Monday, July 13, 2009

James Fox Aims
for a 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

I Know What I Saw
By Billy Cox
De Void
7-9-09

Billy Cox     It’s hard to imagine a staged UFO event that didn’t invite at least some measure of ridicule from the mainstream media. But that’s what happened on Nov. 12, 2007, at the National Press Club in Washington. Skeptics who came looking for lunatics to slam either a) played it straight, or b) filed nothing at all.

National Press Club UFO PanelThat’s because the 14 panelists who came from as far away as Iran and Chile were professional pilots – civilian and military, including two generals and a colonel – former government officials, and/or scientists with immaculate resumes. All testified to the elusive but intimidating nature of what appear to be physics-warping technologies plying our atmosphere at will and rendering worldwide air defense systems obsolete.

The panel -- http://www.freedomofinfo.org/national_press.htm -- adjourned with a statement requesting either the U.S. Air Force, or NASA, instigate a new scientific study of UFOs for flight safety and security reasons. Brainstormed by documentary filmmaker James Fox with the help of journalist Leslie Kean’s Coalition for the Freedom of Information, the event rated poker-faced coverage from Reuters to Xinhua, from CNN to Pravda. Because these guys were bullet-proof. And there were no distracting little green men visuals or paranoid rants from omniscient moonbats.

“Because as soon as you start talking about anal probes or babies in incubators,” says Fox from San Francisco, “you’ve lost ‘em.”

Never mind that the MSM didn’t bother to follow these rich leads with independent inquiry. It’s an unfortunate congenital incapacity for which Fox has no remedy. However, after producing “UFOs: 50 Years of Denial?” for the Discovery Channel in 1998, and a related “Out of the Blue” five years later, Fox mapped out his National Press Club strategy from the moment he decided to bring the panelists together. He wanted to galvanize support for Congressional hearings on UFOs the way Michael Moore rallied the antiwar movement with “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

“On a massive scale, the majority of Americans suspect the government isn’t being entirely honest when it comes to what it knows about UFOs,” he says, referencing a 2002 Roper Poll (http://www.freedomofinfo.org/poll/roper04.html). “On the other hand, we can’t be screaming from the hilltops that ET is here unless we can prove it. And I’m not entirely sure we can prove that yet. But it does appear that we’ve discounted the terrestrial possibilities.”

So Fox’s latest doc – “I Know What I Saw” – builds on his earlier work by exploring the troubling issues raised at the 11/12/07 press conference. But the crucial twist here is distribution. Having put a video trailer online, Fox is negotiating for a big-screen theatrical release this time around. Because he’s certain of this much: “There will be no congressional hearings without constituent support for them. And I’ve screened this film for people who knew nothing about UFOs and said they were blown away by what they learned.”

As for ongoing public efforts aimed at lobbying the Obama administration and the White House Correspondents Association to start discussing this stuff, Fox is cautious. “I have to be very conservative with what I say. The UFO community is somewhat competitive and somewhat compartmentalized, and it’s unfortunate,” he says. “I truly respect all the work that everyone out there has been doing. But in terms of getting groups like (the White House press corps) talking, I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Fox concedes the possibility that the MSM may never get it. “Honestly, I don’t know what it’d take,” he says. “Maybe a massive sighting or somebody like Neil Armstrong coming forward could trigger a movement. But I haven’t figured that one out.”

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