Roswell Incident: Response to UFO Air Force Report - Fund for UFO Research - 1997

Now response to last week's U.S. Air Force report on an alleged U.F.O. crash at Roswell New Mexico in1947. Today a group called the fund for U.F.O. research hosted this 40 minute event at the

By C-SPAN 7-2-1997

National Press Club. They outlined their position on the Roswell incident and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Don Berliner: My name is Don Berliner, this is Rob Swiatek. We are both members of the Executive Committee of the Fund for U.F.O. Research. The Fund is a nonprofit corporation set up to support scientific research and educational projects aimed at shedding some light on the U.F.O. mystery. We don't know what U.F.O.'s are. We would like to know. A long term mystery like this must be solved sooner or later. And we want to do our part by mainly by bringing the scientific community into this problem. Our reason for being here today concerns the latest Air Force attempt to explain the July, 1947 Roswell incident. And one of the things that keeps us going is not only the nuts and bolts of U.F.O. sightings, but the increasingly peculiar behavior of the U.S. government, in particular the United States Air Force. This latest report is far and away the least believable of a series of reports the Air Force has issued on this particular aspect of UFOs. Each one intended as a final answer to the question. And obviously not succesful.

[...]

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

"Corporate Media’s Latest Orgy of Ineptitude Over UFOs — AGAIN"

At least nobody got killed

By Billy Cox De Void 1-24-15

     Don’t even waste your time reading this one today, because it’s so inside baseball, so utterly constipated and confounding I want to set my head on fire and swan-dive into a pond of gasoline. Yeah, that’s right, it’s the corporate media’s latest orgy of ineptitude over UFOs — AGAIN — so you guys can just step back and move right along while I ingest an emetic and hurl.

Whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. At ease. Deep breath, visualize world peace. Context first. Remember the context.

Ahem. OK:

In 1970, shortly after shutting down Project Blue Book, the Air Force moved its UFO files to Maxwell AFB in Huntsville, Ala. And just to settle on definitions, these weren’t actually formal studies. As Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla, the Blue Book director, stated in 1968, “Our primary responsibility is to collect data and then check the subjective material to see what the stimulus might be . . . We're not an investigative force. . . . We collect data. It's a misnomer to think we investigate.”

Furthermore: These files were never secret; you had to schedule an appointment, but you could read them yourself. Among the first to comb through the 100,000-plus hard-copy documents was Fund for UFO Research founder Don Berliner. In 1974 or thereabouts, Berliner spent a week at Maxwell, writing down names of the eyewitnesses for potential followup material. Some of those names were found only in newspaper articles; Blue Book was big on collecting and saving clippings.

The files were shipped from Maxwell to the National Archives and Records Administration in 1975 and compressed into 94 spools of microfilm. "A lot of people wanted to see them," says Berliner. "They were really popular.” So, in 1976, reservists Xeroxed the stuff for transfer into public-release microfilm. But with a hitch. A USAF review board ordered the worker bees to black out eyewitnesses' names. “They even censored the names of people mentioned in the newspaper accounts,” says Berliner. “They cited privacy reasons, but that didn’t make much sense to me, considering how the names had been available for so long. What it meant was, if you were a researcher, you couldn’t go back and reinvestigate the cases.”

Nevertheless, even though Berliner — and who knows how many others — had already recorded eyewitness names before the clampdown, FUFOR decided to purchase the entire catalogue of censored Blue Book microfilm. And that was pretty much that, until 1998, when one of Berliner’s associates who was visiting NARA called to say he was actually looking at the raw unedited microfilm records, complete with unredacted names. “I said are you sure? He said yeah, they’re on the original 16 millimeter film. So I told him to use our credit card and order a complete set.” FUFOR sprang for about $3,000. “But we got the original version with all the names.” So much for the embargo..

In 2007, a history website digitized the Archives’ censored version of Blue Book and placed them online. It wasn't newsy enough to rate MSM coverage back then. A year or so ago, just for grins, Berliner called the Archives and asked if he could see the original uncensored 16 millimeter files, “and they said ‘Absolutely not.’ I said ‘Well, would you like a copy? I’ve got one.’ They didn’t think that was very funny.”

So try to imagine the bewilderment, in extremely small hardcore circles, over the MSM clusterf*#! when the Open Minds website announced on Jan. 12 how those Blue Book files — the ones with the censored names, which have been languishing in the public domain online for nearly eight years — were now available in John Greenewald’s Black Vault database without charge. Greenewald, a Los Angeles rez, has been downloading FOIA-acquired government documents — on UFOs and other federal matters — onto his site since he was a teenager in the Nineties. What happened a week after Open Minds produced its piece caught Greenwald off guard, as he states in an email to De Void: “I never claimed this is the first time they hit the web, but rather, I got them compiled then just converted them to a much easier to use format. Crazy how the media works sometimes.”

Crazy? That’s being charitable.

From the New York Daily News to the Washington Post, from Fox News to the Chicago Sun Times, this sucker couldn’t have made a bigger splash if Larry Flynt belly-flopped from the second floor. And the reliable cliches (“The truth is out there — now on the web,” USA Today; “Is the truth out there?”, Christian Science Monitor; “It’s enough to make Mulder and Scully seethe with envy,” CNN) were the least of it. This was a magpie chorus to see who could mangle the most facts with the least effort possible (“Blue Book was shut down in 1985 ...”, Fox31 Denver). Even the Air Force Times screwed it up, calling it the “Air Force’s top secret files on sightings ... by a California man who spent nearly 20 years hounding the government to produce them.”

NBC’s Today Show anchor Natalie Morales alerted the nation with this especially piquant intro: “The U.S. Air Force just released the files to a top secret government program called the Project Blue Book, launched to investigate more than 12,000 UFO sightings ... NBC News has reached out to the Air Force and we are waiting for a response.”

(Psst, Natalie: You're still waiting because they don't take you seriously, girl ...)

Again, just to reiterate, the media had kittens over the Blue Book files sans noms. Were Greenewald's Black Vault database all he had to work with, Minnesota researcher Tom Tulien never would’ve been able, in 2011, to add eyewitness gravitas to his indictment of the arguably most significant and embarrassing UFO incident in the USAF’s official records. This one involved a UFO incursion over the Strategic Air Command base in Minot, N.D., in 1968. Seriously, check it out at minotb52ufo.com This one’s got everything — nuclear missiles, security-team recon, air and ground sightings, radio communications outages, and radarscope confirmation from a B-52 in flight. The brass didn’t know what the hell to make of that one. They officially blamed everything from Sirius to Vega to plasmas to ball lightning. Nearly 50 years later, the USAF veterans who were there remain incredulous over the whitewash.

“The story’s good, it’s remarkable,” says Tulien, “but the real value is what it tells us about Air Force procedures and protocols. Blue Book was always a public relations stunt — you just don’t find SAC investigating UFO cases. But that’s exactly what happened this time because this was serious. And the Minot report fell right through the cracks.”

Minot was so good, with an assist from Tulien, even Peter Jennings took a peek and included it in ABC's “UFOs: Seeing is Believing” in 2005. But Jennings’ cursory report barely scratched the surface. Imagine the impact the media could make if it directed national attention to the night The Great Taboo punctured American security surrounding the most dangerous weapons the world has ever known. But press coverage of real news? That would be even more unbelievable.

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

Air Force UFO Files 'Have Been On-Line for Years'

Air Force UFO Files: Media Misinforms; Greenewald Sets Record Straight

Project Blue Book Declassified - Really?

USAF UFO Project Blue Book Files Go Online for Free

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

A Candle in The Window

By Billy Cox
De Void
7-27-09

     In 1966, with Michigan eyewitnesses hounding House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for explanations, it looked like this UFO thing might bust wide open on Capitol Hill. As Missouri congressman Durwald Hall’s unhinged rant indicated during a brief hearing on April 5 of that year, measured perspectives were falling out of fashion.

Declaring that acid-dropping Americans “are almost synonymous with the number of space sightings we have today,” Hall added that people who reported UFOs reflected “a decrease in the morals and the fiber of those who would subject themselves to hallucinatory influences in the first place.”

The dude didn’t make any sense, but what the hell, it was Congress. Next thing you knew, the Air Force contracted the University of Colorado to get the 800-pound ape off its back. UC obliged, declared UFOs beneath the dignity of science, and handed the USAF an escape clause to walk away from its public UFO study, Project Blue Book, in 1969.

But more than Blue Book died 40 years ago. “NICAP folded shortly thereafter,” remembers Don Berliner. “It went on for a little while, but it was over for all intents and purposes.”

Founded in 1956 and reaching peak membership of 14,000 with more than half a dozen full-time employees, the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena became the largest private UFO study group in the world. One of its most diligent stewards was Richard Hall, who had a curious zest for immersing himself in reams of often dull, numbing, horribly written UFO reports filed by military and civilian eyewitnesses alike.

Exasperated by conspiracy theories and New Age dreck, Hall went on to write his “Reality Check” column for UFO Magazine and co-found the Fund for UFO Research, which financed investigations for more than 20 years into some of the strongest reports. But at the time of his death earlier this month, Hall’s Web site reflected more accessible priorities, such as genealogy, the Civil War, and his own artwork. You had to scroll down to reach the UFO stuff.

“He tried to get out of the field,” says Berliner, who presides over the remains of the Fund, “and he felt his ability to get a good job was hampered somewhat by research that a lot of people considered weird.”

Berliner met Hall when he joined NICAP in Washington in 1962. Pulling 15-hour stretches for up to two weeks at its office in tony Dupont Circle, taking astonishing reports from the likes of airline pilots walking in from National Airport, Berliner recalls that era with a sense of anticipation, like maybe something huge could pop at any moment.

“Well, it was the quality of the evidence,” Berliner says from Alexandria, Va. “Wishful thinking or speculation on what the government knew or didn’t know had no place in our work. Dick, and others, to a lesser degree, established a basis for looking at that evidence scientifically. We just didn’t see how anybody could ignore what we were collecting, especially given the standards we were using.”

At age 79, Berliner notes that he’s six months older than Hall. If you’d told him in 1969 we’d be no closer to solving the riddle than we are today, Berliner would’ve dismissed the idea as outlandish. And even as he states that “there hasn’t been a great increase in the intellectual capacity of congress in 40 years,” Berliner remains an optimist. A breakthrough, he says, is always just a couple of key documents or whistleblowers away.

“I fully expect to be around when that happens,” says Berliner as the NICAP generation passes into history. “I’m not going until that happens. I’m going to lash myself to a chair.”

More . . .

See Also:

Veteran Ufologist Richard Hall Succumbs To Cancer!

A Tribute to Richard H. Hall
(Dec 25, 1930 - July 17, 2009)

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

An Historical Curio re "MJ-12"

By Larry W. Bryant
ufoview.posterous.com
12-18-08

LWB note: Subscribers for the bimonthly "Journal of UFO History (A Publication of the Donald E. Keyhoe Archives)," published-edited by former NICAP assistant director Richard H. Hall ( http://www.hallrichard.com ), have a nostalgic treat on page 11 of the Journal's November-December 2008 issue. It consists of this excerpt from Hall's recent interview with former NICAP staffer Donald Berliner:

Q: I think I know the answer to this, but what is your opinion on the reality or non-reality of the alleged MJ-12 organization?

A: Either there was an MJ-12 as described in the Eisenhower Briefing Document, or there was a similar organization that went under another name/designation . . . or maybe a series of titles. To have ignored the greatest scientific discovery in history and not marshaled our best talent to learn everything possible would have been malfeasance of the worst kind."

That conversation -- with its ageless perspective -- prompts me to publish here the contents of my 2000 public "Petition to Investigate the 'MJ-12' UFO Cover-up," which I'd circulated for three months via the now-defunct service called "petitionpetition.com." Alas, none of the agencies cited ever responded to my snail-mail delivery of the petition (which also had listed as a recipient one Va. U. S. Senator Charles Robb). Had they done so, they probably would've invoked their discretionary power to ignore it. But it certainly does stand as a nagging footnote in the history of the official, worldwide UFO cover-up, no? Here's the petition's text and list of signatories:

TO: Secretary, U.S. Department of the Army (Washington, D.C.);

Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy (Washington, D.C.);

Director, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (Washington, D.C.);

Director, U.S. Office of Special Counsel (Washington, D.C.);

Attorney General of the United States (Washington, D.C.)

FROM: Larry W. Bryant
3518 Martha Custis Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302

DATE: July 22, 2000

(1) With their 169 electronic signatures now entered upon subject petition, citizens from all walks of life -- from homemakers and students to government workers and professional specialists -- are requesting that you take all appropriate action toward fulfilling their plea as expressed in the text of the petition.

(2) Circulated during the period April 21 to July 21, 2000, via the Internet website of http://www.petitionpetition.com, the petition presented the following background information:

The inspectors general of three federal agencies -- the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of the Army, and the Department of Energy -- are continuing to ignore a written request to investigate their agencies' role in the official cover-up of the "UFO/E.T. experience."

This ADMINISTRATIVE petition (as carried by the website of www.petitionpetition.com) sets the stage for a forthcoming "Petition for Writ of Mandamus," to be filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Accordingly, if the IG officials involved persist in stonewalling the formal request to investigate their agencies' role in the UFO cover-up as revealed by certain whistleblower-"leaked" documentation (now posted upon the website of www.majesticdocuments.com), then they'll have to justify their decision not to just the Court of Public Opinion but also to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

This next logical, legal step in the public's growing demand for the full story as to what these agencies know (and when they knew it) about UFO reality centers on the behind-the-scenes conduct of a supersecret panel of top-rated military leaders and scientists selected circa 1947 to analyze, exploit, and conceal certain recovered artifacts of alien-spacecraft origin. Known as Majestic-Twelve, the 12-member panel managed for decades to keep its affairs hidden from public view -- until one or more whistleblowers began to "leak" documentary evidence of those affairs.

As work proceeds to fully evaluate (via technical, literary, political, and forensic means) the content and specific origin of the MJ-12 documents, you now have this opportunity, through your signatures on this petition, to say no to the UFO status quo -- and to remind these agencies that the public has the right to know, and they have a duty to tell.

(3) Here's the text of the petition:

We, the undersigned citizens -- concerned about the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's, the Department of the Army's, and the Department of Energy's having been implicated (by whistleblower-"leaked" documentation) in the official cover-up of the "UFO/E.T. experience" -- do hereby petition our elected and appointed government officials to compel these agencies' inspectors general to cease their stonewalling and to fulfill their statutory duty to investigate (and to report upon) whatever role their agencies have had (and continue to have) in concealing from public view various hard evidence of UFO/E.T. reality.

-- Whereas, each of these IG officials have received -- and have chosen to ignore -- a formal, written request to commission the sought-for investigation;

-- Whereas, this stonewalling contravenes both the spirit of government accountability and the letter-of-the-law as to the IG charter;

-- Whereas, to countenance that stonewalling invites these agencies to perpetuate their decades-old abuse of authority, violation of the public trust, and deliberate evasion of congressional oversight (as revealed by documentation posted upon the website of www.majesticdocuments.com); and -- Whereas, a growing body of UFO-cover-up whistleblowers and other material witnesses are waiting in the wings to testify against that official agency wrongdoing (if given a chance in a court of law or in an open congressional hearing)--

We sign this administrative petition in full expectation that its recipients will exercise, forthrightly and swiftly, their authority toward granting its demand; and should they deny its demand, we encourage the petition's originator to append the electronically signed version to his proposed "Petition for Writ of Mandamus," for filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

(4) On behalf of the petition's signatories, I ask that you keep me regularly and fully informed as to your progress in helping achieve the goal of this petition. Your failure to do so will add that much more substance to the petitioners' quest for judicial review of your agencies' role in the worldwide government cover-up of the UFO/E.T. experience.

(5) Please note that I'm snail-mailing to you a printout of this e-mail-formatted communication so that you may readily process it among
the multiple levels of your agencies.

(6) Here is the list of signatories:

See Signatories . . .

See Also:

Kimball, Smith, Bush and MJ-12

Navy Warrant Officer: "Forrestal Didn't Kill Himself"

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE