Showing posts with label Hysteria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hysteria. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 07, 2020

How the CIA Tried to Quell UFO Panic



How the CIA Tried to Quell UFO Panic

     In January 1953, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency had a thorny situation on its hands. Reports of UFO sightings were mushrooming around the country. Press accounts were fanning public fascination—and concern. So the CIA convened a
By Becky Little
www.history.com
1-5-20
group of scientists to investigate whether these unknown phenomena in the sky represented a national security threat.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Hysteria Drives UFO Gatekeepers Debunking Exopolitics Pioneers

By Dr. Michael Salla
Honolulu Exopolitics Examiner
8-1-09

Dr. Michael Salla     A new breed of UFOlogist has emerged as critics of the burgeoning exopolitics movement. It’s no surprise that in the lead up and success of the world’s first Exopolitics Summit in Barcelona, Spain, that UFOlogists would increasingly perceive exopolitics as an existential threat. The existential threat, according to UFOlogists acting as gatekeepers for “legitimate UFO research,” is that exopoliticians mix reliable with unreliable UFO sources in their analyses. Indeed, this mixing of reliable and unreliable sources leads to a special form of hysteria among gatekeepers of legitimate UFO research. Existential hysteria leads to UFOlogical gatekeepers claiming in all seriousness that exopolitics has become the main obstacle to genuine UFO disclosure. The reality is that after six decades of earnest activity, UFOlogy has failed to take humanity to the promised land of genuine government disclosure of UFOs, and a new set of pioneers have stepped in to light the way. These exopolitical pioneers believe that a nuanced consideration of ALL evidentiary sources and related political processes will expose the truth behind the extraterrestrial hypothesis – that some UFOs are interplanetary in origin. . . .

. . . Special mention should be made of modern UFO gatekeepers who are most vocal in perpetuating the existential hysteria over the exopolitics discipline. Special note should go to Robert Hastings, author of UFOs and Nukes, who excels in hysterical overreaction when it comes to the use of sources he declares unreliable. David Biedny and Gene Steinberg, hosts of Paracast Radio have consistently shown an astounding lack of intellectual honesty in declaring which sources or witnesses they find reliable or not. For example, they had image expert Jim Dilettoso appear as guest who promptly revealed that 40 of the earliest Billy Meier photos were real, and that models were then created for hoaxed photos for comparative purposes. Totally ignoring this very important information, Biedny and Steinberg go on to declare that the Billy Meier photos are fraudulent based on their analysis of later hoaxed photos. Finally, small mention should also be made of retired Air Force Captain Robert Salas who in a moment of poor judgment deigned to join the existential hysteria created by Hastings, Biedny and Steinberg, and penned an article attacking exopolitics pioneers who had the temerity to support his work while also supporting those he deems unreliable. . . .

Friday, October 31, 2008

70 Years Ago Today: Orson Welles Presented H.G. Wells, "War of The Worlds"



By Orson Welles
The Mercury Theatre on the Air
CBS Radio
10-31-1938

     Note—In January of 1953 UFO reports collected by the Air Force under the names of Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book were analyzed by a panel commissioned by the CIA, known today as the “Robertson Panel” named for its chairman, Howard Percy Robertson, a physicist, and CIA employee; also director of the Defense Department Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG).

Other panel members included:

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

There were additional “associate panel members” which included Dr. J. Allen Hynek.

Ironically, Welles’ version of War of The Worlds, or more accurately the panic that ensued figured prominently in the recommendations by the panel to begin a “debunking campaign” (re UFO reports) which some believe continues to this day! The panel suggested a PR 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—FW.