UFO News | Articles | Commentary | Editorial - Opinion | Press releases | Radio | Reports | Sightings | Video

Labels: 4-28-1964, Army Intelligence, By Las Vegas Daily Optic, Chronicle, Edgewood, Egg Shaped, La Madera, Lonnie Zamora, Orlando Gallegos, Sgt. Sam Chavez, Socorro, Socorro Incident, UFO, White Sands Missile Range

Labels: 1964, 2-25-1964, Albuquerque Tribune, Army Intelligence, Chronicle, Egg Shaped, Lonnie Zamora, Sgt. Sam Chavez, Socorro, Socorro Incident, UFO, White Sands Missile Range

     The Brazilian Government has just declassified a new set of significant previously secret UFO documents, now covering the 80s. We already had disclosures covering the 50s, 60s and 70s, all with very important documents and information. So far over 4,000 pages have been disclosed.

The recent disclosure is particularly powerful because it contains dozens of reports of UFOs on May 19, 1986, considered the “Official UFO Night in Brazil”, when 21 spherical objects, estimated 100 meters in diameter – according to military sources – were detected by radars and spotted by civilian pilots, and literally jammed air traffic over the major Brazilian Airports, such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Then, several Mirage and F5 jets were scrambled to pursue them.

As a result of that “invasion”, the Air Force minister brigadier Octavio Moreira Lima went public about it the other morning on the national TV network, declaring all facts openly. The pilots who took part in the pursue and their commanders also spoke freely about the pursuits, which occurred over several hours.

We've had several other disclosures since 2007, all as a direct result of the campaign UFOs: Freedom Of Information Now, promoted since 2004 by the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers. The latest disclosure comprises over 2,200 new pages of formerly secret UFO documents that were given to the Committee and also sent to the Brazilian National Archives.

In late July, hundreds of papers from the Brazilian Air Force's official System for the Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (SIOANI) have demonstrated how the nation's military authorities dealt with the UFO Phenomena in the 60s and 70s.

Considering that SIOANI wasn't a top secret agency and that even civilian researchers took part in its procedures, the structure and functionality of which proves that Brazil is the first country in the world to officially and publicly admit the reality of the UFO Phenomena, and the first to investigate it openly.

For instance, where have you ever seen color drawings of flying saucers reported by witnesses and investigated by military personnel, such as these ones?






These are only a few links to recently discovered colored drawings of UFOs seen in Brazil and investigated in the 60s and 70s by the Brazilian Air Force's official System for the Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (SIOANI). Much more is about to be disclosed.

The Brazilian UFO Magazine website – www.ufo.com.br – already has thousands of pages for download, such as over 1,200 pages of documents, 200 photos of SIOANI's activities and Operation Saucer, carried out in the Amazonian region in 1977. Along with documents received by the Committee from other military sources.

Included in the recently revealed documents are the detailed research proceedings carried out in dozens of UFO-related incidents which had not been made public previously. Some of the colored sketches of UFO incidents investigated by SIOANI are here:

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/sioani/Novos_documentos

Other documents can be found here:

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/sioani/

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/prato/

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/extra/

www.ufo.com.br/documentos/geral/

Labels: Brazil, Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers, Brazilian UFO Magazine, brigadier Octavio Moreira Lima, By A. J. Gevaerd, Documents, FOIA, SIOANI, UFO. Secret Files

     After 45 years the truth is now revealed- one of the most famous UFO sightings in history was a hoax. The recent confession of an elderly College President -and a newly discovered document- indicate that the 1964 sighting of a landed UFO by Socorro, NM policeman Lonnie Zamora was the result of an elaborate school prank. This incredible story is publicly recounted for the first time ever by individuals who have held the secret of Socorro for decades.

THE SOCORRO UFO STORY
Socorro Policeman Lonnie Zamora was performing his town patrol duties on Friday, April 24, 1964. But this would be unlike any other patrol Sgt. Zamora had ever experienced. At about 5:50 PM Sgt. Zamora started pursuit of a speeding car. But the chase was broken off when Zamora heard a loud explosion. He thought perhaps it came from a dynamite shack nearby. He then observed a cone of flame traveling over a hill. Once over the hill, Zamora stopped his car about 100 feet away from what he reported as a strange landed, 20 foot "aluminum-white" oval object resting on structured "legs." The ovoid had a red insignia about two feet wide on its surface. Though the artistic rendition of the UFO above depicts an opening- Zamora had reported the object as smooth, without any windows or doors. Zamora also noticed what appeared to be two figures "the size of small adults or large kids" and "normal in shape" wearing "white coveralls" walking around the object.

As Zamora started to approach the object on foot, the figures jumped away from his view. As Zamora left his car, he bumped it and his glasses fell off. He reports that a flame from the underside of the craft then appeared and the object roared away. Zamora heard a high-pitched whine and then silence. The object traveled very fast over him, and then just three feet above a nearby shack- and finally out of view over another hill. Left at the site were four "landing impressions" as well as areas of burnt creosote bush near where the object has rested.

Zamora, shocked, then radioed to another officer what he had just observed. When the officer asked Zamora "What does it look like?" Zamora responded, "It looks like a balloon." Zamora would later state that he did not know exactly what it was -it could have been a secret military experiment or even ET. Zamora has remained reluctant to offer his opinion on the specific nature or origin of the craft. He says it was strange and frightening. But he leaves the analysis to others- and only indicates that he was sincere in reporting what he had observed. And Zamora was sincere. And he was extremely cooperative with investigators. But he was also hoodwinked.

The period following the sighting in 1964 found Socorro a town turned upside-down. It was also an active one for Lonnie Zamora. He was visited by many journalists and UFO researchers. This included officials from the US Air Force Project Blue Book, investigators from the civilian UFO study group NICAP and noted skeptics. The story received national and international media attention. To this very day Socorro remains one of the most well-known UFO incidents in history. Still living, long retired and exhausted of the matter, Zamora now avoids any talk about the event.

THE INCRIMINATING DOCUMENT
A former New Mexico Tech President affirmed in the 1960s in a letter to renowned scientist Dr. Linus Pauling that the Socorro UFO was a hoax.

A letter from Dr. Linus Pauling located within the Special Collections of Oregon State University (where the Pauling papers are archived) provides insight into the true nature of the Socorro sighting. In a 1968 letter to Dr. Stirling Colgate -the President of New Mexico Tech- Pauling inquires about the Socorro sighting. Colgate replied to Pauling by sending back Pauling's letter with a handwritten notation at the bottom. Dr. Colgate writes: "I have a good indication of the student who engineered the hoax. Student has left. Cheers, Stirling."


- click on image(s) to enlarge -
Dr. Pauling (a multiple Nobel-Prize winner) was very interested in the UFO phenomena. An earlier article by this author details Pauling's secret UFO studies. He was researching the Socorro-Zamora landing case and decided to write to his friend, Stirling Colgate, President at New Mexico Tech to see what he might have known about the incident. Dr. Colgate's blunt reply leaves little doubt that tricksters were involved. But to allay any further doubt, I contacted Colgate.

THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT'S CONFESSION
As well as having been NM Tech's President, Dr. Stirling Colgate was a world-famous astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Considered a science visionary, he specialized in plasma and atmospheric physics. His discoveries in these fields are acknowledged as monumental. His associates included such luminaries as Oppenheimer and Pauling. Colgate still maintains an office at Los Alamos at age 84! This author emailed Colgate to see what his thoughts are today on the Socorro UFO and to see if he would shed additional light on the event. In my email to Colgate I attached the Pauling letter from 1968 with Colgate's handwritten notes on the Socorro UFO.

Colgate took several days to reply to me. In his email, Colgate answered very cryptically and sparingly:

- To the question, "Do you still know this to be a hoax? His reply was simple: "Yes."

- When asked, "Today, decades later, can you expand on what you wrote to Pauling about the event?" He wrote: "I will ask a friend, but he and other students did not want their cover blown."

- He offered that the hoax, "was a no-brainer."

- When asked "Specifically how did they do it?" He just answered, "Will ask."

- When queried, "Have you ever publicly commented on this?" he replied "Of course not."

It has been some time now, and I have never heard back from Stirling Colgate. He indicated that he would "make some inquiries" to see what more could be detailed on the event. Perhaps his "friend and the other students" who he alludes to are still not ready to come forward and be identified. As Colgate puts it, maybe they still do not "want their cover blown."

Or perhaps Colgate was stunned that the Pauling letter was ever discovered- and knows that he has already said too much. Colgate is likely conflicted about having known about the hoaxers -and the truth about the Socorro UFO- for decades. He said nothing publicly then- and prefers to not say a whole lot more now.

THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR'S CORROBORATION


Dr. Frank T. Etscorn was a Psychology Professor at New Mexico Tech from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s. Dr. Etscorn is famously known for being the inventor of the Nicotine Patch. A wing of the College was dedicated to Etscorn in 1993. Etscorn had known about the Socorro UFO event from the decade before he began work at the College- and it had always intrigued him. This author had learned of his interest and contacted Dr Etscorn to see if he had ever found out anything about the sighting and what had really happened. In a recent telephone conversation, Dr. Etscorn related:

"As a project, a former student of mine had examined the case in the mid 1980s. Using yearbooks and networking, she began calling alumni who were at Tech in 1964. She somehow located one of the former students believed to have been involved. He would not expand on the hoax or have his name used- but she found out it was a hoax. My memory of her investigation is spotty- it was 25 years ago. But I remember that she found also found out through records that coincidentally a rear projection device was stolen from the campus the day of the UFO sighting."

Etcorn was a noted psychologist. He said that the psychology of these Techies was such that they liked to fool those who they thought were foolish.

We discussed how the pranksters may have incorporated 1) a large helium balloon resting on the desert floor to appear "landed" and then released up into the air on cue. Perhaps it was a reflective white colored balloon or a balloon fitted over with glossy-white craft paper- with added "landing struts" and a red insignia drawn on its side 2) "roaring" or "whining" explosives, pyrotechnics, model rockets, thrown flares or a flame device 3) smaller students dressed in white lab coats acting as the "aliens" and 4) the digging out of "landing depressions" and burning of nearby bushes. Soil or rock in the area may have been "salted" with silicon or trinitite from the school's Geology Lab. And perhaps it was intentional that Zamora was led to the landed craft by a speeding car. One of the students may have purposely engaged Lonnie in a car chase to lure him to where the hoax was staged. Zamora reports that he "broke the chase" to investigate the UFO- just as the students knew that he would.

Though these ideas about how the hoax may have been accomplished are strictly speculative, Dr. Etscorn reminded me of an important fact: Nothing that was reported was beyond the abilities of "smart Techies" to create.

WHAT A TECHIE LEARNED
Dave Collis was a freshman at New Mexico Tech in 1965, a year after the Socorro UFO incident. Collis went on to become a published scientist helping to lead the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at NM Tech. He is considered a world expert in researching blast effects and explosives.

Collis explained that he himself enjoyed planning pranks when he was a student at Tech. In 1965, he and his friends had planned a "paranormal" prank and shared the plan with one of his trusted Professors. The Professor (who had been with Tech for years) told him that NM Tech had a long history of pranking- and that one of them was especially noteworthy. Collis then said that the Professor (whose name he does not remember or does not wish to offer) had "confidentially told me that the UFO sighting by the town cop was a hoax done by Techie students." Collis did not want to press the Professor on who did it -or how. Collis says, "he was telling me this in confidence, so I didn't ask for the details and he didn't offer." When asked if the Professor could have been making up the hoax story, Collis replied that in the context of his conversation with him- there was no reason for him to lie. The Professor had told him the truth about the hoax, of that he was sure. Collis, when told about Stirling Colgate's confirmation that it was a hoax said, "Colgate is a brilliant man and he was a great College President. From what I was told by my Professor, it was a hoax. And if Colgate also says it was a hoax, it was." Collis (who is a pyrotechnics expert and often directed NM Tech's July 4 Fireworks) said that it always has surprised him that people didn't seem to realize just how "terrestrial" the reported Zamora UFO seemed to be in the first place.

THE REASON FOR THE HOAX
Collis also explained that Lonnie Zamora had a reputation for "hounding" the Techie students during that time. The students and the Socorro police did not have a particularly good relationship back then. He said that there was "a lot of friction" at the time between what were felt to be "elitist and educated Techies" versus the "under-educated and simpler town folk." Zamora was always harassing the students for seemingly no reason, and at every opportunity. Many of the college kids just did not like him. What better way to "get back" at Zamora than for them to fool a fool?

Little known is that Zamora himself had worked at New Mexico Tech as a mechanic for seven years before becoming a patrolman. He had developed an insiders view of these college kids' world- a world that was very different than his own. When he left to join the town police, he was then in a position to exert his "influence" on these same kids. Collis further explains that Zamora was known as being "not especially educated." Supporting this are the observations of USAF investigator Dr. J. Allen Hynek. He wrote in his report of his interview of Zamora, "I would conclude that Zamora, although not overly bright or articulate, is basically sincere."

PRANKS AND GEEKS
As readers of my articles well realize, I am convinced that ET has visited Earth. But I am also a critical thinker. I recognize the role that pranks and hoaxes have played when it comes to things UFO. I am not happy to report the results of my investigation- but it is a story that must be told. It is an obligation to history and truth. The compulsion to prank is a reality we must always bear in mind in evaluating all UFO reports.

Neil Steinburg's classic study on college pranks, "If At All Possible Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks" is very instructive relative to the Socorro hoax. Steinburg's hypothesis is that college pranks happen because there are many young creative minds that feel "stifled." And these minds are looking for release- a little fun. And there is a "geek" connection. Complicated and sophisticated pranks are often pulled off by engineering or science students who have the technical know how. The many well-known stunts by students at MIT and Caltech show that the grander the stunt- the more highly educated the students. The "fun" of such pranks does not come from admission to them, it comes from the reaction to them.

I recall two pranks that were pulled off by others during my own college days when living in Boston. MIT students had perfected two stunts that were mind-boggling. The first involved taking an enormous promotional prop "cow statue" (weighing a quarter-ton) from the lawn of a suburban steakhouse. Somehow the students were able to hoist the huge cow figure on top of the famous MIT "dome buiding." They removed it the following day -and returned it to the steakhouse lawn- without anyone ever having seen them. To this day, no one has ever owned up to the prank- and no one has ever come forward stating that they saw the stunt being carried out. It is still unknown how this was accomplished without use of a heavy construction crane. The second prank involved a high-tech catapult. Somehow the MIT students were able to hurl large clear water balloons made of very thin material up and over two city streets. The water balloons were sent careening across the block with precision to land exactly at the entrance of another college's building. When people went to open the door, invisible "water bombs" hit them out of nowhere- causing them to get soaked. Visibly stunned, they had no idea where the water burst came from- and had to go to class soaking wet.

THE SOCORRO HOAXERS TODAY
Great jokes can be carried out with great planning and calculation. But great jokes can also backfire. Perhaps the Socorro UFO hoaxers continue to get a "big laugh" over the whole thing and revel in their prank done decades ago. But it is more likely that the New Mexico Tech pranksters -who perhaps became famous scientists- are today oldsters in retirement struggling with what they did. They played a trick on a community, a nation and the world. They are keenly aware that they had involved the Air Force, media, scientists and many others. They know that Zamora's life was made difficult by the event. He was made a spectacle and suffered hugely from the unwanted attention. They must ponder their youthful folly- and how much time, effort and money was expended in the prank's long aftermath. It was "a prank gone wild." It had escalated beyond what they could ever have imagined. Often pulling off a brilliant prank "traps" the pranksters. They create the illusion, but they never receive the "credit." And no credit was ever sought by those who engineered one of the greatest hoaxes in UFO history.

Labels: 1964, Article, By Anthony Bragalia, Dave Collis, Dr. Frank T. Etscorn, Dr. Linus Pauling, Dr. Stirling Colgate, Egg Shaped, Hoax, Lonnie Zamora, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, Socorro Incident, The UFO Iconoclast(s), UFO

     

Labels: 1979, Documentary, Dr. Jacques Vallee, Flying Saucer, Holloman AFB, Robert Emenegger, Rod Serling, UFOs It Has Begun, Video

     Travis Walton claims to have been abducted by a UFO on November 5, 1975, while working on a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Walton could not be found, but reappeared after five days of intensive searches. The Walton case received considerable mainstream publicity and remains one of the best-known instances of alleged alien abduction.

In his book The Walton Experience, Walton relates in his own words the best documented account of alien abduction yet recorded, the story of his harrowing ordeal at the hands of silent captors and his return to a disbelieving world of hostile interrogators, exploitative press and self-styled “debunkers.” Travis recounts the struggle to get a fair hearing and confronts his detractors with a stinging rebuttal. (www.travis-walton.com/book)

He later changed the book’s title to Fire in the Sky. In 1993, it was adapted into film (Tracy Torme screenplay, Robert Lieberman director) with D.B. Sweeney in the role of Walton. James Garner also appeared in the movie.

Walton has been a guest on Weird Travels-Alien Encounters on the Travel Channel, Alternate Realities Conference, Northwest UFO Paranormal Conference, various MUFON engagements, ABC Television Special, and the Bay Area UFO Expo as well as other appearances.

Listening guests are invited to submit specific questions prior to the Sep. 25 broadcast to Joiner at ajoiner@nctv.com.

Labels: 9-25-09, Abduction, Angelia Joiner, Fire in The Sky, Interview, Press Release, Radio Show, The Joiner Report, Travis Walton, UFO

     UFO-Nukes Connection researcher Robert Hastings will make his third appearance on Coast to Coast AM on Wednesday, September 30, 2009. (The program begins at 10 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time but Hastings’ one-hour segment begins at 1 a.m. Thursday morning PDT.) Visit http://www.coasttocoastam.com/ for details.

The topic for discussion will be former U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Supervisor Chet Lytle’s revelations about the Roswell Incident. Lytle, who did engineering work for the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb during World War II, states that the former Roswell Army Airfield commander, then-Colonel William Blanchard, personally told him that the crashed object secretly recovered near the base, in July 1947, was an alien spacecraft.

A detailed discussion of Lytle’s admission appears in Hastings’ critically-acclaimed book UFO and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. A brief summary may also be found HERE.

The dramatic revelation occurred during a taped interview with Hastings, concerning Lytle’s knowledge of nuclear weapons-related UFO activity. Unexpectedly, the retired engineer began discussing Roswell. In February 1953, Lytle—by then a weapons stockpiling supervisor with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)—was visiting Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, together with newly-promoted USAF Brigadier General Blanchard, whose assignment was the training of aircrews for the B-36 strategic bombers based there.

According to Lytle, who held Top Secret clearances related to nuclear weapons work, during a flight from Alaska to Illinois, his “very good friend” Blanchard confessed to him that an extraterrestrial spacecraft had been recovered in 1947, together with four dead aliens. Lytle, whose AEC office at Wright-Patterson AFB, in the early 1950s, put him in the right place at the right time to learn more, said that he had also been privy to “leaks about autopsies on the bodies from people who had been in and seen them.” Lytle further stated that the crashed craft had been stored at Hanger 5 on the base, adding, “I had the highest clearances involving atomic weapons stockpiling. I was very heavily cleared to do what I did, but I was never allowed into that area.”

Hastings says, “Three years after my 1998 interview with Lytle, he refused to answer a few follow-up questions, nervously telling me that after our first conversation he had been ‘paid a visit’ by someone who wanted to know why he was talking to me and Roswell researcher Don Schmitt.”

Labels: AEC, Atomic Energy Commission, Brigadier General Blanchard, C2C, Chet Lytle, Coast To Coast AM, Nuclear Weapons Sites, Nuke, Press Release, Robert Hastings, Roswell, UFO

     Why run 1953's letter from Al Chop to Maj. Donald Keyhoe's publisher again (and a better copy), having featured it two or three times before? First, because I cherish this particular triumph of correspondence from the days when letters were letters, destined to survive on paper indefinitely. How long would this document have lasted as an e-mail? As a jpg image? If converted from rich text into lackluster plain text, minus the official look, what might have been its fate? And no official seal? Please! Like a day without sunshine, to quote a TV commercial.

I've even thought of starting another blog with one eternal entry displaying this letter and nothing more, not ever. In fact, were it in my power, I think I'd instruct every TV station in the country that still runs the National Anthem before signing off for the night to show Al Chop's letter prominently prior to a hitting the goodnight switch. I don't know, maybe a sober viewing should be a requirement for every high school American history class in the U.S. As readers of my blog regarding the 1956 movie, "UFO" know (see link), I've posted several personal letters from the late Mr. Chop over there, but this timeworn document trumps every piece of mail in my files just for the last paragraph's stand-alone shock effect from a man of integrity who was just trying to do his job.

Albert M. Chop, chief of the Pentagon's Air Force press desk, did far more than type out a letter to Henry Holt & Co., a major U.S. publisher -- he put a time line on history itself. Barely six months before churning out this testimonial to Keyhoe's UFO work, Chop had endured a very busy ringside seat and public relations tightrope amidst two bouts of apparent UFO activity high over the nation's Capitol, occurring within just a week of one another in 1952. In addition to the nightmarish days and nights which followed him to and from the Air Force press desk, Chop was already so impressed by a wealth of good military and airline UFO encounters that he slowly transformed from UFO skeptic to ardent proponent. Keep in mind, Al was an ex-Marine with a dual reputation as a responsible journalist, unlikely to radically alter his views without just cause.

So -- Mr. Chop answered a letter from Henry Holt & Co., responding in a remarkably freestyle manner regarding the possible origin of UFOs. Hard to believe, but up to that time a fellow working for the government could openly speculate a bit on things like this. Yes, he took a little -- a little -- flack from superiors over this because Al never suspected (though he should have) that the publicity folks at Henry Holt would take rabid advantage of a delicious opportunity to post the letter on the back of Keyhoe's new book jacket for the whole country to see and purchase (for some reason, as we've mentioned on a previous occasion, the British version did not include Chop's letter on the jacket). Flying Saucers From Outer Space was Keyhoe's title for this 1953 release, and now it seemed to project a profitable aura of official sanctioning about it, even if it didn't. Good. So what?

But, as I said, Chop accomplished not simply a letter, but an historic time line, an indelible stamp, on January 26, 1953, for this was the year when the "Robertson Panel" convened. 1953 was also the year that aeronautical engineer Capt. Ed Ruppelt departed Project Blue Book and the Air Force, only to die of a heart attack a few years later, still a relatively young man. Al left government service that year, too, for a while, but the reason, far from being job-related, was the simple fact that his beloved wife, Dee, hated crowded Washington and yearned for the open spaces. So they up and moved West, Al went to work for Douglas Aircraft Co. and eventually rejoined the government payroll, first at NASA (sometimes as the voice of mission control during a space launch) and then with the Atomic Energy Commission.

Al's letter pretty much delineates the end of an era, a period when citizens could depend somewhat upon openness in government. The CIA, H.P. Robertson and the gang were concerned about UFO reports messing up intelligence channels integral to national security, so everybody went nuts and decided to downplay UFOs from that point forward. Maybe it was a good idea at the time, but -- but look where we are today. The policy never went away and things just became worse. Any, any -- any government public information official daring to write a letter like that on official paper tomorrow would be nailed faster than you can say yes-we-can.

Way back in this blog, I posed a question or two about heroes, contemplating who they are and what makes them heroes. While many are obvious, too many more are not. Is it heroic, for instance, for ex-military personnel to come forward and alert the public that those UFOs which governments so stringently deny are actually, from their own perspective and observation, intelligently controlled objects sired by amazing sources unknown, even when such admissions may questionably violate security oaths they took years ago?


Make no mistake, Chop echoed the UFO opinions of many in the government, though being far too modest and careful to specify more than "some of the personnel" in his letter, at this time when freedom of official speech glowed refreshingly tangible in specific instances. "Some of the personnel," hardly a reference to office folks standing around a water cooler, meant high-ranking military people, engineers and scientists, and there were many standing silently on Chop's side of the philosophical aisle.

Contrast the early fifties with the current day, when former military officers such as Robert Salas and Charles Halt come forward, probably at considerable risk to themselves, to alert us of incidents which open governments are charged with telling us about, but won't. Yet, the numbers of former military UFO whistle blowers appear to be on a steady increase (per especially the research and writings of Robert Hastings and revelations from the Bentwaters RAF base/Rendlesham Forest witnesses). Who are our modern heroes? Who are the new patriots -- or is there a "new?"

Funny, isn't it? In Chop's time, everybody recognized the enemy. Now, nebulous forces and agents of regulation consider us our own worst enemy, and telling the truth is, presumably, a punishable offense, as supposed national security entities wait vigilantly to wield a destructive club in strange ways against their own. Our own. Oh, absolutely yes, how I honor Al Chop's truthful, lay-it-on-the-line letter to Henry Holt & Co., truly bold and tragically emblematic for the end of an era.

Labels: 1953, Al Chop, Article, By Robert Barrow, Capt. Ed Ruppelt, CIA, Flying Saucer, Henry Holt and Co, Letter, Maj. Donald Keyhoe, Pentagon, Robertson Panel, UFO