UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record Read online

  Eventually I came to realize—repeatedly, through the research and publication of my subsequent stories, each of which seemed like earth-shattering news to me then but was never enough to stimulate change—that the UFO story could not be properly told, nor could the taboo be overcome, through any one short news piece,6 no matter how many there were. I now believe that the only way to adequately convey the full story—to really break the news about the existence of UFOs and convey the impact of the material for the person so far unexposed to it—is through a book such as this one, which includes some of the world’s best sources speaking in detail for themselves. Sound bites and short quotes cannot carry a story of this magnitude.

  The chapters you are about to read will address the fundamental questions about UFOs that concern so many people. What do we really know about them? Is it actually possible that some of these objects are from outer space? Do pilots ever see them? How do governments and militaries handle sightings? Why is there so much ridicule and denial about UFOs in America? The answers, on all counts, are nothing short of astonishing.

  As any journalist would, I have relied on official sources, documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, corroborated case reports, physical evidence, and numerous interviews with military and aviation witnesses and government investigators from around the world. I’ve come to know many of these official witnesses personally, and have no doubt as to the credibility of their accounts, which are almost always corroborated by others. Some have conveyed information, and showed me documents, that must remain off the record because of their sensitivity, and other such documents, provided by very trustworthy sources, cannot be verified or corroborated but are still valuable as background. I have also met, interviewed, and come to know numerous civilian witnesses over the years, regular people from all walks of life, who have impressed me with their sincere and clear accounts of amazing UFO incidents. They, too, have made essential contributions to the search for understanding about the phenomenon.

  My role here is to write as an objective observer, and as a guide. At the same time, I take a position in support of an effort to solve the many unresolved questions about UFOs, rather than ignoring them, and in support of the witnesses and experts who have come forward. In so doing, I’m directly and openly confronting irrational attitudes and misinformation. This means I’m practicing a form of “advocacy journalism,” something that I’ve never objected to and that is the modus operandi for many investigative reporters who dig into a story to serve a greater cause. I’m not a “believer” in anything except respect for the facts, even when they don’t conform to our established worldview. The UFO issue is so unorthodox that even a straightforward, rational approach can seem as though it’s crossed a line into questionable territory. I’ve done my best to keep all this information clear, logical, and well-documented.

  That is why much of this book consists of personal accounts from expert investigators and witnesses who will address the UFO issue directly, some for the first time. Through their words, readers will be given firsthand access to the material, and can arrive at their own informed conclusions.

  These individuals from nine countries are highly trained men who were assigned the daunting job of confronting this phenomenon through intimate investigation, or who directly witnessed it, not by any choice of their own. Some of them have been given access to secret files, insider witnesses, and unfolding case investigations way beyond the reach of any journalist or anyone outside of their closed, privileged world. They are coming forward collectively here, to give all of us access, and to explain what they know about UFOs, in their professional capacity as pilots, government officials, and high-ranking military officers.

  On a personal level, each one has been transformed in one way or another, sometimes drastically so, by this interaction with the “impossible.” They are all baffled and want answers to the same serious questions as the rest of us, but usually for their own reasons. Each one began his relationship to the UFO issue as a natural skeptic, and even though many are now retired from their official jobs investigating UFOs, most have not been able to disengage from the intense drive to want to find out what UFOs are. They remain involved in various ways. One is planning to teach a course on UFO history at a prominent university; another is contacted frequently by the media to be a spokesperson on the issue; a former NASA scientist heads a research group studying anomalous aerial phenomena; a former government investigator is often called via cell phone by nervous Air Force personnel observing strange phenomena in remote locations. So in this sense, these men are not really fully “retired.” And some are now captains working for commercial airlines.

  I noticed that many, even the ones I came to know well, were hesitant to reveal the emotional aspect of their experiences dealing with UFOs. Some witnesses struggle for years with the impact of a mind-boggling close encounter. It was my job to nudge as much as I could from the minds of these reticent military men and Air Force pilots not prone to disclosing their fears. These are men oriented toward duty first, and the significance of their statements cannot be overemphasized. This courageous group is breaking a huge story for the world.

  Over many years they have all discovered a great deal about UFOs, despite the phenomenon’s ability to remain unidentified even while making repeated, tantalizing appearances in so-called waves, or engaging in cat-and-mouse chases with Air Force pilots. The objects come and go, sometimes leaving a blip on radar, an image on film, or an imprint on the ground. This diverse group can provide as intimate and factual a look at this mysterious phenomenon as we can ever hope to acquire as outsiders.

  None of these writers were privy to the others’ statements, nor, to my surprise, have any ever asked me what the other contributors were writing about. Even so, striking similarities exist, not only in their reports of the UFOs themselves, but also in their interpretations, attitudes, and ideas for future resolution. To me, this uniformity validates the worldwide nature of the phenomenon, and it also shows that when properly investigated, the same conclusions are drawn no matter where the investigation takes place.

  There exists a universal curiosity, increasing over time, about the UFO mystery. I have seen it grow, and have observed an improvement in straightforward media coverage about UFOs since I began this study ten years ago. The more we learn, the more confounding it becomes. Still, many people continue to think the subject is based on fantasy or mistaken identity, or is some kind of a joke and therefore a waste of time. My deepest hope is that these people in particular will read through this entire book, sticking with it from beginning to end, and then draw a conclusion. We can all agree, I assume, that no one is entitled to dismiss a subject without knowing something about it.

  I have done my best to distill from a huge mass of material some of the most compelling and essential facts. In this country, UFOs became a national issue in the late 1940s, when there were many sightings of great public interest and concern that were covered widely by the media. The U.S. Air Force took the lead in addressing these events, complicated by the onset of the Cold War, attempting to explain away as many cases as possible in order to divert public attention from the mystery. Behind the scenes, the topic was of great concern at the highest levels, and the Air Force was not equipped to protect the public from an entirely unknown but apparently technological phenomenon that could come and go at will. In the early 1950s, it established Project Blue Book, a small agency that received reports from citizens, investigated the reports, and offered explanations to the media and the public. Blue Book gradually solidified as largely a public relations effort intent on debunking UFO sightings. Hundreds of files accumulated, and the Air Force closed down the program in 1970, ending all official investigations—or so they said publicly—without having found an explanation for many shocking UFO incidents. The cases presented by our contributors all occurred after the close of Project Blue Book, between 1976 and 2007.

  Our government still stays out of the UFO cont
roversy and has no policy in place to address growing concern. Within the historical framework, the upcoming chapters will examine the role of the CIA in establishing the protocol for the debunking of UFOs; the stark contrast between the handling of UFOs by our own government and the governments of other countries; the issues of aviation safety and national security as they pertain to UFO incidents; the psychology of the UFO taboo; and the question of a U.S. government cover-up.

  Much of the American public has grown increasingly frustrated with the pattern of government denials about UFOs, especially as the evidence has mounted over time. With digital cameras and cell phones now commonplace, UFO photos are snapped almost every day, although they are easier to fake, making the new technology a mixed blessing. As exoplanets are discovered and scientists acknowledge the probability of life elsewhere in the universe, the demand for studying the neglected UFO phenomenon has become imperative. I think you will agree, by the time you finish reading, that there is now renewed hope for solving the UFO enigma, and that you will also agree as to the signal importance of that endeavor.

  Defining the Indefinable: What Is a UFO?

  It’s extremely important to establish at the very beginning that neither I nor the other writers are claiming that there are alien spacecraft in our skies, simply because we do not deny data showing a physical presence of something there. The term “UFO” has been misused and has become so much a part of popular culture that its original (and accurate) definition has been nearly completely lost. Almost everyone equates the term “UFO” with extraterrestrial spacecraft, and thus, in a perverse twist of meaning, the acronym has been transformed to mean something identified rather than something unidentified. The false but widespread assumption that a UFO is, of necessity, an alien spaceship is usually the reason the term generates such an exaggerated and confusing range of emotional responses. A recognition of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being a valid, although unproved, possible explanation worthy of further scientific scrutiny is something entirely different from approaching the subject of UFOs as if this discovery had already been made.

  Historically, it was the U.S. Air Force that, some fifty years ago, invented the term “unidentified flying object” to replace the popular but more lurid phrase “flying saucer.” The Air Force defined a “UFO” as “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.” This is the definition embraced by all the contributors to this book, and the definition employed by all relevant government documents and official pilot reports.

  If an object in the sky cannot be identified but we still can’t rule out the possibility that it could be if we had more data, then it is not a true unknown. In that situation, we can’t determine either what it is or what it is not. Again, a genuine UFO, the UFO we are concerned with in this book, is an object that, for example, exhibits extraordinary capabilities beyond known technology while being documented on radar and observed by multiple qualified people, to such an extent that enough data is obtained and enough study is undertaken to eliminate other known possibilities.

  Because there is so much baggage associated with the term “UFO,” some scientists and other experts have employed a new terminology to separate serious studies from the more frivolous. Instead of “UFO,” some of our contributors have chosen to use “unidentified aerial phenomena” or “UAP,” which can be used in both the singular (for the phenomenon) and the plural. Richard Haines, former NASA senior scientist and aviation safety expert, defines UAP as:

  The visual stimulus that produces a sighting report of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance and/or flight dynamics of which do not suggest a logical, conventional flying object and which remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making both a full technical identification as well as a common-sense identification, if one is possible.7

  In the context of this book, the terms UFO and UAP mean essentially the same thing and will be used interchangeably, although some writers prefer to use one or the other exclusively. “UAP” suggests a broader scope, incorporating perhaps a wider range of phenomena, which, for example, may not appear to be a flying object. No matter which acronym is employed, the phenomenon is often motionless or hovering, not flying, and sometimes is simply seen as unusual lights rather than a solid object, especially at night when brilliant illumination overpowers the observation of any physical structure. “UAP” maintains the clarity that these unusual objects and lights may represent many types of phenomena originating from different sources.

  A second fundamentally important point is that roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained. Within the remaining 5 to 10 percent, once an object has been determined to be a genuine UFO by the proper standards, then all we know is what it is not: something man-made or natural, or an outright hoax, of which there are unfortunately too many. Examples of phenomena sometimes mistaken for UFOs are weather balloons, flares, sky lanterns, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting the sun, planes reflecting the sun, blimps, helicopters, the planet Venus or Mars, meteors or meteorites, space junk, satellites, sundogs, ball lightning, ice crystals, reflected light off clouds, lights on the ground or lights reflected on a cockpit window, temperature inversions, hole-punch clouds, and the list goes on! Yes, the vast majority of reports can usually be explained by one of the above, but of course it’s only the ones that can’t that we’re interested in.

  It follows, therefore, that the often asked question “Do you believe in UFOs?” is actually baseless, but it’s frequently asked and creates endless problems in communication. It really doesn’t make sense, because we know that unidentified objects exist, officially documented and defined as such by the U.S. Air Force and other government bodies around the world. For over fifty years, the reality of unidentified flying objects has not been a question of belief or a matter of faith, opinion, or choice. Rather, when using the correct definition of UFO, it is a matter of fact. Like conventional identified objects—such as aircraft, missiles, and other types of man-made equipment—these unidentifieds can also be photographed, create radar returns, leave marks on the ground, and be observed and described by multiple independent witnesses at separate locations. In terms of belief, the questioner is really asking, “Do you believe in alien spaceships?” That is an entirely different question.

  To approach UFOs rationally, we must maintain the agnostic position regarding their nature or origin, because we simply don’t know the answers yet. By being agnostics, we are taking a giant step forward. So often, the UFO debate fuels two polarities, both representing untenable positions. On one side, the “believers” proclaim that extraterrestrials have arrived from outer space and that we already know that UFOs are alien vehicles, and on the other, the “debunkers” argue with aggressive defensiveness that UFOs don’t exist at all. This counterproductive battle has unfortunately dominated public discourse for a long time, only heightening confusion and creating more distance from the scientific—the agnostic—approach.

  Principled skepticism is the foundational premise of this book. Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch, former science editor for The Astrophysical Journal and The Journal of Scientific Exploration, defines a true skeptic as “one who practices the method of suspended judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity.” I invite you to look at the material presented here from the perspective of an agnostic—objectively, with an open and truly skeptical mind.

  Now we can begin a fascinating journey. I will present some of the most powerful material that so profoundly impacted me during my own process of exploration and discovery. During that process, the ot
her writers and I ask the reader to consider the veracity of the following points, to be revisited at the end of book, which I have distilled from my ten years of looking into the UFO subject. These five premises are thoroughly evaluated and illustrated by the evidence throughout the volume:

  (1) There exists in our skies, worldwide, a solid, physical phenomenon that appears to be under intelligent control and is capable of speeds, maneuverability, and luminosity beyond current known technology.

  (2) UFO incursions, often in restricted airspace, can cause aviation safety hazards and raise national security concerns, even though the objects have not demonstrated overtly hostile acts.

  (3) The U.S. government routinely ignores UFOs and, when pressed, issues false explanations. Its indifference and/or dismissals are irresponsible, disrespectful to credible, often expert witnesses, and potentially dangerous.

  (4) The hypothesis that UFOs are of extraterrestrial or interdimensional origin is a rational one and must be taken into account, given the data we have. However, the actual origin and nature of UFOs have not yet been determined by scientists, and remain unknown.

  (5) Given its potential implications, the evidence calls for systematic scientific investigation involving U.S. government support and international cooperation.

  I believe that after reading this book, the discerning reader will accept—or at least acknowledge as plausible—these five positions, as remarkable or even inconceivable as they seemed at the outset.