THE UFO CHRONICLES

Showing posts with label Mainstream Media. Show all posts

Monday, August 12, 2019

'Public Trust in Media Objectivity Surrounding TTSA Continues to Plummet'

Wicked Webs: Media Portrayal of
Tall Tales, TTSA and Luis Elizondo

Cooper Blumenthal Kean

In the much celebrated Dec. 16, 2017 story at the New York Times, authors Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean wrote about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or what was later identified as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Many of the assertions published in the article remain unconfirmed. "It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze," they reported.

Frank Warren attempted to learn more about what led Kean

By Jack Brewer
The UFO Trail
8-7-19

and Blumenthal to report Elizondo ran the AATIP. In an Aug. 5 post at The UFO Chronicles, Warren explored the AATIP saga and explained how he specifically asked the two if they would at the least describe the nature of the evidence and how it was authenticated. They did not.

"So after a couple of weeks and 5 attempts I received a five-word, one-sentence reply, sending me back to the article whose omissions precipitated my query to begin with," Warren wrote.

After several emails, Kean told Frank Warren to ask Blumenthal. Blumenthal eventually stated the two stand by their reporting. Neither remotely addressed Warren's original questions pertaining to what evidence was reviewed that indicated Elizondo ran the AATIP.

Warren concluded:

Above I asked the proverbial question, "does any of this matter?" The short answer is yes, of course it does. This is research 101; thorough investigation and due diligence performed by sober researchers should be commended, not criticized. Facts don’t lie. Moreover, and particularly in this instance, when contradictory information to this degree, i.e., divergent statements from the Pentagon re Elizondo’s claimed credentials are uncovered, then this must be resolved.

All the same, I can’t for the life of me understand why Luis Elizondo has not got in front of this. If everything is as he says, then certainly he can provide evidence to put this controversy to bed once and for all, unless….

Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean were each offered an opportunity to comment for this blog post. None responded.

Nearly two years now since the initial Times article, many important details remain unverified. Not only have the initial assertions received little to no follow up, but more articles were published about TTSA while ignoring mounting discrepancies.

Tom DeLonge

In a June 4 piece at Rolling Stone, Tom DeLonge was asked how it felt to see the latest story on TTSA in the Times. He replied, "This is the third New York Times article that we organized and put together at To the Stars."

It's entirely reasonable to ask, exactly, what that means. Public trust in media objectivity surrounding TTSA continues to plummet while concerns of false narratives seem more justified with each successive question. In addition to a credulous (if not blatantly deceptive) network of reporters, a small army of self-described journalists and so-called persons of knowledge emerged on blogs, podcasts, and social media to uncritically - painfully so, at times - promote TTSA. Many would argue the organization and its high profile supporters have not earned such unconditional loyalty.

Credulous or Complicit?

Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal's work has previously been called into question, and Kean has a rather well documented history of jumping the shark. It is yet to be understood why the New York Times does not take this into account and more carefully require evidence for assertions prior to publication.

In 2012 Kean and Blumenthal co-authored a quite sensational piece on a now infamous 2010 Chilean airshow in which they reported jets were stalked by a UFO - that no one actually saw until viewing film later. The article included suggesting this was the UFO case skeptics had been dreading. Before long the hyped case fell apart under circumstances which called motives and competency into question.

Researchers pointed out many areas of concern, such as Kean's claims the UFO was captured on some seven different videos from differing angles, yet she failed to produce the alleged corroborating videos. Additional film footage was indeed located by an independent researcher, which significantly contradicted Kean's stance, rather than supported it. The footage showed what were obviously insects and birds to be prevalent throughout the newly located film, circumstances which could not be seen in the arguably misleading and much more limited film samples previously released. Many in the UFO community eventually questioned how Kean, Blumenthal and Chilean authorities could have been oblivious to the likely explanation of insects, while rather inexplicably silent about additional and extended footage that so clearly established an abundant presence of airborne wildlife throughout the event.

Prior to going overboard on the airshow, it was documented in 2011 how Kean rejected and completely ignored evidence contradicting her preferred narrative of an alleged cover-up of the JAL 1628 UFO case. Kean was provided witness testimony of two people, both who attended a meeting in which the cover-up was supposedly discussed, yet each person indicated no such statements were made. As a matter of fact, one of them stated they were provided information for publication during the meeting. Kean completely omitted the circumstances from her description of the events while opting to continue to promote the cover-up version of the story, among other reported questionable actions.

Going back even further, as documented by Carol Rainey and later explored in The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community, Kean endorsed Budd Hopkins in his promotion of alleged alien abductee James S. Mortellaro, Jr. The sensational case was destined to be identified as a hoax.

The absurd and unverified claims of Mortellaro - in addition to his baseless stories of being celebrated for heroic action as a police officer - included his assertions he was examined by medical doctors who substantiated his tales of alien abduction. He also claimed witnesses could verify his abductions. The evidence was perpetually promised to be forthcoming but chronically never produced, as seems to be a recurring theme.

Without personally interviewing or ever even speaking with any of the alleged witnesses or medical staff who could purportedly substantiate the case, Kean and Hopkins were on board with Mortellaro's story. It unraveled in whole when Rainey, a writer, filmmaker, and then-wife of Hopkins, along with members of an advisory committee of the Hopkins-founded Intruders Foundation, refused to entertain the empty claims of medical documentation any further until substantiated.

An alleged medical document handed over by Mortellaro, along with other supposed evidence, was identified as fraudulent. A statement was subsequently published on the Intruders Foundation website which clarified the case was not worthy of further investigation. The statement established the purported credible evidence long promised to be forthcoming was never produced and that alleged official medical documentation was fabricated.

It could be argued if select UFO researchers can hold credulous investigators and those with mile-high tales responsible for providing evidence to support their assertions, then we should expect the same from other researchers. We might particularly require such standards from journalists and, certainly, the "Paper of Record."

How We Got Here

Luis Elizondo

Bryan Bender of Politico also reported Luis Elizondo formerly ran the AATIP in an article published virtually simultaneously with the piece by Cooper, Blumenthal and Kean. Bender wrote that Pentagon spokesperson Dana White confirmed the program existed and was run by Elizondo. White could not say how long Elizondo was in charge, Bender added, and that she declined to answer detailed questions.

Journalist Keith Kloor raised substantial doubts about Elizondo, AATIP leadership, and those promoting the story in his June 1 article published at The Intercept. Kloor pointed out Bender's source, Dana White, was a Trump administration political appointee who resigned amid an internal probe into charges of misconduct.

Moreover, Kloor quoted a current Pentagon spokesperson, Christopher Sherwood, as stating, "Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI (the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017."

The relevance of Elizondo's lack of AATIP responsibilities while specifically working in OUSDI is significant because Sherwood's statement directly contradicts information provided on the record by TTSA spokesperson and Tom Delonge sister Kari DeLonge. She stated it was out of that office that Elizondo ran the program starting in 2010.

Christopher Sherwood further clarified his statement for Kloor, explaining how he arrived at his conclusion. Sherwood spoke with OUSDI leadership, Kloor reported, which included individuals who are still there from the time Elizondo started working in the office.

Kloor covered statements made during a podcast by Helene Cooper, the Pentagon correspondent for the Times and co-author of Kean and Blumenthal. Kloor wrote, "Later on, after she left [a meeting with Elizondo], Cooper acknowledged that doubts crept in. In the end, though, she decided that what mattered most was whether the Pentagon’s UFO program was real. That, she said, was the focus of the story."

Bryan Bender

Sherwood's statement and the current DoD position on Elizondo's employment history obviously came in contradiction to the narrative held by Bryan Bender. He asserted on Twitter he could provide documents to support Elizondo's claims of running the AATIP. However, when encouraged to do so, Bender presented no such documents and later deleted the tweet.

Bender deleted another tweet, as reported by John Greenewald at The Black Vault, in which he assured Twitter the Pentagon would soon revise its position on Elizondo's lack of AATIP involvement. However, the opposite proved true when the Pentagon actually reiterated its stance that Elizondo did not, in fact, have any assigned responsibilities for the AATIP while working in the OUSDI.

In an interview published July 9 with TTSA loyalist Alejandro Rojas, Bender stated Elizondo's role in the AATIP has been difficult to confirm because "you can't really do that." The Politico editor once again spoke of unspecified documents and knowledgeable staffers but provided listeners with no answers to lingering and valid questions. Bender explained that he suspected a substantial amount of Elizondo's UFO investigations were in unofficial capacities and subsequently cannot be verified.

"[T]here really wasn't an AATIP, officially," Bender added, which does not seem entirely accurate, according to Pentagon statements and a great deal of research conducted by various bloggers.

"I mean, that's just not how the intelligence business works," Bender stated about difficulty following paper trails and identifying project personnel.

DIA Response To Brewer FOIA Request Re AAWSAP and Baass Contract (Pg 3) 7-19-19

Many would challenge Bender's portrayal of Pentagon programs. As part of a recent FOIA response, the DIA provided The UFO Trail a letter it issued to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). The letter further established what many researchers already knew: Pentagon programs contracted to private corporations are not exempt from either paper trails or the FOIA process.

The FOIA request was pertaining to a 2008 contract awarded for the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program, or AAWSAP. The letter demonstrated BAASS was notified of an FOIA request concerning its contract, as is required by executive order, and offered a standard opportunity to suggest portions of the contract be withheld, pending justifications.

Early in the interview with Rojas, Bender suggested he perceived a lot of early statements from TTSA panned out so he began giving its personnel benefit of the doubt. It could be considered interesting that many came to form the exact opposite assessment.

It is reasonable to question why the initial stories at the NYT and Politico reported Elizondo ran the AATIP. Bender's rationalizing about the difficulty of confirming Elizondo's claims does not justify publishing his and TTSA statements as fact. It arguably makes it all the more apparent not to report the statements as facts.

Adding to the controversy was a May 22 article written by Steven Greenstreet for the New York Post. We previously explored the piece and that it was Greenstreet who initially received Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood's statement about Elizondo having no AATIP responsibilities, and Greenstreet opted to omit it from his article. Instead, he framed the piece as a pro-UFO read while later declining to reveal the contents of Sherwood's full statement when requested to do so. The irony of such actions by journalists advocating government disclosure of UFO information should be self evident.

The Videos

Sherwood's full statement, when obtained independently and able to be viewed in its entirety, further called into question the already controversial chain of custody of the videos published by TTSA. The videos became the cornerstone of TTSA claims of being a leading and significant group. Also omitted from Greenstreet's article, along with the comment about Elizondo, was Sherwood's statement, "The video[s] you reference in the NY Times article was made releasable for research and analysis purposes by U.S. government agencies and industry partners, and not for general public release." The remark is significant to the DD1910 issue and deteriorating credibility of TTSA, which long claimed to have "chain of custody documentation" but has yet to produce it.

George Knapp, a longtime prominent UFO reporter who uncritically promotes the Skinwalker Ranch legend and holds steadfast to the legitimacy of claims surrounding Robert Bigelow and Bob Lazar, "obtained" and published the DD1910 on April 29. A DD Form 1910 is used to request review and clearance of material, in this case the videos later framed as evidence of UFOs by TTSA. Knapp proclaimed the DD1910 established provenance of the film clips. It actually did not, which is particularly ironic, given the fact Knapp had no provenance for the form itself.

DD 1910 Form For Go Fast, Gimbal and FLIR UFO Videos

While the Pentagon later confirmed to John Greenewald the DD1910 in question was authentic, spokesperson Sue Gough further explained the videos were never authorized for public release. It remains unclear how the film footage came to be published.

Additional areas of concern surrounding the DD1910 published by Knapp included redacted sections, apparently done by parties other than the DoD, which obstructed the name of the requester. It was also questioned why the subject of the videos were listed on the form as UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), balloons, and UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System). In other words, the DoD labeled the objects filmed as drones and balloons.

It was reported by Sarah Scoles at Wired on Feb. 17, 2018 (and known by people familiar with UFO forums), that some of the TTSA footage was posted online years earlier. Scoles raised several interesting questions about the original purposes of the videos, such as the doubt they were ever classified.

"It looks very strongly like these weren’t released through any proper DOD declassification channels that I’ve ever seen," Nate Jones, director of the Freedom of Information Act Project at the National Security Archive, told Scoles. "I’ve seen a lot of DOD declassification in response to FOIA, in response to mandatory declassification review, in response to proactive disclosure. And it doesn’t look like this."

Scoles went on to aptly observe there is no definitive connection between the video footage showcased by TTSA and the AATIP. It indeed might be competently argued that the unconditionally loyal UFO reporters are the lone reason the TTSA videos - and Luis Elizondo - were ever associated with the project at all.

Knapp soon posted a screen shot of another document lacking provenance when he offered it in support of Elizondo following Kloor's June 1 article at The Intercept. Knapp's document seemed to raise more questions than it answered and, once again, actually resolved nothing. As a matter of fact, it remains unresolved as of this writing as to whether or not Luis Elizondo ran the AATIP or ever had any official responsibilities in it.

While evidence may eventually be presented that indeed establishes the specific relevance of the videos to the AATIP and Elizondo's involvement in the project, the fact of the matter is that is not currently the case, and two Pentagon spokespersons definitively stated he had no responsibilities in it at all, much less ran it. To claim otherwise at this point is simply wrong.

Elizondo, TTSA, History Channel (which aired a TTSA series), and affiliates have largely remained quiet about his unverified credentials, a silence of particular concern among many researchers and journalists. If the videos were released through proper channels and if Elizondo ran the AATIP as repeatedly asserted, why wouldn't he and those who reported it just provide documentation? Wouldn't they have such documentation in hand before ever making the assertions? One might be inclined to think so, but, to state the obvious, it is becoming increasingly doubtful. That might particularly be considered the case the more time that passes without TTSA and its fraternity of writers resolving what have become many issues of baseless claims.

In a June 7 interview with Martin Willis, the first public statement Elizondo offered on his credentials since Kloor's article at The Intercept, Elizondo told Willis, "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion." It is just such ambiguity that draws criticism to TTSA and deeply alarms researchers who respect standards of evidence. In order to give Elizondo the benefit of the doubt for such a statement, he would have to genuinely fail to identify a significant difference between substantiating a claim of directing a Pentagon UFO program and choosing a flavor of ice cream.

Bottom Line

It is reasonable for people to be interested in reports of UFOs and related phenomena. They are entitled to believe as they want and loyally follow researchers as they choose. It is understandable they are excited about their topic of interest receiving increased coverage.

Similarly, those who prioritize accuracy are entitled to respect professionally recognized standards of evidence when forming their beliefs. They are free to reject or suspend judgement on claims which fall short of such standards, pending further, more conclusive information. That might particularly be considered justified when such claims are prematurely and falsely published as facts.

It should go without saying, but seems to constantly need reiterating, that extra skepticism is warranted towards reporters who have documented histories of sensationalizing UFO stories and being shown to be wrong upon further investigation. If this stuff is worth following, it's worth getting right, or perhaps it's not worth following at all.

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Thursday, July 26, 2018

The Media's Ineptitude in Covering The UFO Phenomenon

Wrung Out & Wasted

Look, I’m not even gonna bother with Newsweek’s latest attempt to cover the Pentagon’s UFO program. Some dingbat headline writer surprised the world, including the Defense Department, by announcing the Defense Department had investigated a “Poltergeist Connection” to the “Alien Mystery.” And the reporter lost me in the second graph when he referred to Richard Bigelow, not Robert.

By Billy Cox
De Void
6-2-18

God knows, De Void makes mistakes aplenty, but Newsweek has demonstrated such a consistent pattern of ineptitude when it approaches The Great Taboo it’s like watching Inspector Clouseau in a shootout with Pablo Escobar. The only thing it didn’t totally screw up was its takedown of the hapless Mutual UFO Network in April. But that was like burning ants with a magnifying glass – not very sporting.

Now, the Washington Post, on the other hand – watching WaPo drop the ball on UFOs this week with its regressive formula spin is to understand it doesn’t have a clue about how to push this conversation forward. Let’s start with the headline, in toto: “UFOs are suddenly a serious news story. You can thank the guy from Blink-182 for that.”

If by “suddenly” it means six months ago then, yeah OK, that adverb’s solid gold. As for “the guy from Blink-182” – spoiler alert: Tom DeLonge’s involvement with The Great Taboo has been out there since, well, at least since WaPo did a spread on Tom DeLonge’s involvement with The Great Taboo in March 2017. But you’d never guess that from this week’s Captain Obvious Award winner. Here’s the WaPo’s idea of a provocative setup:

“You’ve seen it without knowing it.” I have? Really? Me? “Remember that wild news in December about a secret Pentagon UFO program?” Welllll, now that you mention it … “And those grainy military videos showing radar images of unexplained phenomena – white, Tic-Tac-shaped objects that appear to fly at remarkable speeds, at impossible angles, without wings or exhaust?” Yes! Yessir I do! Got my ears on now, bruh, bring it! “Tom DeLonge helped ring the alarm about those things, as part of his new business venture: To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science.” Oh. We’re having stale bread. Again. Good. We were almost ready to give up hope.

You know, maybe if I lived in Yemen or Pyongyang, or if I couldn’t leech off magazines like Billboard and Mother Jones, I might be a little more appreciative of these patronizing leftovers. After all, let’s face it, six months have passed since The New York Times broke the story about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), and we’re still waiting for a meaningful followup. Despite the fact that we readers are losing interest in damn near everything these days, our attention spans are collapsing, and our memory-retention lights are flashing red.

But here’s the part of the headline an editor should’ve deleted altogether – “a serious news story.” Really? Leaving the frontier for the clogged double lanes at the drive-thru is serious? Reporter Dan Zak lets ‘er rip — “the subject carries the odor of crazy” — and quotes oft-quoted usual suspects SETI evangelist Jill Tartar and Skeptical Inquirer mainstay Robert Sheaffer. Sheaffer’s as reliable as gravity when it comes to dissing “a couple more blurry videos that are similar to the blurry videos we’ve had before this.”

But the real disappointment: The Times worked the 12/16/17 AATIP coup with two Pulitzer Prize-winning bylines, Helene Cooper and Ralph Blumenthal. The Post put its own Pulitzer pedigree, Joby Warrick, on the story and published the same day. It looked like an old-fashioned newspaper war was shaping up.

Crickets ever since.

Here’s the deal. Forget about UFOs shadowing naval exercises off the coast of California. What nobody wants to talk about is nuclear weapons. Or, more specifically, UFOs’ ability to operate unchallenged in restricted airspace over U.S. missile fields in the Northern Plains. That, plus our inability to stop it. That’s the story nobody’s writing. De Void’s wishful thinking: Maybe the media are being patriotic by not telling Little Rocket Man just how porous our sovereign skies are. But they are. And they’ve been that way for a long time.

Many of the veterans who’ve gone on record only after years of separation from the military are dying off. Are UFOs continuing to keep tabs on our WMD? The only researcher actively trying to find out is author Robert Hastings. The military doesn’t issue press releases on this stuff, and the media won’t even address data that’s been languishing for decades in the public domain. The story isn’t dead, just ignored.

One thing we know for sure is, the UFOs haven’t gone away. But if the corporate newshounds decide to put the nuke angle on the table, I promise to replace the butt-ugly dog photo up there with something less offensive. And trust me, folks, it’ll be very very incredible, that I can tell you.

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See Also:

'Getting the Mainstream Media to Approach the UFO Puzzle as Legitimate News

The Missing Times - News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up

UFOs in the Mainstream Media: Washington Post Science Writer Reveals Her Unfamiliarity with the Facts

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Sunday, April 15, 2018

'Getting the Mainstream Media to Approach the UFO Puzzle as Legitimate News

A media turning point … maybe

If To The Stars Academy contributes nothing more to the debate, if its sole legacy is getting the mainstream media to approach the UFO puzzle as legitimate news, it will have accomplished what no one else has been able to do since the cessation of Project Blue Book nearly 50 years ago. Right now, the signs are encouraging. Just look at everyone who’s suddenly paying attention to The War Zone blogger Tyler Rogoway.

By Billy Cox
De Void
4-5-18

Avoid the alien spaceship references, work the FOIA angles, stick to hard data, decline to interpret — could this be the formula for grabbing and sustaining mainstream media interest in The Great Taboo?

A military hardware aficionado who has harbored a longstanding but closeted interest in UFOs, Rogoway cultivates sources by keeping tabs not on The Great Taboo, but the latest developments in war technology, at home and abroad. Journalistically, and with good reason, he has kept a healthy distance from the UFO quagmire. Until recently, that is, when he followed a lead on incidents that played out over California-Oregon in October, and Arizona-New Mexico in February.

Swiftly working those sources for Federal Aviation Administration data, Rogoway augmented his detailed analyses on both of those episodes by posting voice recordings among pilots, air traffic controllers, and FAA officials. He steered clear of interpretation, an area where so many people screw up, and let the presentation speak for itself. What was also remarkable, as Rogoway told Alejandro Rojas this week in the Open Minds podcast, was the amount of cooperation he got from the FAA.

The results have been astonishing. Rogoway’s revelations have been circulated by all the corporate heavy hitters – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The NY Times, WaPo, Fox, Time, etc. etc. And that publicity windfall comes on the heels of an equally viral shot across the bow from former Department of Defense administrator Christopher Mellon. In a March 9 Washington Post op-ed, accompanied by F-18 video footage of an object its pilot struggled to lock onto, Mellon excoriated the Pentagon for its failure to rigorously investigate this potential flight safety hazard.

Mellon’s credentials pinged the media radar last December when, as an adviser to TTSA, he figured into the NY Times scoop on the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which included two F-18 videos tracking UFO activity. So it’s a fair question to ask if the MSM would’ve been as receptive to Rogoway’s reporting without the TTSA having breached the restraining walls four months ago. Lately – or to be safe, let’s just say for now – it appears as if the Fourth Estate might actually be rousing from its slumber.

But at a moment when this issue appears to be gaining traction, we’re not hearing a peep from TTSA, which should be shaping coverage, not evaporating. Unlike Rogoway, who documented every step of his investigation into the civilian UFO events, TTSA has little to show in the way of establishing under whose authority, specifically, an investigation of those recorded incidents occurred, especially the one associated with the USS Nimitz carrier task force off California in 2004. Unable to produce chain-of-custody records, TTSA has evidently walked away from that obligation.

To get a feel for how bad this looks, check out John Greenewald’s updates at his Black Vault website. In an effort to verify statements made by retired intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who oversaw the AATIP before retiring in frustration last October, Greenewald has pursued every lead for substantiation. And at every turn, his FOIAs have been answered with no-records-found snubs. Although it’s still a little early to go all X-Files on these denials, it doesn’t look like TTSA much cares about following up, either.

Robert Powell, the researcher who co-authored the ground-breaking, radar-based evaluation of the 2008 Stephenville Incident, and anchored the investigation into the equally intriguing 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, encounter, offers another disappointing twist. Following his appearance on one of Rojas’ podcasts, Powell was contacted by a radar operator aboard the USS Princeton, the flagship for the Nimitz group during the 2004 encounter.

“He’s retired now, and he said nobody had ever contacted him about what happened,” recalls Powell. “And he wanted to talk.”

The radar guy told Powell the UFO(s) that mystified the carrier pilots were tracked by five separate military systems, which included two destroyers and an airborne E-2 Hawkeye. Powell says the Navy veteran commented for the record, and his credentials passed the smell test. Given the military’s inability to produce radar data for his FOIAs, Powell says his source’s perspectives are invaluable.

“You can’t really conclude anything from video, and that’s why radar returns are so important because they’re primary sources,” says Powell who, like Greenewald, is having little luck on the FOIA front. “They say they don’t have any radar records, but why would our government keep the video and throw away everything else? That doesn’t make sense. They could easily release the video and put this to bed without revealing any national security secrets.”

Like the Aguadilla footage, the Navy F-18s followed the UFO(s) using the same sort of infrared optics employed by Border Patrol agents in the skies above coastal Puerto Rico five years ago. Unlike the Navy incident, radar records from Aguadilla helped Powell’s team — called the Scientific Coalition for Ufology – render a more accurate accounting of a smallish object that not only buzzed a city at treetop level, it dipped into the Caribbean and split in two when it re-emerged.

Among Powell’s SCU team members is Morgan Beall, who played a lead role in the Aguadilla study and is now collaborating on reconstructing the Nimitz encounter. Once the Florida director for MUFON, Beall like Powell is severing his ties to the increasingly sensationalist and marginalized national volunteer organization. (“MUFON,” says Beall, “is promoting an agenda and placing more value in entertainment and celebrity than research”.)

Beall says SCU hopes to have a white paper on the Nimitz incident completed within a few months, and that it will be more thorough than anything TTSA has published.

“I think what they’ve (TTSA) done has been good in terms of, there’s a little bit more ease of public discussion (about UFOs), and the giggle factor isn’t quite what it was,” says Beall. “But they’ve been no help to us at all, and the stuff they’ve put out there isn’t going to get into Nature magazine or Scientific American. There’s no executable data.”

If, as De Void hopes, journalists like Tyler Rogoway continue to file solid work on The Great Taboo, and big media continues to handle it with sobriety, then TTSA will have contributed mightily to our cultural evolution. But unless TTSA gets a bit more fastidious about documenting what else, if anything, it has up its sleeve, its best moment may already be receding in the rear-view.

The $50 million crowd-funding goal it set to develop shareholder-financed innovations like “beamed energy” and “advanced electrogravitic” propulsion systems remains stuck at $2.5 mil, and hasn’t budged in months. In fact, at last glance, TTSA isn’t even bothering to post the latest numbers anymore. When it comes to headline-grabbing UFO material, the TTSA, Powell suspects, is out of gas.

“I think they’ve already shot their wad,” he says, “and that’s probably the end of it.”

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Thursday, August 10, 2017

UFOs in the Mainstream Media: Washington Post Science Writer Reveals Her Unfamiliarity with the Facts

Regarding WAPO science writer Sarah Kaplan’s recent review of scientific commentary on the UFO phenomenon, she seems oblivious to a basic truth: There is a distinct and fundamental difference between merely having an opinion, and having an informed opinion, on any given topic. This holds true for scientists and laypersons alike. Because very, very few scientists have actually studied the UFO phenomenon before holding forth, their pronouncements about it must be viewed for what they really are: Pontification with little or no data to support their dismissive assessments.

By Robert Hastings
The UFO Chronicles
8-8-17

Granted, while Kaplan mentions the investigative efforts of astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek—whose initial skepticism about UFOs was eventually discarded, after he analyzed a number of genuinely inexplicable sighting reports compiled by the U.S. Air Force during the 1960s—she devotes most of her article to touting the demonstrably uninformed utterances of UFO skeptics such as physicist Enrico Fermi and SETI specialist Jill Tartar.

Perhaps most telling, Kaplan completely ignores (or is unaware of) the published remarks of the late Dr. James McDonald, one of only a handful of physicists who actually engaged in UFO research, who wrote,

“From time to time in the history of science, situations have arisen in which a problem of ultimately enormous importance went begging for adequate attention simply because that problem appeared to involve phenomena so far outside the current bounds of scientific knowledge that it was not even regarded as a legitimate subject of serious scientific concern. That is precisely the situation in which the UFO problem now lies. One of the principal results of my own recent intensive study of the UFO enigma is this: I have become convinced that the scientific community, not only in this country but throughout the world, has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance.”¹

—Dr. James E. McDonald
Senior Physicist, Institute of Atmospheric Physics
Professor of Meteorology, University of Arizona

McDonald was especially unhappy with the initial skepticism exhibited by Dr. Hynek during his tenure as scientific consultant to the USAF’s chief UFO project, Blue Book. After personally reviewing a large quantity of UFO reports held by the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, McDonald wrote, “…There are hundreds of good cases in the Air Force files that should have led to top-level scientific scrutiny of [UFOs] years ago, yet these cases have been swept under the rug in a most disturbing way by Project Blue Book investigators and their consultants.”²

Despite, or perhaps because of, the Air Force’s ongoing attempts to suppress the frequently high-quality data on UFOs it collected, McDonald began to investigate the phenomenon on his own time and at his own expense, while ignoring the very real risk to his scientific reputation.

This diligence paid off and, by 1968, McDonald was widely regarded—although not among his still-dubious peers—as one of the world’s leading scientific experts on UFOs. Consequently, he was invited to address the United States Congress on the subject, during hearings held that year. McDonald’s full statement before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, presented on July 29th, may be found in the U.S. Congressional Record, as well as on the Internet.³

While acknowledging that the overwhelming majority of UFO sightings undoubtedly had prosaic explanations, and that a great many questions about the phenomenon remained unanswered, McDonald succinctly summarized his conclusions regarding the most credible of the unexplained cases: “My own present opinion, based on two years of careful study, is that UFOs are probably extraterrestrial devices engaged in something that might very tentatively be termed ‘surveillance.’” ⁴

Although this was merely an opinion, it was after all an informed opinion on UFOs, something very few other scientists could offer, then or now. Many of McDonald’s published papers, private research notes, and personal letters relating to his investigations of the UFO phenomenon are now accessible at the University of Arizona, providing insight into the cautious reasoning underlying his dramatic conclusions.

While most scientists (and science writers) are quick to dismiss as impossible the idea that UFOs are alien spacecraft, very few of them will ever make the effort to learn whether any evidence exists to suggest otherwise. Instead, they merely continue to assert that, as an idea, it simply does not work.

This self-created impasse was mentioned by McDonald in his oral statement to Congress: “We have tended to ignore [the UFO phenomenon] because we didn't think it made sense. It definitely defies any explanation, and hence the situation has evolved where we can’t get going because we aren’t already going. The scientific community as a whole won’t take this problem seriously because it doesn't have scientific data. They want instrumental data. Why don't they have instrumental data? Because the scientists don’t take it seriously enough to get the scientific data. It is like the 20-year-old who can’t get a job because he lacks experience, and he lacks experience because he hasn’t had a job. In the same way you find the scientist wishing you would give him good hard meter readings and magnetometer traces, and so on. But we don’t have [those data] yet because the collective body of scientists, including myself, have ignored UFOs.” ⁵

In other words, most scientists reject outright the validity of UFO research, refuse to engage in it, and deliberately ignore the intriguing data compiled by a handful of their more inquisitive, less-biased peers. If this were not enough, despite their profound unfamiliarity with the subject, many of these same intransigent individuals preach about UFOs in the most shameless and presumptuous manner. If they were to apply this same “methodology” to their own research, their colleagues might justifiably consider their conduct incompetent, if not fraudulent. Nevertheless, it is rare to hear a scientist speak knowledgeably about the UFO phenomenon and rarer still to find one who has actually studied it.

1. McDonald, Dr. James E. “Prepared Statement before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics”, July 29, 1968

2. [Tucson, AZ] Daily Citizen, March 1, 1967

3. http://files.ncas.org/ufosymposium/mcdonald.html

4. McDonald, Dr. James E. “Prepared Statement before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics”, July 29, 1968

5. McDonald, Dr. James E. “Oral Statement before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics”, July 29, 1968

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See Also:

Front Page News in The Washington Post: UFOs Hovered Over Nuclear Missile Sites (Redux)

The Never-Ending Search for UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence

J. Allen Hynek, UFO Skeptic Who Believed in Aliens

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