discombobulate them.



Ufology, that faux research sobriquet use by UFO hobbyists to provide cachet for their irrational attempts to uncover the nature of UFOs, is loopier than string theory, but is also encumbered by overt pathological participants whereas physicists keep their pathology suppressed, masking it with calculus and other mathematical formulae.

Physicists are trying to discover the reality of the Universe.



Ufologists once tried to uncover the mystery of flying saucers and then generic UFOs, but have since devolved into a babbling clique of pseudo-researchers who are so flummoxed by the enigma they once hoped to explain that they are now babblers of nonsense that borders on total insanity.

The UFO phenomenon is not amenable to mathematics, it seems – but who has tried to use math to provide a theoretical paradigm?



Moreover, UFOs have attracted crazies of all types, while physics (quantum, string, and classical) attracts brilliant loonies who see beyond the prosaic and mundane to theoretical models of the Universe that may provide profound truths of our existence.

The study of UFOs takes us nowhere and thus far has only provided babbling of a pathological kind. (See Alfred Lehmberg’s ditherings for example.)

One holds out hope for a rational denouement in the realm of physics (string theory notwithstanding).

But in the realm of UFOs? One should keep their distance, remaining aloof and disconnected, if only to remain compos mentis.

The Best UFO Case, Ever???

Our friend, film-maker Paul Kimball, along with once prominent UFO researcher Brad Sparks consider a UFO incident from 1957 to be the very best incident to offer proof of UFOs.

It is the so-called RB47 bomber confrontation, as it were, with a UFO in July 1957.

Here’s Mr. Kimball’s essay on the incident, from his film, Best Evidence:



While Mr. Kimball is seemingly obsessed with this UFO sighting, we find it evidentiarily boring.

A plane was followed by a UFO, which was seen by some members of the crew, spotted on radar, and apparently interacted with the plane’s radar.

The Air Force, as is its wont, said the crew was tailed by and taken in by another aircraft in the area, as noted in Mr. Kimball’s film.

The Air Force was obviously maliciously stupid as usual, but the sighting is hardly the theochristic UFO event that Messieurs Kimball and Sparks think it is.

It doesn’t come near to explaining what a UFO is, nor does it provide overt clues that lead to a possible explanation. It is merely a well-witnessed sighting of a strange thing in the sky.

We would hope that Mr. Kimball gets over his obsession with this beleaguered sighting, and apply his noteworthy UFO acumen to sightings and incidents that resonate in more meaningful ways.

RB47 is just another sighting of an anomaly that requires more scrutiny than that provided by the details inherent in this admittedly intriguing, but ultimately soporific case.

The Mystery of Aliens [Part 2]

Our earlier assessments about the gods and heroes of old differing from the extraterrestrial aliens of the flying saucer/UFO (modern) era needs to be supplemented apparently, as it has flummoxed some visitors to our blog(s).

Our premise, if there is one, is that the gods/heroes of ancient times were barely different from the humans who observed and recorded their visitations; whereas the alien beings of flying saucer lore (mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, aside from the alleged Space Brothers of the “contactee” tales) were either dwarfish or grotesque.





Moreover, we accept some ancient texts as (almost) literal…



And we find some accounts, as in The Old Testament of the Holy Bible [Confraternity-Douay Version] to be very intriguing (and human-like); e.g., Exodus 4:24

The Mayan Popul Vuh [Translated by Dennis Tedlock, Touchstone Books, NY, 1985/1996] is a source for extant renderings of the original Popul Vuh which dates, reliably from about 1550 A.D., but represents ancient oral and written texts of the early Mayans going back at least 1000 years.



The text contains creation stories similar to that found in The Hebrew/Christian Bible in Genesis.

And the gods, described therein, while adorned with animal parts and recounted as having grotesque accoutrements, were essentially human-like in appearance. [Page 145
ff.]



The Egyptian Book of the Dead contains descriptive similar to that in the Popul Vuh and precedes the Mayan book by several thousand years.



Most readers here are familiar with (or should be) the Egyptian iconography and the association with the ancient alien theory of Erich von Daniken at al.

Again, the gods of Egypt, while often adorned with animal parts, remain human-like in action and appearance, especially after the theological thrust of Akhenaton [circa 1354 B.C.]



From the text:

Åmen-Ra…president [sic] of all the gods, beautiful god, beloved one….the gods adore him…The gods love the smell of Him…the gods cast themselves down at his feet…the gods acclaim him, and he stretcheth out his hand to him that loveth him. [Page 108, The Book of the Dead, University Books, Secaucus, NJ, 1960].

Nothing pungent, odorous, or ugly there.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead can be traced back to the 12th Century with antecedents attributable to the 8th Century [after Christ].



The gods of Tibetan lore were described therein thusly:

Blessed Vajrasattva-Aksobhya will appear before you….His body is blue in colour, he holds a five-pointed vajra in his hand and sits on an elephant throne, embracing his consort Buddha-Locana, He is accompanied by the two male bodhisattvas…the two female bodhisattvas…[Page 43, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Francesca Fremantle and Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala Books, Berkeley, 1975].



Nothing grotesque or dwarfish there.

Then there is lacunae where the gods (and their minions) disappear, until the Christ incarnation and the appearance of Mohammed’s Allah [6th Century A.D.] and perhaps the appearance of Jesus to Jeanne d’Arc in the 1400s [A.D.] and possibly the visitation of god’s mother Mary at Lourdes [1858] and Fatima [1917].

Finally we have the visitation of weird, little beings outside or near flying saucers, a few years before the ubiquitous arrival of little gray beings of an almost benign nature.



Again, we pose the query, why such a dichotomy in nature, physically mostly and somewhat in behavior?

The early descriptions allow for a divine patina to the ancient “visitors” while the modern visitors hardly come of as divine in any way – pasty, wan, and frail or so grotesque that they invite revulsion rather than the glorification like that by those who provided ancient accounts.

Why?

The Mystery of Aliens

Ancient Astronaut theorists posit the idea that the messengers and gods of old were extraterrestrial visitors, which is not necessarily a faulty supposition, considering the circumstantial “evidence” presented to bolster the hypothesis.



The visitors were not gray with large, almond-shaped eyes as they are rendered today by descriptives.



In mythology and religious-oriented works, the visitors of old were manifested by an aura that bespoke something otherworldly but not grotesque.



Those visitors often mated with human beings, as recounted in the Genesis account of the Hebrew Bible [6:1]:

...The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were good, and they took themselves wives from whomever they chose. God said, ’My spirit will not continue to judge man forever, since he is nothing but flesh. His days shall be 120 years’. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also later. The sons of God had come to the daughters of man and had fathered them. They were the mightiest ones who ever existed, men of renown.



And they also appear in the Greek myths, as Gods, whose dalliances produced such Greek Heroes as Achilles and Heracles.



And Merlin, the great wizard of the Arthurian legends, was said to have been fathered by an Incubus. [Bulfinch]



In the 1950s, flying saucer “occupants’ – as reported by observers – were usually grotesque or small, bizarre creatures, akin to the little people folklore of the British Isles.



In the 1960s, those visitors morphed into the so-called “grays” which evolved out of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction saga.



There is a dispute, extant, about what Betty Hill really described, at first, about her “abductors” – mostly having to do with their noses. But the “creatures” she allegedly encountered eventually came into being as the ubiquitous UFO people pictured when UFO occupants are discussed:



The question posed is this…

What happened between 5,000 years ago when the Sumerians pictured their “gods” and the modern era when UFO beings are described? [Intelligent Life in the Universe, Shklovskii/Sagan, Delta, 1966]



That is, why has the intruders’ physiognomy changed?

Yes, we accept the reality behind the myths and Biblical renditions of gods (or messengers from above).

We also think that some relatively recent observations of creatures nearby, what some call, UFOs or, better, flying saucers, are true also, whether created as an illusion or actually as perceived.



(The alien abduction phenomenon, which remains controversial and not proven, has been, in one form or another, around since the beginning of oral and written history, as anyone familiar with mythology and religious texts knows.)

There is a mystery in all this, one that is connected in all its aspects by the similarities in the visitations.

The difference lies in how the “visitors” appeared, not in how they acted, but what they looked like.



Are there, or were there, two different classes of beings – some actually gods (or imagined as such) and some actually extraterrestrials (or imagined as such)?

It’s a mystery, either way…..

(And yes, we’ve covered this before, in 2007)

Ufology’s Insane Asylum: UFO UpDates

The pathology inherent to or study of UFOs is rampant and overt at an internet place that designates itself as The List: Errol Bruce-Knapp’s UFO UpDates.



A cursory glance at the postings on UpDates provides evidence of a psychopathology that is substantiated by a perusal of such dolts as Jerry Clark, Don Ledger, Stanton Friedman, and especially the sour and intellectually misguided Alfred Lehmberg.

Recently, sensible and coherent thinkers such as Britain’s David Clarke and the eminent Jeff Ritzmann have departed UpDates, realizing that the venue now contains a gaggle of very mentally-sick persons, who are spouting jeremiads about the Alien Abduction brouhaha that Paratopia started by its anti-Hopkins revelations of Carol Rainey, Hopkins’ ex-wife and colleague, and the Jacobs/Emma Woods imbroglio that has captured the noses of ufological morons and idiots who haven’t a clue as to what malfeasance is or perverse bias is on their part or others,

UpDates is the last refuge of the ufological residue that has been marginalized by UFO newbies and true intellectuals, who refuse to habituate the site.

The scandalous asides of The Listers is grist for psychoanalytic study, if one wants to examine minds that have gone off the deep end of sanity.

The once scholarly UFO historian Jerry Clark has descended into a state of Libyan-like autocracy, where he thinks he’s the sole-arbiter of what is germane about UFOs and what isn’t.

Don Ledger is just dumb, and grammatically lax.

Freidman is defensive and self-aggrandizing.

Lehmberg is egregiously loopy, ruining the English language with his grammatical faux pas and incoherent ramblings.

Bruce-Knapp likes the idea of having a lot of material in his UpDate archives, and encourages postings of every kind. He’s the asylum’s wayward director who should have retired a few years ago, before senility hit him square in the head.

There are others, too many to name here, who complete the inventory of psychopaths who once were atop the ufological list of responsible UFO mavens but who now make up the raft of silly persons that time has made irrelevant and rationality has subverted.

UpDates is the list alright – but the list of UFO nuts and crazies.

Alien Abductions

We're not going to get immersed in the alien abduction brouhaha that is running amok all over the UFO community...

But we are making available, a compilation (by Jeff Carney), of some papers by alien abduction mavens (including some in the current abduction imbroglio).

The PDF is mostly for newbies to the abduction phenomenon, but some regulars here might find a few interesting morsels.

Click here for the PDF.

Edward U Condon and pink UFOs

Way back when, before many readers here were even extant, we pursued the allegation that Edward U Condon, the person responsible for the flawed Air Force/Condon Report on UFOs, was a communist sympathizer, a "pinko" as The John Birch Society called him and his ilk.

We posted our inquiry online, earlier at his blog and others, but provide it again for your edification.

We believe that if Condon was, indeed, a commie sympathizer (or worse), his perversion of the Colorado Study of UFOs was compromised for reasons more substantial than stupidity.

Click here to see our paperwork for what we call The Condon Affair.

Scientology, Ufology, and Psychology

The New Yorker issue for February 14/21, 2011 has a lengthy piece by Lawrence Wright [The Apostate, Page 84 ff.] about a Scientology defector.



The article presents an overview of Scientology and especially L. Ron Hubbard (its founder).



Those interested in the Navy’s connection to UFOs will find clues to that connection in the article, but they will find much more about the founder of Scientology, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Just as Christianity is marred by the machinations of its early followers and Constantine, and psychology is saddled by the permutations of Freud to make psychoanalysis viable to his colleagues [See Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s “The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory” – Ballantine Books, NY, 1984/2003], Scientology is riddled by the flaws of its founder L. Ron Hubbard.



And ufology? Where has that artful and contrived discipline gone wrong?

Ufology has no definitive founder, but the progenitors of the faux “science” were (and are) men flawed by a lack of scientific acumen and a lack of intellectual credentials.

Whereas Freud has great insights about the human mind and behavior, he muddled those profound insights by fudging truths and facts to make his (psychoanalytic) movement palatable to psychologists and the Victorian populace of his time.



L. Ron Hubbard had no profound insights, but his movement (Dianetics and then Scientology) has been promulgated by a patina of distortions and concocted legends of his acolytes, just as happened with Christianity. [See Bart D. Ehrman’s “Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible…” – Harper One, NY 2009]



In Ufology, one can’t point to a single person who led the study of UFOs astray but one can point fingers at persons such as Phil Klass (a perverse skeptic), Stanton Friedman (a biased researcher), and a host of other “ufologists” who had or have an agenda that has little or nothing to do with truth or science but is, rather, a ploy for self-aggrandizement.



The raft of persons who’ve led the study of UFOs/flying saucers astray is too vast to list here, and most readers know to whom we refer.

The point is that movements are always corrupted by followers or instigators who have self-promotion as their premise or ignorance at their foundation.

Psychiatry, Scientology says, is a crock. And Scientology may be right. Psychiatry moved away from a therapy based on the study of the mental afflictions of people to an overly of symptomatic suppression with drugs or various kinds, a move away from the methodology of Freud and his followers.

Freud may have compromised his movement by altering the truth of child seduction but his methodology for getting at unconscious truths was remarkable and unique, even helpful to those afflicted by neuroses of a sexual kind.

But the little insight by Scientology about psychiatry and drug-therapy doesn’t offset the flawed premises of L. Ron Hubbard, as you will see by the New Yorker article.



And since Jeffrey Masson exposed the flawed, dishonest Freudian account of child seduction – the root of neuroses according to psychoanalysis, and Bart Ehrman (among others) exposes the flawed, distorted beginnings of Christianity, why has no one exposed the flawed roots of ufology?

Yes, skeptics of UFOs abound, and some in the UFO community have assailed the fraudulent in the UFO/flying saucer era, but no one has made as thorough assessment of the UFO crockery as have Dr. Masson of Freud or Bart Ehrman of Christ’s early devotees.

L. Ron Hubbard has been skewered, and Freud too, along with Jesus’s early disciples. But nowhere has anyone taken on the personalities that have tried to make ufology a valid enterprise, using lies and distortions in the process.



Is that because ufology is seen, intrinsically, as the canard it basically is? Or is it because no one has the intellectual stamina to assail a thing as ridiculous as ufology?

We think it is both…

Being and Nothingness: UFOs and Jean-Paul Sartre

Aside from Bruce Duensing, there is little point to suggesting visitors here read Jean-Paul Sartre’s monumental Being and Nothingness, the ne plus ultra of existentialism.

But we will suggest Joseph S. Catalano’s A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” [Harper & Row, NY, 1974].



Professor Catalano’s book provides a concise, lucid overview of Sartre’s book and philosophy. It also defines “phenomenon” – the definition of which (by Sartre and Husserl) is applicable and relevant to UFOs.



Reality is a complex thing, and not clarified by anyone, including philospophers. Jean-Paul Sartre is not an exception but his views are attuned, rather specifically, to the UFO phenomenon as it manifests itself in the modern era:

“As a phenomenologist, [Sartre] begins with a study of phenomenon – that very appearance that does not hide reality but reveals it.” [Catalano, Page 35]

Some UFO mavens – Duensing among them, if I understand his erudite writings – think that UFOs interact with human consciousness, and their [UFOs] existence dependent upon the human interaction.

Sartre says this:

“…the subsistence of a permanent element apart from something which changes can not allow change to be constituted as such except in the eyes of a witness who would be himself united with that which changes and with that which remains.” [Sartre, Being and Nonthingness, Philosophical Library, NY, 1956, Page 143]

That is to say that UFO witnesses are linked, transmentally, with the phenomenon, and become a part of it; an idea that meshes with quantum’s theory of the observer affecting that which it is observing (measuring).

For “nuts and bolts” ufologists, this is buggy and ignored. But should it be?

The superficial approach of mechanical ufologists hasn’t provided anything conclusive in the sixty-plus years of UFO scrutiny. Isn’t it time to give consideration to ideas steeped in such theorizing as that of Sartre or Bruce Duensing (at his blog, Intangible Materiality)?

Sartre, in his Conclusion to Being…,writes, “But here, as in Greek philosophy a question is raised: which shall we call real?” [Ibid, Page 622]

That is the same question that UFO aficionados have been asking for years.

We suggest that the mental gyrations required to understand Sartre can be employed to understand the UFO phenomenon.

But understanding the phenomenon doesn’t determine the essence of the phenomenon, and that still requires scrutiny of an evidentiary kind.

Ontology may be helpful as a methodology fro UFO study, but there still exists a need to touch and hold the phenomenon, which has a tangible reality, as far as the evidence thus far indicates, or does it?

That’s the question, after all, isn’t it?

Review of UFO Matrix magazine

Philiop Mantle has provided a review of his magazine UFO Matrix.

Click here for that review

The Robertson Panel -- An Overview

This is Google's cache of http://www.nicap.org/waves/1953_robertson_panel.htm. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Sep 4, 2010 15:20:56 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime.

Text-only version

These search terms are highlighted:

fred durant nicap
Form: 97 INF
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:36:09 -0600
From: Francis Ridge
Subject: The Robertson Panel, 1953; A Corrected Brief Summary
Source: CUFON, Brad Sparks
Distribution: CE, SHG, NCP

CUFON posted the text version of this report several years ago which makes internet searches possible. Brad Sparks had obtained the full declassification of the Robertson Panel Report and Durant Memo by the CIA with all sanitized redactions filled in, in 1974-5. The Panel met Jan 14-17, not 14-18, 1953. The Durant Memo (or Report) to the CIA director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell, has a typo in the memo subject heading/title saying "14-18," thus the erroneous dates. The following report has been updated.

Jan. 14-17, 1953: The Durant Report of the Robertson Panel proceedings Report of Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects Convened by Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA. (Credit: CUFON)

The Air Force had earlier commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute to scientifically study the various UFO reports collected by Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, but Battelle insisted they needed more time to conduct a proper study. The CIA thought the question so pressing that it sent a group to Project Blue Book on Dec. 12, 1952. (See 1952 UFO Chronology) The CIA agreed with Battelle and tried to postpone the Robertson Panel for several months but got overruled by the AF which insisted on an immediate convening of the panel.

The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14, 1953 under the direction of Howard Percy Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA employee and director of the Defense Department Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG).

Other panel members were respected scientists and military personnel who had worked on other classified military projects or studies. Ruppelt's notes indicate that Robertson and Alvarez were initially pro-UFO and their pro-UFO comments can actually be found in the Durant Memo. By the end of the Panel fiasco, set up by the AF with phony IFO cases masqueraded as UFO Unknowns, they turned skeptical too.

ROBERTSON PANEL MEMBERS

H. P. Robertson, cosmologist physicist, Panel Chairman

Luis W. Alvarez, physicist (and later, a Nobel Prize winner), University of California, Berkeley

Samuel A. Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories physicist

Thornton L. Page, astrophysicist, deputy director of the Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University.

Lloyd V. Berkner*, physicist, Carnegie Institution

ASSOCIATE PANEL MEMBERS

Frederick C. Durant, III, CIA OSI missile expert, an Associate Member of the Panel not a full member or signer; acted as Panel Secretary taking the minutes and notes.

J. Allen Hynek, astronomer at Ohio State, Associate Member of the Panel, not a full member or signer.

*(Sparks: Berkner came so late that he was in effect a non-entity and Ruppelt could not get a fix on whether he was pro or anti-UFO. Durant tried to make up for Berkner's absence by peppering his long memo with Berkner's comments so that his views were better represented.)

Formal Meetings: The Panel had four consecutive days of formal meetings.

The first day, they viewed two amateur motion pictures of UFO's: the 1950 Montana UFO Film and 1952 Utah UFO Film (the latter taken by Navy Chief Petty Officer Delbert C. Newhouse, who had extensive experience with aerial photography). Two Navy photographic analysts, Lt. Robert S. Neasham and Navy civilian Harry W. Woo, both of NavPIC (Naval Photographic Interpretation Center), then reported their conclusions: the two films depicted objects that were not any known aircraft, birds or natural phenomena. Air Force Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt then began a summary of Air Force efforts regarding UFO studies, which had to be finished the next morning.

(Note: Brad Sparks was the only researcher ever to interview Woo, who died in 1976. Woo had joined the CIA, in its highly secret Technical Services Division of the Clandestine Service working on spy cameras, several months after the Robertson Panel. Woo was still angry decades later at how the Panel scientists mistreated him and he praised Hynek for "sticking up" for him.)

The second day, Ruppelt finished his presentation. Hynek then discussed the Battelle study, and the panel discussed with Air Force personnel the problems inherent in monitoring UFO sightings. In the afternoon, AF Lt Col Frederic C. E. Oder, on assignment to CIA OSI, gave a briefing on the 1950-1 Project Twinkle, when he had been in a supervisory role in the AF Cambridge Research Lab.

(Sparks: Oder falsely asserted that nothing had ever been photographed by Project Twinkle except for "two frames" supposedly showing "nothing distinguishable" [Durant Memo p. 16]. In fact several phototheodolite tracking camera films had been taken of UFO's, on April 27, May 24, and Aug. 31, 1950, and in the first incident a triangulation was obtained of 4 UFO's about 30 feet in size flying at 150,000 feet. The existence of these White Sands UFO films was carefully concealed from the CIA. Despite Col Oder's assignment to the CIA his loyalty remained with the AF as did Ruppelt and Fournet, not one of whom breathed a word about the existence of these AF Project Twinkle tracking films proving the existence of UFO's with scientifically measurable data. On March 29, 1992, I actually got a chance to confront the eminent Dr. Oder, the black-projects spy satellite director for the AF and Lockheed for many years. Oder repeated the nonsense about Project Twinkle finding nothing. I retorted that that was flatly not true, that in April 1950 two theodolite stations had triangulated a UFO at 150,000 feet. Oder seemed a bit taken aback, paused a moment as if to settle on a response then admitted that UFO's could be some unexplained phenomenon.)

The third day, Dr. Hynek presented his pro-UFO scientific paper delivered at the Optical Society of America on Oct 11, 1952 (later published in the Journal of the OSA). Dewey J. Fournet spoke to the panel on the year he had spent coordinating UFO affairs for the Pentagon. Fournet supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the best explanation for some puzzling UFO reports based on his study of intelligently-guided motions in 17 cases he had selected (this was the study approved and sent up the chain of command to AF Director of Intelligence, Maj. Gen. John Samford, at around this time, in Jan. 1953).

(Sparks: The 15 months of Fournet cited mistakenly in the Durant Memo were not his 11 months as UFO Project Monitor, from Feb. 1952 to Jan. 1953, but Fournet's total time in AF Intelligence.)

For the remainder of the third day, the panel discussed their conclusions, and Robertson agreed to draft a preliminary report. Berkner finally showed up for the first time, in the afternoon of this 3rd day, when the Panel was almost over.

The fourth and final day, the panel rewrote and finalized their report.

The Robertson Panel's informal comments in the Durant memo concluded that "most" UFO sightings could be readily identified with conventional aircraft, balloons, astronomical, or natural phenomena, and that the remaining UFO reports could, in all likelihood, be similarly explained with detailed study. (p. 6 of Durant Memo).

Furthermore, the Panel suggested the Air Force should begin a "debunking" effort to reduce "public gullibility" and demystify UFO reports. The panel suggested a public relations campaign, using psychiatrists, astronomers and assorted celebrities to significantly reduce public interest in UFO's. It was also recommended that the mass media be used for the debunking, including influential media giants like Walt Disney Corporation.

Their formal recommendation stated "That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired."

Also recommended that the government monitor civilian groups studying or researching UFO's "because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking ... the apparent irresponsibility and possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind."

It is commonly believed today that the Robertson Panel's conclusions and recommendations had a great influence on official United States policy regarding UFO's for many decades. (Sparks: The Robertson Panel had zero influence and was not even known to anyone for years, outside the few in the AF and CIA involved. No one has ever found any orders or directives debunking UFO's that cites the Robertson Panel, and the Panel itself had no power or authority to issue such orders, nor did the CIA. It was the AIR FORCE that had already established the official policy of debunking of UFO's, for psychological warfare reasons, back on July 28, 1952, long before plans for the Robertson Panel ever came into existence (in Dec 1952). After being tricked by the AF into thinking that the entire UFO problem was merely one of poor quality IFO reports, the CIA and Robertson Panel agreed with AF debunking operations and suggested ideas how to make them even more devastating.)

The Robertson Panel's study was classified for over 20 years. In 1954, however, Ruppelt made the first public mention of the panel in his TRUE article, then in his 1956 book he offered an extended summary of its proceedings. Ruppelt did not, however, note the panel members' names, nor the government agencies represented. (Sparks: Under AF instigation to support its efforts to derail Congressional hearings on UFO's sought by NICAP, the 2-page Robertson Panel report was partially declassified in 1958 in a 1-page sanitized version that concealed the CIA's role. Behind the scenes the AF circulated the classified Report and a retyped version of the Durant Memo to Congressional committees in order to get them to drop the UFO subject and not hold public hearings. )

Additional Informal Robertson Panel Meetings

Dec. 12, 1952 CIA/OSI chief Dr. Chadwell, Dr. H. P. Robertson and Fred Durant visit Project Blue Book and Battelle's Dr. Howard Cross

Dec. 30, 1952 Robertson and Thornton Page meet at CIA for UFO briefings (approx. date)

Jan. 28, 1953 Some Panel Members (probably Robertson, Page and perhaps Berkner) meet informally with CIA/OSI in a "rump session" to postmortem the UFO Panel proceedings, review the new agency NSA recently established with help of OSI deputy chief Ralph Clark (unrelated to UFO's)

July-Aug 1953 Project Blue Book acting chief Lt. Robert M. Olsson sends some selected new UFO cases to Robertson Panel members as a followup review to see if any change in conclusions was warranted (no change resulted)

Close Encounters Conference

Philip Mantle's UFO Matrix magazine is presenting a Close Encounters conference in October 2011.

Click here for the full announcement

NASA/military tests mistaken for UFOs?

Here is an ARMY/NASA position paper that outlines proposals for surveillance of outer space planets, Mars and Jupiter in particular:

AERIAL SURVEY

Has the processes proposed been put into practice and tested in the Earthian sky?

Check the details and specifically the references, and you’ll see that the proposals have, indeed, been put to tests in the last half of the 2000 decade.