More numbers — and this time they have dollar signs attached to them. During the 1950s, the Pentagon spent hundreds of billions of dollars on defense. Yet at one point, Captain Ruppelt’s Blue Book was so impoverished it didn’t have enough money to even read over all the sighting reports it was taking in.
The Pentagon cheapened out when it came to studying UFOs. The institution that historically overspends on everything chose to nickel-and-dime this very important matter. Why? There’s only one answer. They did it because they never intended to do a good job in the first place. In fact, the goal all along was to do the worst job possible.
As J. Allen Hynek said in 1972 in Fate magazine: “It became patently clear to me as the years passed that no Blue Book case had been given the ‘FBI treatment.’ That is, no case was followed through until every possible clue or bit of evidence was obtained, as is standard procedure in kidnapping, narcotics rings and bank robbery cases.
“Quite the opposite attitude was taken by Blue Book. When a case did appear to have a likely misperception explanation (and hence should have been excluded from further UFO investigative effort) Blue Book often spared little effort in phone calls, interrogations, etc., in order to pin it down to a planet, a refueling mission, or some other natural occurrence. Thus they set their dogs to catching simple chicken thieves but ignored potentially far more important prey.”
The supreme irony is that finding out what UFOs are might not be that hard. UFOs are not like quirks, quarks and quacks. They are not as elusive as the Higgs boson particle. They are not things that one has to build a $10 billion supercollider to take snapshots of, pictures that last for one billionth of one trillionth of a second before they disappear.
Just the opposite. UFOs are all around us. There’s a reason that millions have been reported over the years. The misconception is that UFOs don’t want us to see them, but the evidence indicates the reverse is true.
The scareships gliding over the British landscape, their searchlights turned up to high? The ghost planes waking up the frozen Scandinavian tundra, their engines roaring, their searchlights also ablaze? The foo fighters tagging along on 800-plane bombing raids? The ghost rockets flying by the hundreds every day? Huge saucers over Korea? A dozen saucers over the White House?
These are not the actions of an entity that is hiding or being secretive. We might not know what they are, but it’s clear they have no problem letting us know that they are here. That is the grand puzzle.
But every puzzle has a solution. So, when will the UFO question finally be solved?
Stan Gordon, the man who has dutifully kept the Kecksburg mystery alive all these years, told us in an interview: “When the ‘powers that be’ make the decision, or when circumstances occur that can’t be hidden away.”
When we asked Richard Haines, the NASA expert who turned his talents to studying UFOs, the same question, he went right to the point. “We’ll know when ‘they’ want us to know.”
Keith Chester, who’ll be forever known as the man who finally told the whole foo fighters story, told us: “It will take undeniable evidence of extraterrestrial visitation for the whole world to witness for this riddle to be truly solved.”
Jerome Clark, aforementioned author of numerous UFO articles and books, took a more existential view:
“Science has largely ignored the UFO phenomenon,” he told us. “Leaving the issue to military agencies, civilian researchers, and debunkers. The UFO problem is not inherently unsolvable, however, and while sometimes science is slow to take up complicated, troublesome issues, it does get there eventually. I believe that by the middle of the 21st century learned people will start to look into this phenomenon and finally make up for the lost opportunity we had back in 1948.”
We hope Clark is right. We also hope he’s off his timetable a bit and that we get some answers before 2050.
Most important, though, when the serious study of UFOs begins again, no matter who champions it, who pushes for it, or who pays for it — we hope, this time, they don’t put the U.S. military in charge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following books, articles and websites were invaluable to me while writing this book. I urge all to look into the UFO question more deeply by reading these and other works.
Chester, Keith. Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOS in WWII. Anomalist Books. San Antonio. 2007.
Clark, Jerome. Strange Skies: Pilot Encounters with UFOs. Citadel Press. New York. 2003.
Clark, Jerome; Farish, Lucius. Article, “The Mysterious ‘Foo Fighters’ of World War II,” in 1977 UFO Annual.
Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia, Second Edition: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. Two volumes. Omnigraphics. Detroit. 1998.
Cooper, Gordon; Henderson, Bruce. Leap of Faith. HarperTorch. New York. 2000.
Good, Timothy. Need To Know: UFOs, the Military, and Intelligence. Pegasus Books. New York. 2007.
Hall, Richard, H. (ed.) The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) The UFO Evidence. Barnes and Noble Books. New York. 1964.
Hastings, Robert. UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. Authorhouse. Bloomington. 2008.
Kean, Leslie. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. Harmony Books. New York. 2010.
Keyhoe, Donald E. Flying Saucers: Top Secret. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. New York. 1960.
Pflock, Karl, T. Roswelclass="underline" Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe. Prometheus Books. Amherst. 2001.
Randle, Kevin, D. Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol. HarperTorch, New York. 2001.
Ruppelt, Edward, J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Filiquar-ian Publishing.
Vallee, Jacques and Janine. Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma. Ballantine Books. New York. 1966.
Vallee, Jacques. Anatomy of a Phenomenon: UFOs in Space. Ballantine Books. New York. 1965.
Wyatt, John, “The Hobart Incident,” AUFORN Special Report, Issue 34, April 2003.
www.colinandrews.net/UFO-MiltonTorres.html
www.mtpioneer.com/March-Malstrom-UFOs.html
www.nickpope.net/rendlesham-forest.htm
www.nuforc.org
www.ufocasebook.com
www.ufoevidence.org
tvufo.tripod.com/id116.html
www.allsupernatural.net/aliens/ufo/story/136/ufo-attack-n-vietnam-1968/
www.alien-ufos.com/ufo-alien-discussions/22198-ufo-reports-during-vietnam-war.html
files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e3c51170ec1a.jpg
www.unsolvedmysteries.com/default.asp?action=ndate
ILLUSTRATIONS
