Paul Kimball's UFO Debunking and Irrationality

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By Stanton Friedman www.stantonfriedman.com/ 11-1-13

"The definition for balderdash is senseless prate,
a jargon of words, noisy nonsense.”

     Every so often I find a UFO debunking piece that illustrates the irrationality of the debunkers’ arguments despite the educational background of the debunker. For example, Dr. Isaac Asimov who wrote more than 300 books, mostly on scientific topics and many Science Fiction tomes made the following claim, “If aliens were visiting Earth, they would either land and make themselves known, or keep hidden. If they do neither, they are not visiting.” How extraordinary that a world class sci-fi writer can’t think of other scenarios, some place in between the noted extremes. He certainly gives no rationale. He has not claimed to be himself in touch with ETs or to have studied the evidence presented by witnesses to actual ET behavior. One might say it illustrates arrogance combined with ignorance.

My nephew Paul Kimball has a law degree and has spent a lot of time “studying UFOs”; in mid August he penned a piece about which one can only shake one’s head and ask where that nonsense came from. He starts by saying “here are the reasons why I am completely convinced there was no ET Crash.
If aliens had sufficiently advanced technology of the kind that would permit travel to the stars (and I have talked to enough scientists to know just how mind blowingly advanced this would have to be, Stan Friedman and his nuclear rockets balderdash not withstanding) then it beggars belief that they would crash in spaceships that looked like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B movie once they got here (much less crash multiple times, as some posit, including Stan).” As noted in the book “"Science Was Wrong"” by myself and Kathleen Marden, there were loads of scientists who were totally negative about flight in the air and then flight in space. I don’t know how Paul knows what the Roswell crashed saucer looked like . . . lots of reports of small light weight pieces of wreckage . . . not like a spaceship at all.

Notice the assumption that the same small vehicle that crashed at Roswell, or Aztec, or the Plains of San Agustin came to earth directly from another star system. Is he really unaware that flight in the atmosphere of a planet is a very different business than flight in deep space between stars? Wow! Lift, drag, heating, gravity etc., are very different for airborne vehicles than for deep space rockets. We have many reports of huge mother ships into and out of which the small earth excursion modules fly.

The Lunar excursion modules which landed on the moon were extraordinarily different from the huge Saturn V rockets which were launched from Earth with the LEMs on Board. Surely he (with a very strong background in history) is aware that even as far back as the epic battles of World War II, there were huge aircraft carriers which carried a bunch of small airplanes to the locations from which these aircraft flew. The carriers didn’t fly, and the aircraft didn’t float on the water. The carriers carried fuel for the airplanes and provided housing, food, ammunition for the pilots, etc. The aircraft are far more maneuverable than are the carriers. Despite all the aircraft in a huge variety of sizes, speeds, etc., there are loads of crashes. Two huge and expensive space shuttles crashed.

Paul has another sword which he wields, ”However, allowing for the equally infinitesimal [based on what?] possibility that Murphy’s Law applies to super advanced aliens, It beggars belief that they would just leave the remains of the ship and their dead comrades to be found by beings, who, as Stan puts it, were here to observe us because we might be dangerous someday soon.” In actuality, I have suggested more than 20 reasons for coming here. Furthermore we are already dangerous. We killed 50 Million of our own kind in WWII. We destroyed 1700 cities. We have exploded 2000 nuclear (there is that word again) warheads. Not dangerous?

Additionally, there certainly were later sightings near the Roswell crash site that might well have been aliens looking for their fallen comrades. I doubt if they worried much about our duplicating their technology. Christopher Columbus could not have duplicated a nuclear submarine or a radio or computer chip. After all we Earthlings have left many of our dead behind. Check out "By Any Means Necessary: America's Secret Air War in the Cold War" by William Burrows. 166 US military men were in planes “tickling” radar sets in North Korea, China, and Russia just after World War II . . . and being shot down. We didn’t go after them (starting WW III) and their families weren’t told about what happened to them until 50 years later in 2001. We didn’t attack Russia when they downed Gary Powers U-2.

Yet Paul asks “How can we be asked to believe that they would let we warlike creatures have their technology? “ Why does he think we would have been able to duplicate it? Has he no concept of how difficult it would be? Moreover, he pontificates as a supposed expert on alien behavior and technology, “if they had the ability to get here from another star system, then they would certainly have had the ability to collect or vaporize the wreckage.” One might note that we earthlings have had the ability with nuclear (that word again) weapons to vaporize all the civilizations. Yet we have exploded 2000 nuclear warheads, but only 2 on people; funny how countries agree not to use poison gas.

Paul also pontificates about keeping secrets, “It beggars belief again that the United States government could have maintained what must be [why?] such a vast conspiracy to this day to keep it all quiet. History tells us that the reason they are kept for a very long time successfully is that they are always confined to only a few people. As soon as they start expanding the circle of knowledge, then the wheels fall off.” Now that is real balderdash! The definition for balderdash is “senseless prate, a jargon of words, noisy nonsense.” Yes, Paul you hit it on the head. There were 12000 people at Bletchley Park in the UK secretly working on intercepting, decoding, translating and carefully distributing German military communications in the early 1940s. Not one word in public until 25 years after the war was over. The Lockheed Stealth aircraft was developed at a cost of $10 Billion over 10 years in secret utilizing thousands of people. At one time the Manhattan Project involved 60,000 people in secret. The National Reconnaissance Organization contracted with Boeing on new spy satellite architecture and then cancelled the program. That involved thousands of people in secret at a cost of $13 Billion. The development of the first successful US spy satellite in the “Corona” program was kept secret for more than 30 years. The first one (after 12 expensive failures), obtained more information about Soviet military installations than all the U-2 spy planes that preceded it. Many more than a few people were involved.

Now let us look at “Stan Friedman’s nuclear rockets balderdash.” It is quite clear that when engineers and scientists want to control large amounts of energy, they go nuclear. When it comes to bombs, a big bomb in WWII released the energy of 10 tons of dynamite in 1944. In July 1945 the first nuclear fission bomb released the energy of 16 thousand tons of dynamite; by 1952 the first nuclear fusion weapon (Mike) released the energy of 10 million tons of TNT. The Russians later set off a fusion (H-Bomb) one releasing the energy of more than 50 million tons of TNT.

The US Navy, admittedly a bit larger than our Canadian navy, built their first NUCLEAR submarine in 1956; able to sail around the planet underwater. Submarines in WWII could stay underwater for all of 24 hours. Years later the first NUCLEAR fission powered aircraft carriers operate for 18 years without refueling. Three different organizations successfully operated NUCLEAR fission rockets at the NUCLEAR test site in Nevada. They were Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory (I worked on their NRX A-6 at a power level of 1100 megawatts); Aerojet General operated the XE-1 at a power level of 1000 megawatts. Los Alamos operated the Phoebus 2B at a power level of 4400 megawatts or twice the power of Grand Coulee Dam, less than 8’ in diameter. There are no fission nuclear reactors in Nova Scotia where Paul lives. We here in the neighboring province of New Brunswick have the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, a fission power- plant producing 2200 megawatts. I and many others worked on studies of fusion rockets able to eject charged particles having ten million times as much energy per particle as in a dumb old chemical rocket. Many papers have been published but I suppose Paul hasn’t seen any.

It should be noted that almost all the energy in the universe comes from nuclear fusion in the stars. Why Paul is in denial about nuclear rockets I don’t know, though I suppose lawyers don’t dig into such matters. I should note that my book “Flying Saucers and Science” has pictures of several real nuclear rocket engines

The real balderdash is that one should theorize for ever about alien activities and motivation, but avoid the facts; however—it is the evidence that matters. Of course there might be advanced propulsion systems that can outdo nuclear fusion. They are not needed to get us out there and certainly not needed to get aliens here. Let us not forget that nearby stars are already within reach, if we want to spend the money. We didn’t even find out that there was such a process as nuclear fusion until 1938—a very short time ago indeed. We now know that there are planets all over the place many of them have to be much older than earth.

Paul may think “nuclear rockets are balderdash” and only small groups can keep secrets. He probably is aware that many nuclear facilities had UFO sightings back in the 1940s. These included reports near Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Hanford Atomic works up in eastern Washington state. Furthermore as delineated by Robert Hastings and Robert Salas, there have been UFO observations where missiles on which were mounted nuclear weapons had been shut down by the aliens. The notion that that only small groups can keep a secret is put to rest by the fact that this year the US black budget is about fifty billion.

Visit Stan's site: www.stantonfriedman.com

See Also:

UFO Debunker, Philip Klass and the FBI

UFO Debunkers: Irrational, Uninformed and Ignorant

Deconstructing The Debunkers: A Response
PART I

Debunkers at it Again

Stanton Friedman's Ongoing Task in Educating The Ignorant (Debunkers)

Leading UFO “Skeptics” Shy About Discussing Their U.S. Government Connections

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Kimball, Smith, Bush and MJ-12

By Stanton Friedman
fsphys@rogers.com
© 8-2-08

     Paul Kimball has, for reasons unknown, become very upset about my claiming that he got things wrong about Wilbert Smith, Van Bush, MJ-12 in “Flying Saucers and Science”. He claims in various blogs that I have said that Wilbert Smith headed a major Canadian UFO group, that President Truman would never have appointed Dr. Vannevar Bush to head the MJ-12 project had there been one; that Smith was basically an individual not to be respected, a kind of nobody, that Truman didn’t like Bush., etc. Paul spent 6 hours at the Dalhousie University Library looking up comments in the Canadian Hansard (unclassified record of Parliamentary testimony)made about UFOs back in the 1950s. He apparently spent no time with Smith’s papers in an archive in Ottawa. He apparently didn’t look into Defense Research Board Materials at the National Archives in Ottawa. The 300+ page formerly classified DRB UFO file has been available for a number of years. He totally neglected what I have said about the comments made by George Elsey, who had responsible positions at the White House as noted below during Truman’s entire tenure there.

Nowhere did I,or anybody else besides Paul, claim Truman had appointed V. Bush to head Operation Majestic 12. The proof is the statement in the Truman Forrestal memo. It clearly authorized James Forrestal, the new and first Secretary of Defense, to proceed with Operation Majestic 12. He did not authorize Bush to proceed with Majestic 12. He did say “It continues to be my feeling that future considerations relative to the ultimate disposition of this matter should rest solely with the Office of the President following appropriate discussions with yourself, Dr. Bush, and the Director of Central Intelligence.”

Yes, Bush would be consulted. There was nobody more knowledgeable about developing new technology with national security implications. Bush had been head of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics pre-war, During the war he had directed the Office of Scientific Research and Development which covered such major areas as the development of the atomic bomb, the proximity fuse, radar, and many dozens of other devices. Literally billions of dollars were spent at a wide variety of Labs. There was nobody who knew more about who the best practitioners of advanced science and technology having security clearances were. On September 24, 1947.(The date of the Truman Forrestal memo) Bush and Forrestal were with Truman at the White House. He appointed VB to be head of the new Research and Development Board which had replaced the Joint Research and Development Board which had replaced OSRD.. all headed by Bush. We have unclassified notes made by Bush after the meeting. We furthermore know that Bush was also later appointed by Bush to head a classified committee to review data that might indicate the Soviets had exploded their first atomic Bomb. We know that he continued to be a member of the high security War Council, that he was in charge of another high security committee concerned with a possible Surprise Attack.. though the attackers were unspecified .To suggest that Truman would not have used him to look into Modus Operandi for saucers is absurd.

Furthermore the crucial statement in the Smith memo so disliked by Paul, is 3.

“Their Modus Operandi is unknown, but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush” Modus Operandi means manner of working. Note “small group”.

There is no suggestion anywhere that Bush was in charge of all aspects of effort dealing with UFOs or Majestic 12.Just working on technological aspects. Obviously the US government was also concerned with the origin and purpose of alien visitation, their interaction with other countries. There was nobody better equipped than was Bush to do look into “Modus Operandi”. Of course Truman and Forrestal would have picked him. Bush and Forestal had a long and close relationship even playing tennis together. There were six military and intelligence people and 5 scientific people on MJ-12. Forrestal as head of DOD would have been on top and report directly to Truman.

After sending Elsey, with his permission, a copy of the3 primary MJ-12 documents. I had specifically asked him, as I have reported, if he saw any reason to believe that the Eisenhower Briefing Document or Truman Forrestal or Cutler Twining memos were fraudulent. He said No. I asked if he had any reason, knowing all the people, to believe that, if a saucer had crashed, Truman would not have picked any of the 12 to be a member of an over-group. No. They were all people he trusted. I asked if the TF memo could have been typed elsewhere than at Truman’s office. He said more than 80% of what a President signs is prepared elsewhere. I noted that the numerical portion of the date is offset from the month and that there is a period after the date and that Bush’s office always put a period after the date. Could it have been typed in Bush’s office (or Forrestal’s?). He said certainly. Truman certainly trusted them. He also noted that often documents had to be put in a typewriter twice to put the right date on them as to when directives etc went into effect. I have examples from the National Security Council where the date and text are typed in 2 different fonts.

In case people are wondering why I place much reliance on Elsey,. here is some background: He was a Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and the duty officer at the White House map room from 1941 until 1946, that is the entire 2nd World War. He was assistant to the Special Counsel to the President (Clark Clifford) 1947-1949; Administrative Assistant to the President 1949-1951 and assistant to the Director, Mutual Security Agency 1951-1953.

He also filled me in on the close connection between James Lay, Executive Secretary to Eisenhower’s National Security Council, and Robert Cutler, Ike’s National Security advisor. This helped very much in evaluation of the Cutler Twining memo. The evidence strongly indicates this is also a genuine document despite the attacks of noisy negativists, armchair theorists. This is not only because Phil Klass paid me $1000. for proving him wrong about the type face on the memo.

Paul doesn’t mention that the public Hansard Question Period comments could not be classified. The Canadian Defense Research Board for some time was denying to anybody who asked that it had any concerns with UFOs, even though they had a committee meeting often to deal with them. There was no Access to Information act (Like FOIA) in Canada then. In the USA, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote many letters, to people who had asked, saying the FBI is not now and never has been involved with the question of UFOs. He also lied. Dr. Bruce Maccabee obtained over 1500 pages of FBI UFO material using FOIA, There were many other government UFO lies as noted in a piece by that name at my website www.stantonfriedman.com.

Another point of the Smith memo helps explain the lies: “ The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government rating higher even than the H-Bomb.” I believe that this explains why Canada’s sort of equivalent to Bush, Omond Solandt, was so negative about Smith.. long after Smith was no longer around to defend himself. Solandt was very careful in what he said to me at his home in the manner of someone who is dealing with classified material and must be very careful. He knew I had had a clearance. He did admit that if the effort had been accountable only to the President, that he wouldn’t have been privy to details.

Paul is also unhappy with the role of Dr.Robert Sarbacher who supplied the info to Smith noted in his Classified memo of 1950. He suggested that Sarbacher, whose meeting with Smith was arranged by the Canadian Embassy, was passing on false information about alien technology to have it move up through channels, by some very mysterious means, and be passed on to the Soviets to get them to think, falsely, that the US had learned about alien technology. He calls Sarbacher a young scientist. He was 43 in 1950 and already had many major contributions to the US national security technology working on various high tech projects. He was featured in a Saturday Evening Post article ,as a boy genius. He was not some wet behind the years youth. It is an insult to Smith to suggest that he was a disloyal Canadian and would have passed on classified information (True or untrue)to the Soviets. What possible basis is there for this damning remark? Paul provides none. Sarbacher was concerned with advanced technology, not intelligence as such..

I should mention that I had visited Sarbacher and had phone and letter communication with him as well. I was very favorably impressed. He said the accounts given in the Smith memo sounded right to him. He appreciated that I had found an old R and DB colleague with whom he had lost touch.

Paul could have benefited from reading Chapter 16 of “Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience “ by myself and Kathleen Marden, Betty’s niece. It discussed Smith and Sarbacher and Solandt. Paul condemns Smith for being a contactee. The chapter covers others interested in contact including US Navy Admiral Knowles who, along with various CIA personnel, was also interested in contactees such as a Mrs. Swan. They were impressed when she told them to look out the window and they saw 3 UFOs.

Paul also, for reasons unknown, belittles Smith by showing a Canadian Government Organization chart and showing what a small fraction f of the budget Smith controlled and suggesting he would never have been let in on the most classified Information in the US. Funny there isn’t the slightest suggestion that he was. He certainly knew that the military, especially the Canadian Air Force was heavily involved in monitoring UFOs. Neither he nor Sarbacher said Smith was given the secret details, only told that there was some very classified material…. which is very different.

Of course, Paul has also insisted that I am really hurting ufology by championing MJ-12, The Flatwoods Monster work of Frank Feschino ( as shown in “Shoot Them Down”) by standing behind the Aztec crash and the 1947 Plains of San Agustin saucer crash. Art Campbell has added greatly to my early work on the Plains. I am very familiar with the outstanding research on Aztec done by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey. Paul isn’t, nor is he familiar with the work done by Frank. Clearly he is also not well versed about the Plains. He, of course, is free to believe whatever he wants to, regardless of the evidence or lack there of.

See Also:

UFO Perceptions

National Geographic Mockumentary

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How About That ETH?

By Don Ledger
© 6-18-08

     Paul Kimball posted an article at his blog recently, which, for the most part, I agree with. He states:

"Of all the non - terrestrial theories that have been offered to explain the UFO phenomenon, the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) has always seemed the most plausible one to me. I don't think it's been proved, but I think it's a better bet than the others on offer when one looks at the evidence, and the science. The evidence seems to indicate that at least some UFO cases represent a non - human intelligence at work."

Kimball goes on to say that science tends to promote the idea that there is intelligent life, elsewhere in our galaxy or the universe. He also mentions that he has been hard on some ETH supporters amongst "Ufologists" because the "H" in ETH represents a hypothesis.

And he is right. The ETH is a theory, like Black Holes, the Big Bang Theory [a very flawed theory it seems] and Worm Holes and M - branes and multiple universes. Relativity is a theory - known as the Theory of Relativity - but this one is the holy grail of physics and not to be considered anything but fact … apparently. All of the above theories might in fact have some bearing on the
ETH incidentally.

Kimball supposes that much of today's ETH debate among "Ufologists" stems back to Keyhoe and the thinking back then; probably so, but it’s not my thinking.

I have stated many times that, to my mind, this need to narrow down the ETH as some kind of point - to - point contact is wrong. By point - to - point I mean their planet and our planet; that somehow "they" learned of our existence and came here, not to make contact, but to study us. This thinking seems to me to want to maintain two "miracles" in one universe. It's a little easier to handle that than perhaps a galaxy teeming with life particularly if you are of the religious bent that favors the egocentric notion of man being the center of God's universe. Y'all know I am not of a religious bent. If you don't then you haven't been paying attention.

Kimball refers to nuts and bolts Ufologists and the," ... reductionist approach that has been adopted by the nuts - and - bolts crowd, on the other hand, which seeks to make potential alien life over unto our own image, lacks vision"

I consider myself nuts - and - bolts though these days this might more properly described as more of a "technologically advanced intelligently [HI or AI] controlled craft", probably because of my association with aviation.

I don't subscribe to the premise that ETI is in our image however. That too smacks of religious overtones; but to some degree there might be evidence to support certain traits among sentient beings, which have evolved under similar conditions such as our own. Naturally there is the bias we have in favor of similar stature and two of everything like arms and legs and eyes but that has been burned into us by Hollywood who has difficulty finding actors with other traits that could be employed when an alien is needed on the set; at least up to now. CGI will and does let the artist's imagination run wild.

Maybe 40 years ago I might have believed that the point - to - point contact from some planet around a nearby star with Earth was the way things "really" were but not now.

My take on it is this: The universe has been around for 14.7 billion years; at least that's the current figure, or galaxy some 8 or 9 billion years; that is plenty of time for thousands or millions or space faring civilizations to have evolved and ranged out into space, like we did. It allows more than enough time for them to do more than range locally, however.

Technological evolution being what it is would have accelerated the same as our own, building on itself and feeding on itself, changing outmoded technology for the new and changing "their" societies as it has done here. But more than that it would have changed space travel in ways that we can't even imagine right now.

How often has "science and technology" come up with something new because someone thought outside the box. Kirk's communicator was an idea dreamed up by either Gene Roddenberry or one of his writers but it impressed a teenager who later developed the first crude version of that which has developed into the cell phones of today; and not just to communicate verbally but textually as well with pictures and data streaming. And that's just this year's models.

IBM engineers came up with the modular computer design but it took a couple of guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to set the world on its ass and provide us with these machines and the CIA to help out with the Internet; low grade stuff really when you consider the leaps that must have been made to travel through whole galaxies.

I wonder, did they surge forward and perhaps travel to their satellite moons then slip back into mediocrity only to re - invent the same primitive space technology as we did of the 1960s for the 2020s? If we are to believe that the ETH has value then obviously they did not.

My thinking is that various intelligences have been ranging through this galaxy for hundreds of millions of years. If I'm right then perhaps one of them happened across out pretty, little, blue planet, took a look and reported back. "Found another one!"

Greech on planet Frob - one of 6,000 in the Gert Clique -learned of this new planet (after poring over some million year old documents in the dead files) which had a peculiar life form, some of which peed standing while the others did it sitting down. Amazing, Greech wondered...they peed?

Greech just happened to be doing its dissertation at Xzzryq U on new evolving life forms so it [Greech was genderless after all] applied for and got a low level grant that would allow a few thousand craft to bug the crap out of the life forms on that planet for 20 or 30,000 of that planets revolutions around its star. It was then discovered that virtually all of one species defecated sitting down. The stock on anal probes went through the roof on Frob when this came to light.

The above is nonsense of course - at least I think it is - but the idea that Earth was discovered by some deep ranging mission through the Cosmos, perhaps thousands of years ago might just be the case in my estimation.

I would like to think that we eventually reach a plane of existence where war is a thing of the past or restricted to planets where it can be practiced - like a hobby - without pissing everyone else off; where the whole raison - d'etre is to get out there and explore, discover, learn and try to figure out why? I suspect that if life has been ranging through this universe for billions of years, those spacefarers have likely found or punched into other universes as well.

Paul Kimball relates that Michio Kaku evoked the analogy of us being as ants to some super intelligence. Somehow I don't think this would be the case. But Kaku might be right about us being below the radar of some super intelligence, like ants to ourselves; but it should not be forgotten that there are still many entomologists around the world studying ants, their structures and their societies. The anal probes must be really tiny, though. [Note, I am not making light of the abduction phenomenon - I have too many friends, acquaintances and relatives who have claimed the experience.]

See Also:

Researchers Verses Investigators

Stephenville UFOs: Was the Air Force Protecting 'The Presidential Ranch?'

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UFO Perceptions

By Stanton Friedman © 5-1-8

     I see so much false and misleading material about flying saucers and related matters (especially on the internet) that I am sure one could do a column every day pointing out the errors and false claims and still not cover all the garbage. But who would pay somebody to do that? And who would read it anyway?

I very recently received the 2nd issue (April/May 2008) of a new, six times a year, slick magazine from England known as Alien Worlds. The editor/publisher is Stuart Miller who has been busy posting on the internet about UFOs for some time. This issue is in large format with relatively small print, sometimes hard to read for us old guys, often with blue print on black paper. It is glossy and, because of all the color, would be hard to Xerox. There are many articles covering a wide variety of subjects. I strongly disagree with some, but find others of interest. The magazine isn’t cheap costing 3 pounds 99 or about $8.00 US. More information can be obtained from Stuart at The New House, Church Bank, Richmond road, Bowdon, Altrincham, Cheshire WA14 3NW, UK . His email address ed@alienworldsmag.com.

Several things caught my eye. One is that there is, somewhat surprisingly, a lot of SETI related material. My new book Flying Saucers and Science has an entire chapter on the cult of SETI.I note that Dr. Ian Morrison head of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, the UK, misrepresents the Fermi Paradox as do most SETI specialists. He says, page 78,“. . . in something like about 10million years, maybe a hundred million years, you could, in principle, colonize the whole galaxy." All the suitable planets. What Fermi said was if that’s possible, then why aren’t they here, why have we never come across any other alien life form?”. Sounds like he wants them to be waiting at the bus stop or airport. This is certainly not what Fermi said though many astronomers would like to believe that is what he said. He actually said (assuming the colonizing capability) “So where is everybody?” Whole books have been written with various answers to the question known as the Fermi Paradox.

My own answer, based on what I heard about Fermi at the University of Chicago (he died while I was there) was that he was very fond of using questions as a teaching tool. One obvious answer (mine) is “We don’t know where all of them are, but we know some are visiting Earth, some few people within the government in intelligence and military circles know a great deal about them and have even recovered wreckage and bodies, tried to shoot them down (see Frank Feschino’s Shoot Them Down), and has been lying about what it knows big time”.

Fermi who, unlike most of the SETI guys, academic astronomers, ancient academics and fossilized physicists who attack ufology, knew very well, from his very important work on the multi Billion Dollar Black Budget Manhattan Project, that huge and very expensive projects involving world class scientists can be conducted in total secrecy… no publications in the Physical Review. Obviously, it is very difficult to justify searching for ET signals with radio telescopes, if aliens are already coming here and some Earthlings know it.

Another article that caught my eye was a relatively brief one (pp16,17) by Paul Kimball (producer of a number of high quality TV Documentaries)Above and Beyond: Ufology’s two Biggest Problems: The Condon Effect and Roswellism. I agree with Paul that the widespread publicity given to the University of Colorado’s loudly proclaimed (by Dr. Edward U. Condon)1969 “scientific” conclusions that there was nothing to UFOs had a devastating effect on many who might have been willing to investigate UFOs, or teach classes, or sponsor PhD theses about them, but had now no willingness to risk their professional reputations by doing so. Membership in NICAP and APRO dropped precipitously. Lazy and busy journalists and scientists now had an excellent excuse to ignore the entire question of UFOs and have very often done so.

There were courageous ufologists such as James E. MacDonald and J. Allen Hynek who pointed out that Condon’s conclusions were contradicted by the data in his report. Their views certainly reached fewer people than the paeans of Condon praise from such reporters as Walter Sullivan, science editor of the New York Times, and the National Academy of Sciences. We slowly seem to be overcoming Condonism ,to some extent illustrating physicist Max Planck’s comment that “New ideas come to be accepted, not because their opponents come to believe in them, but because their opponents die and a new generation grows up that is accustomed to them”.

Paul defines Roswellism “in broad strokes, it is:1.The unequivocal acceptance of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (i.e.UFOs are alien spacecraft) as fact; 2. The unequivocal acceptance that alien spacecraft crash landed near Roswell in 1947 (and the resulting acceptance that any other crashed flying saucer story may be true) ; and 3. The unequivocal acceptance that the American Government has covered up the truth about 1 and 2 since1947, in an organized conspiracy of silence that represents a “Cosmic Watergate”.

I have very serious problems with these. I and other serious ufologist are skeptical and critical of much in ufology, so unequivocal seems way too strong. There is a very large difference between my conclusion, after intensive study, that SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft, and the notion, implied by Paul, that ufologists believe ALL UFOs are alien spacecraft. I don’t know of any serious ufologist who has expressed the latter view. Yes, I am certainly convinced on the basis of a great deal of evidence that a crashed flying saucer, and bodies, were recovered near Roswell in 1947.I would be the first to point out, as I have, that there is a lot of irrelevant, false nonsense published about Roswell and other crashes. The garbage (much of it published by the government in lying and misleading volumes), has helped obfuscate the truth.

Paul speaks of the “Aztec hoax in the early 1950s”. Scott and Suzanne Ramsey’s outstanding and persistent research on the Aztec event which was in March , 1948, and should be published in book form by the end of 2008, should certainly dispel the label “hoax”.

What does Paul mean by an organized “conspiracy of silence”? I never thought of highly classified research and development and intelligence programs as organized “conspiracies of silence” when working on them. Nice terminology. Certainly the Manhattan Project would qualify wouldn’t it? How about the Corona Spy Satellite successfully launched for the first of many times in 1960 and which obtained more data on Soviet military installations than all the U-2 flights which preceded it, but was not discussed publicly until 1995? What about the NRO’s 7 very expensive Poppy satellites launched to spy on Soviet shipping between 1962 and 1971 and not discussed until 2005? How about the breaking of the German and Japanese codes involving more than 12,000 people and not disclosed for over 25 years?. I guess you could say “Conspiracies of Silence” which sounds ominous. Covering up data about alien visitations and technology is certainly of no less importance to national security than these major multi-billion dollar programs. What is the big deal?

Paul claims “ Roswellism has achieved nothing of substance . . . based on a flawed unproved set of assumptions masquerading as facts.” He doesn’t really point out what these are other than to say it is unscientific, a-historical, and no different than Condon’s methodology. I beg to differ. We point to clear and unambiguous evidence such as first hand testimony from people directly involved such as retired General T.J. DuBose, Major Marcel, Bill Brazel; contemporary press coverage and research demonstrating government and skeptical misrepresentation. Condon ignored the research of his own people and the data in his own report. So are black holes and worm holes unproved, but they are indeed very useful concepts, so what? Roswell has certainly opened a can of worms for the government and caused many people to look at the UFO question in new ways and certainly made debunkers very unhappy. Too bad. Paul seems to want clear and unambiguous tests such as DNA testing and maybe aliens introduced to the Canadian House of Commons. He does provide details of some interesting events at that august body. Many things in science aren’t like that. . . or in law either.

Newton’s laws are very useful in understanding how the universe operates, even though that aren’t correct at the small and large limits of the universe. The biggest source of outright lies about Roswell are the 2 big reports on Roswell provided by the government not by ufologists. What are we supposed to make of crash test dummies, 6’ tall, weighing 175 pounds, dropped in 1953 and thereafter, and later used as an “explanation” for reports of small bodies observed in 1947? What are we to make of Colonel Cavitt’s claim that the Roswell wreckage covered an area 20 feet square and could easily fit in a single car when even the July 9,1947, contemporary cover-up newspaper account said it covered an area 200 yards in diameter. The New York Times front page coverage of the silly Mogul balloon explanation was indeed as bad as Condonism, since Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist William Broad ignored the relevant evidence (Mogul simply doesn’t fit. . . so one must acquit).I demonstrate government UFO lies in an article on my website www.stantonfriedman.com. Cosmic Watergate is the right phrase.

One must further note that there are no licensing regulations for qualifying ufologists. We in the field can do little to keep people from calling themselves ufologists. There are licensing regulations for doctors and lawyers, electricians and plumbers, not ufologists. Certainly the preponderance of the evidence indicates, some UFOs are alien spacecraft, Roswell involved a crashed flying saucer, and there has been a substantial government cover-up concerning many aspects of ufology

More . . .

See Also:

National Geographic Mockumentary

Drake Equation

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