Board Logo
« Anatomy of a Conundrum »

Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
Feb 9th, 2010, 4:55pm



Visit the UFO Casebook Web Site

*Totally FREE 24/7 Access *Your Nickname and Avatar *Private Messages

*Join today and be a part of one of the largest UFO sites on the Net.


Pages: 1 2 3  ...  5 Notify Send Topic Print
 Image  Author  Topic: Anatomy of a Conundrum  (Read 5422 times)
globus1
Guest
xx Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Thread started on: Aug 5th, 2007, 11:37am »

In the Beginning


I should state my belief about UFOs and aliens now: The idea of extra-terrestrial machines visiting earth developed by the intelligence community is a cover to protect their own experiments with secret aircraft and mind-control techniques. The rest is supplied by what is called "the phantom assailant" where a localized hysteria breaks out among the populace who believe themselves to be victimized by something sinister and/or supernatural. Sounds old, I know. But stick with me. There is something else to it--another component that isn't defined because we don't understand it or seem aware of it because we have been mentally subverted by the belief in ET.

This will be series of posts that will be titled. Feel free to comment on them as you see fit. My responses will be untitled so there won't be any confusion.

The standard story goes this way: It started on June 24,1947 when a man named Kenneth Arnold was flying his plane near Mt. Rainier in Washington state. He saw nine objects flying in line around the summit and zooming off at a tremendous speed with a motion that resembled “saucers” skipping across water. For this reason, a reporter dubbed the unknown craft “flying saucers” and the name made an immediate splash. The country was abuzz with talk about these flying saucers. After that, a deluge of sightings followed including the alleged crash at Roswell.

But let us examine this a little deeper. Shortly after the Arnold incident, the media held a poll asking people what they thought these flying saucers were. The top answer was that they were military machines. That they may have been extra-terrestrial did not even register on the poll. Nobody thought any such thing was plausible.

On July 4th, the San Francisco Chronicle headline read: “FLYING SAUCERS SEEN IN MOST STATES NOW. That same night, something allegedly fell from the skies over Roswell, New Mexico. The headline the next day in the Roswell Daily Record read: RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION. But a short time later, the next headline stated that the object recovered was a crashed weather balloon. Certainly sounds fishy, doesn’t it? Well, it certainly is but perhaps not the way you might be thinking.

User Image

Before we go ahead, let us now regress just a few days before the Arnold sighting over Mt. Rainier.

June 21, 1947, Maury Island off the coast of Tacoma, Washington. A crew aboard a marine salvager consisting of the crew leader, Harold Dahl, his son Charles, two other crewmen and a dog, were salvaging logs just off Maury Island when six doughnut-shaped craft, each about 100 feet in diameter and bright metallic, flew overhead. Five of the craft encircled a center one which “fluttered” and then released a shower of hot metal slag and what looked like aluminum flakes. Dahl’s son was injured and the dog was killed. Dahl radioed to his chief, Fred L. Crisman. The next day, Crisman came out to the area and saw metallic debris strewn along the shoreline. Crisman stated that as he collected up the pieces, he saw a doughnut-shaped craft zoom by overhead.

Little has been made of the Maury Island incident even though it happened just prior to Kenneth Arnold’s sighting which has become legend in UFO circles. This is due in no small part because Crisman and Dahl made a public confession to the whole thing being a hoax. Both the Maury Island incident and the Mt. Rainier incident occurred at very nearly the same time in Washington state so might they be connected? Much more than anyone may know.

Crisman called magazine editor Ray Palmer (Ziff-Davis Fiction Magazine, Fate and Amazing Stories) and reported the story to him including his collecting of the UFO debris. Palmer, in turn, contacted Kenneth Arnold and sent him a $200 advance to investigate the story. Arnold then went to the editor of The Idaho Daily Statesman Newspaper and made a big deal of the money Palmer had given him to investigate Crisman’s story. The editor, in turn, contacted the Air Force which sent two investigating officers, Capt. William Davidson and Lt. Frank M. Brown, both of the Army Air Corp, to investigate. By the time they got there, Kenneth Arnold was the one who gave the men the “evidence” Crisman had gathered along the shoreline of Maury Island. So Arnold was far from a happenstance witness of flying saucers over Mt. Rainier, he was already deeply involved in the Maury Island incident!

On June 24th, the very day Arnold claimed to have had his own sighting, Dahl told Crisman that a mysterious man in black, driving a black car, had visited him and told him to keep quiet about what he had seen over Maury Island or bad things could happen to him and his family. Dahl began having second thoughts about his involvement in the affair.

Brown and Davidson completed their investigation on August 1st and took all the debris they could shake Arnold, Crisman and Dahl down for and boarded a B-25 bound for Hamilton Air Force Base. En route, one of the plane’s engines caught fire and the craft crashed, killing Brown and Davidson, while the pilots parachuted to safety. The debris was never recovered nor was other important evidence such as film footage that was shot of these mysterious craft.
« Last Edit: Aug 5th, 2007, 11:43am by globus1 » User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #1 on: Aug 5th, 2007, 11:41am »

In the Beginning (cont)


Paul Lance, a reporter for the Tacoma Times reported on the crash. His story was headlined: “SABOTAGE HINTED IN CRASH OF ARMY BOMBER.” Lance had received mysterious calls from an anonymous source that the plane had been sabotaged or shot down to prevent its strange cargo from reaching its intended destination. The caller was not a random prankster however. He knew the names of the two dead Army Air Corps investigators some twelve hours before they were officially released to the public by the Army. Lance talked to an intelligence officer at McChord Air Field who confirmed that “classified material” had been on the plane.

Badly frightened now, Dahl went to Crisman and told him he wanted out. He and Crisman went public and admitted to a hoax. The Maury Island incident, they said, never happened. They had made the whole thing up. This was not a good thing to do being that two military men had died investigating it but Dahl was afraid that he would be next and felt he had little choice.

Now Lt. Col. Donald Springer came forward to say that Crisman’s hoax should be enough to have his commission revoked. Crisman, it turned out, was a pilot—and not just any, ol’ pilot—a military pilot! Moreover, he had been an OSS agent in World War II! The OSS, as we recall, was run by Allen Dulles who, with the help of former-Wehrmacht officer Reinhard Gehlen, turned it into the Central Intelligence Agency in, of all years, 1947. And no one who ever works for U.S. Intelligence ever really parts company with it. Once you’re in, you’re always in. Fred L. Crisman was an intelligence operative!

Two weeks after reporting on the B-25 crash, Paul Lance mysteriously died. The Tacoma Times went out of business shortly after despite having been in circulation for over 40 years. Ray Palmer lost his job although no satisfactory explanation was advanced to account for it as he was probably the best editor the aforementioned magazines had ever had. Dahl, who appears to have been an unwitting participant in this strange tale, eventually dropped from sight. He allegedly died in Roy, Washington at age 70 according to the following clipping:

User Image

Kenneth Arnold is the prime mover of this mystery. Who was he? Was his sighting real or did he make it up. If he made it up, was it simply for publicity or was he instructed to do so? I raise the possibility that he might have been an intelligence operative like Crisman. His alleged flying saucers were not saucers. When he drew his impression of them, he rendered something that looks surprisingly like our modern stealth fighter. He had merely said the object moved like skipping saucers not that they looked like saucers.

User Image

But he also allegedly claimed that the objects were identical to those seen over Maury Island—but those were doughnut- or torus-shaped. Supposedly Arnold was also nearly killed in his plane when it too was sabotaged but I wonder if he made this up. He lived a long time after the incidents described, always ready to discuss his sighting. But no one seemed to remark on the oddness of his having such a sighting only three days after investigating another. He did not arrive at Tacoma a complete stranger. There is evidence that Crisman had already contacted him several days before the Maury Island incident.

And what about Crisman? Was his officer commission ever revoked? Heck no! He was eventually reactivated and flew missions in Korea during that war. After that, he was transferred to Alaska and then to Greenland. He was always in places where he would be difficult to reach. He eventually ended up a radio announcer in Tacoma. But had apparently also been a missionary clergyman to “the Gypsies” for a time. Crisman is reported to have died in 1975.

User Image

Believe it or not, New Orleans prosecutor, Jim Garrison, wanted to ask Crisman where he was when JFK was assassinated. You see, Garrison firmly believed that one of the three mysterious hobos picked up in Dealy Plaza was, in fact, Fred L. Crisman!!

Garrison went so far as to subpoena Crisman in 1968 to testify at the trial of Clay Shaw but, of course, he never did. No doubt the intelligence community got him out of it. But why did Garrison believe that Crisman was one of the hobos? Because he was identified as one of the Dealey Plaza hobos by certain members of the Warren Commission!

User Image

Garrison felt that Crisman was “engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex.” Although Crisman was not likely one of the three hobos, it is nevertheless odd that his name should pop up in so very unlikely areas as UFOs and the JFK assassination as does General Charles Cabell, chief of Air Force intelligence in 1949 when he wrote the memo concerning the use of deadly force by pilots against UFOs. He was Deputy CIA director under Allen Dulles and was fired by Kennedy in 1962 after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. His brother Earle was mayor of Dallas when JFK was shot. Who knows what the truth really is?

What we do know is this:

· The flying saucer craze started in 1947 with the Maury Island incident.
· Fred Crisman was intimately involved in that incident.
· Crisman was also a military pilot and former-OSS agent.
· Kenneth Arnold was an Idaho businessman who arrived in Tacoma to investigate the Maury Island incident.
· He indirectly (but perhaps intentionally) caused the Army Air Corps to get involved in the investigation.
· He was the go-between for Crisman and the Army’s investigating officers.
· He then claimed to have had a sighting of nine unidentified craft flying over Mt Rainier which is generally credited with being the original UFO sighting even though it is not.
· The Army’s investigators died while wrapping up their investigation.
· Crisman and Dahl now admit to a hoax.
· Neither is charged with anything and Crisman eventually returned to flying for the military.
· Shortly after Arnold’s sighting, a public poll is taken to reveal that the public believes flying saucers are secret military craft.
· Some two weeks later, the Roswell crash occurs. The media initially say that a “flying saucer” or “flying disc” had been recovered by the Air Force but then change their story shortly after to state that the RAAF had recovered a crashed weather balloon.
· The public is immediately suspicious of the changed story and begin whispering about a “cover-up.”
· We were duped, it would seem. The intelligence community wanted us to believe there was a cover-up. They knew their secret craft would be seen and by large numbers of people. It was unavoidable. So people must be misled as to their origin. So Crisman was assigned to oversee a sighting using his unwitting dupe Harold Dahl as a guinea pig. Then Arnold is called in to fabricate a better story since Arnold was more trustworthy than Dahl. Then a poll was taken precisely so that the intelligence community could see how the public regarded their secret craft. They learned that the public regarded them as just that—secret government craft. So an incident was invented that would forever indelibly etch ET into our minds—Roswell. After the term “flying saucer” is programmed into the public mind, a crashed flying saucer story was deliberately “leaked” just so it could be replaced with the prosaic balloon story —and we’ve been stuck with ET ever since.
· The public information officer for Roswell Army Air Field in 1947 was Walter Haut. He was the one who had released the crashed flying saucer story. Here is what he said on Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? which was shown on Fox TV: “I was called to headquarters [and] was given copies of a press release which stated, in essence, that we had in our possession a flying disc. I was told to hand-deliver [these] to the foreign news media we had in town at the time, the two [local] radio stations, and two newspapers.” The man who had given Haut his orders was the base commander himself, Colonel William Blanchard who, in turn, received his orders from the Pentagon.
« Last Edit: Aug 5th, 2007, 2:56pm by globus1 » User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #2 on: Aug 5th, 2007, 3:08pm »

The Battle of Los Angeles


You may have seen the old Steven Spielberg-John Belushi movie, 1941, but did you know it was based on a true incident? It didn’t happen in 1941, however; it happened in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942. It is a little known event in the annals of World War II now called “The Battle of Los Angeles.” Wartime historians and military officials are strangely reticent to speak or write of it. Mostly, it has been relegated to the pages of conspiracy and UFO literature. But it did happen and it is nothing to laugh about.

The City of Angels had gone to bed for the night on the 24th of February but Naval Intelligence had issued a statement that an attack might come within the next ten hours. Lights resembling flares as well as blinking lights were spotted near the defense plants and an alert was issued at 1918 hours (or 7:18 p.m., Pacific time). At 2223 hours, the alert was called off and, for the next four hours or so, all was calm and quiet. By 0215 hours on the 25th, anti-aircraft batteries were placed on “green” alert. Radar had picked something up over the Pacific 120 miles west of Los Angeles and moving towards Los Angeles County. At 0221 hours, a blackout was ordered as radar indicated the target was now only a few miles from the coast. Then the target seemed to vanish but suddenly reports of “enemy planes” began pouring in. At 0243 hours, “planes” were reported over Long Beach and “about 25 planes at 12,000 feet” were spotted over Los Angeles. At 0306, ground observers in Santa Monica spotted a balloon carrying a red flare. Suddenly, air raids sirens went off, anti-aircraft guns began blazing away, more than three dozen searchlights were playing over the dark skies, the streets were filled with air-raid wardens and a million frightened people running to and fro. The darkened streets were suddenly lit up like day. The object or objects continued to be fired upon until about 0415 hours.

By morning light, residents emerged from their houses and bomb shelters to find their city had suffered extensive damage. Falling anti-aircraft shells, including many that did not explode until after hitting the ground, had destroyed buildings, vehicles, and tore up streets. Six civilians had died. What happened?

Air-raid warden Raymond Angier recalled the cause of the disturbance quite vividly: “A formation of six to nine luminous, white dots in triangular formation was visible in the northwest. The formation moved painfully slowly—you might call it leisurely—as if it were oblivious to the whole stampede it had created….” There are photographs of this incident although they are not particularly distinct. They show ground searchlights trained on something luminous in the sky. There appears to be a large luminous object where the searchlight beams converge and smaller luminous bodies around it although they are probably bursting antiaircraft shells.

User Image
Slide photo of mysterious object sited over Los Angeles February 1942. Smaller lights grouped around the object are bursting antiaircraft shells.

To this day, many are convinced that the Battle of Los Angeles was precipitated by a large, luminous UFO that was undamaged despite the numerous hits by artillery fire.

But the real battle came after the “UFO” was long gone. The government was under siege from angry Southern Californians demanding answers. The Navy declared that the whole thing had been a “false alarm” and that there were no planes over Los Angeles on February 25th. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox blamed the Army for the whole thing. The Army, in return, remained strangely silent, until after the 27th when it contradicted the Navy and claimed that “unidentified planes” had indeed been spotted over Los Angeles on the morning of the 25th “between 3:12 and 4:15 A.M.” Secretary of the Army Henry L. Stimson later added that about fifteen unknown planes flying at 9000 to 18,000 feet were over Los Angeles that fateful morning but that no bombs had been dropped and no military planes had been deployed to engage “the enemy.” Stimson also added that the military suffered no casualties while callously neglecting to mention the six dead civilians.

The Washington Post was scathing in its criticism of the military’s handling of this affair. If enemy planes were over Los Angeles on February 25th, the paper asked, then what enemy was responsible, where precisely did the planes come from, and why did we not pursue them after they had invaded our airspace? Doesn’t all this indicate, asked the Post, a terrible case of jitters and incompetence within our military?

The only logical explanation, if the Army’s account was true, was that the planes would have to have been Japanese. Yet, after the war, Japanese military officials expressed complete ignorance of the Battle of Los Angeles. One high-ranking official, Okumiya Masatake, stated that by 1942, the Japanese military already suffered a severe shortage of aviation fuel and trained pilots and could never have pulled off such an invasion. Historical investigation indicates that his statement is entirely truthful. Besides, if the Japanese had invaded Los Angeles, for what purpose did they do this? The Army had already admitted that no bombs were dropped. No one recalls planes strafing the ground with artillery fire. What about the unknown flares and balloons that were spotted? Certainly not standard tactics in an air raid. Nothing ever found in the Japanese military documents and memos has ever shed even the tiniest light on the Battle of Los Angeles. Simply put, the Japanese had absolutely nothing to do with it.

User Image

The fault I find with the UFO literature regarding this incident is, that while the details are well-researched, the authors get lost in those details and, in particular, with the descriptions of witnesses concerning luminous lights and a large object that was unaffected by antiaircraft shells. This indicates, they say, the presence of a UFO. I say it indicates nothing of the sort.

The real details that need to be paid strict attention to are those that seem at first glance to be unimportant. A second glance reveals that they are supremely important in understanding who or what was behind the Battle of Los Angeles. I believe the Battle of Los Angeles was an early Army “psy-op” or psychological operation designed to convince both civilians and military personnel of Los Angeles that they were under attack. The reason appears to have escaped everyone who has written on this subject – at least those I know of.
« Last Edit: Aug 5th, 2007, 9:42pm by globus1 » User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #3 on: Aug 5th, 2007, 3:12pm »

The Battle of Los Angeles (cont.)


Let’s go over some points:

· Two days before the incident, President Roosevelt had stated in a speech that no part of the nation could be considered safe in this time of war. Was the country being prepared for something unusual?

· Hours before the incident, Naval Intelligence had issued a warning that an attack might occur within the next ten hours. What was the source of their information? Whom did they believe might attack us? Certainly, space aliens in UFOs let nothing leak out hours before their alleged flyover! I believe that Naval Intelligence got wind of an Army psy-op and tried to prepare for it.

· What about the flares seen near the defense plants? Who was firing them and why? Douglas Aircraft Company employee, Paul Collins, reported seeing bright red lights low on the horizon. He stated that they initially shot upward and then fell in a zigzag motion. He also stated an artillery unit opened fire on these lights.

· A Captain Molder of the 203rd Coast Artillery unit reported spotting a balloon through field glasses. This balloon too was fired on.

· Why were none of our planes deployed? Were officials behind this staged attack afraid they might shoot each other down firing at phantoms?

· What about the large luminous object that hung motionless in the air and showed no notice of antiaircraft fire despite what witnesses said were several direct hits? I think it was the forerunner of the skyhook balloon. The skyhook was supposedly developed in the late forties, after the War, as a reconnaissance device to monitor the Soviet Union. Equipped with spy cameras, it could take detailed ground photos. The skyhook was necessary because at that time there were no aircraft that could fly high enough to escape antiaircraft fire. Skyhook was top secret at the time. But who outside the intelligence community can say for certain when skyhook was actually developed? Could it have been around before the early forties? Since the balloon is enormous, very baggy and extremely light perhaps it could simply absorb artillery fire unlike a standard balloon.

· What about the radar images? More balloons in all likelihood. Balloons were spotted several times. These were probably deployed in order to create blips on radar screens. What about the blip that came in from the ocean that vanished? If a balloon dips low enough, it will drop off radar.

· Observers reported that unidentified lights moved slowly and seemed oblivious to the hullabaloo they were causing below. Certainly sounds like balloons to me. But balloons aren’t luminous, right? Remember that some observers had seen balloons carrying flare-like lights.

· If the Japanese were responsible for the Battle of Los Angeles and their planes were over the city on February 25, 1942, then why is there no evidence of it? If even a tiny shred of evidence to support this contention existed, then the Battle of Los Angeles would have attained the same fame and notoriety as the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet, the only Japanese attack on the continental U.S. from Japan that has been documented was a “fugo” balloon loaded with explosives that landed in Oregon and killed a farmer’s family when they approached it. The fu-go balloons have been well documented. One Japanese man who helped to make the balloons against his will journeyed to Oregon after the war and, when taken to the spot where the woman and her children were killed, broke down and wept piteously. Yet not a single Japanese civilian or military official has ever apologized nor expressed remorse for the Battle of Los Angeles simply because they have no knowledge of it.

User Image
A Japanese fugo balloon.

· Even stranger, none of our military or war historians have any knowledge of the incident either. Yet it did happen. Why the silence? To say it was a false alarm is to dismiss the photographic evidence that something unusual was indeed going on in the skies over Los Angeles in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942.

· Could the balloons that were spotted by ground observers have been fugo balloons? They were, after all, the first intercontinental ballistic weapon ever used. Extremely unlikely as air currents from Japan would not carry them to Southern California but rather to the Pacific Northwest. In fact, the fugo were so impractical that the Japanese government gave up making them shortly after launching the first ones. Only a handful are known to have done slight damage in the U.S. (as far north as Alaska and as far east as Wyoming) and Canada. The rest have been lost in the forests of the Northwest or fell into the ocean.

· If we suppose the Battle of Los Angeles was an Army psy-op to convince a city it was under attack, why? I searched through other documentation of this event and came across an interesting item: The next day, 20 Japanese-Americans were arrested on the charge of participating in the Battle of Los Angeles and accused of signaling the “planes” with flashlights. Obviously, the charge is bogus but certainly few Americans questioned it. When the “War of the Worlds” broadcast of 1938 – only 4 years earlier – sent thousands of Americans screaming and shooting into the night, many of these people later stated that they did not believe Martians were invading; they believed it was the Germans or the Japanese and the newscasters on the scene were simply mistaken. One woman stated she was convinced the Japanese were invading them and that the crashed craft was some kind of plane built by the Japanese “because they’re so clever.” In other words, was this attack meant to arouse more anti-Japanese sentiment? Perhaps, but I refer not to the people of Japan but the Japanese-Americans of the West Coast. On February 19th, just 5 days before the “attack” on L.A., Franklin Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066 which ordered all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to be evacuated to ten different concentration camps complete with barbed wire and armed guards in towers. Was the attack simulated in order to choke off any outcry about violating both the human and constitutional rights of Japanese-Americans? While the press lambasted the military’s response to the attack, I never read a word about the fate of the 20 Japanese-Americans who were arrested and charged with participating. In fact, to a surprising degree, the entire episode seems to be based upon the War of the Worlds debacle. As far as I know, I am the only person to write about his event and connect it to the evacuation and relocation.

· Since the official Army position to this very day is that “enemy planes” were indeed over Los Angeles on February 25, 1942, the question remains: Whose planes?
« Last Edit: Aug 5th, 2007, 8:51pm by globus1 » User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #4 on: Aug 5th, 2007, 9:32pm »

Bluebook & the Invasion of D.C.


By March of 1952, Project Grudge was nearing the end of its usefulness for the nation’s intelligence community. The study so innocently suggested four years earlier by General Twining, who did not appear to be an insider (which was probably the very reason his suggestion of a study was followed), had mutated into a monster with a life of its own. Thenceforth, the official government study was now called Project Bluebook.

We should be careful in our assessment of the designations of these projects. The first, we recall, was Project Sign. By “Sign,” was the implication that a sign would be given us? Namely, that UFOs were from other worlds and were, perhaps, signaling us? No sooner had this conclusion been reached when suddenly the gears shift and Project Sign dies and Project Grudge begins. As its name suggests, it appeared to be staffed by those who only grudgingly agreed to study the UFO data. Diametrically opposed to Project Sign, Project Grudge was determined to show all you dolts and rubes out there that UFOs were complete BUNK—almost. Now comes Project Bluebook. What is a bluebook anyway? A blue book is defined as a directory or register of socially prominent persons or government employees. A strange designation for a study of UFO events—a listing government employees. Are we perhaps being given subtle clues?

User Image

The month after Bluebook’s formation, an article appeared in Life magazine. It stated, “The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation; here LIFE offers some scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary flying saucers.” Even more surprising was the fact that the article was written under the acknowledged auspices of Project Bluebook itself. Ten incidents were investigated in the article that could not be explained by any of the following possibilities: psychological delusions, secret technology being tested, Russian weaponry, Skyhook balloons, or atomic tests. The Skyhook denial is humorous for Time magazine had run an article that same year that tried to say ALL flying saucer sightings were Skyhooks. How one can rule out secret technology if it is completely unknown to the public is also a puzzler. For that matter, we can say the same of Russian weaponry. The truth is, both America and the Soviet Union were busy hiring all the Nazi scientists they could get their hands on. Therefore secret technology and Russian weaponry would be only items on the list that cannot be ruled out.

But a new phase of UFO study was being initiated and, as always, its purpose was to deceive. Whereas the official scientists were formerly of the hard skeptic school, the new breed were the complete opposite. “I am completely convinced that they [UFOs] have an out-of-world basis,” stated Dr. Walter Reidel. Not surprisingly, he was a German rocket scientist. The purpose of Project Bluebook looks more and more like a mere cover for Project Paperclip.

Be that as it may, Project Bluebook was headed by an Air Force officer, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt. One of the study’s consultants was an astronomer named J. Allen Hynek who would later coin the now-famous term “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Project Bluebook was kicked off with what could only be called a tremendous coincidence.

On July 10, 1952, an object “too bright to be a lighted balloon and too slow to be a big meteor” was spotted over Quantico, Virginia by a National Airlines flight crew. On the 13th, another commercial airliner was paced by an “odd light” about 60 miles from Washington D.C. When the pilot switched on the plane’s landing lights, the light raced off at a steep incline. The next evening, William Nash and W. H. Fortenberry, pilots aboard a Pan Am flight observed six UFOs each about 100 feet in diameter flying in stair-step formation near Newport News, Virginia. The objects did about a 150-degree turn and then two more of the same type of objects shot up from under the plane to join the group and then all eight objects raced away in formation, their lights extinguishing one by one.

Three days later, two people observed two amber lights “much too large to be aircraft lights” near Langley Air Force Base. The lights turned reversed direction 180 degrees and were joined by two more unknown lights. The four UFOs then raced away in formation. Both witnesses, one of them a high-level scientist, stated that the objects were observed for about three minutes and made no sound.

These sightings were only a prelude to what was about to follow. The important thing to note here is that even though the UFOs were sighted in areas heavily involved in the nation’s intelligence community and were saturated with military aircraft, they seemed interested only in passenger liners, indeed seemed perfectly capable of distinguishing one from the other, and put on ostentatious aerial acrobatics of the type often seen in air shows.

In his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt wrote that he had spoken for two hours with “a scientist, from an agency that I can’t name” about the build-up of UFO incidents on the East Coast. Ruppelt writes: “…I was ready to leave when he said that he had one last comment to make—a prediction…. ‘Within the next few days,’ he told me, and I remember that he punctuated his slow, deliberate remarks by hitting the desk with his fist, ‘they’re going to blow up and you’re going to have the granddaddy of all UFO sightings. The sighting will occur in Washington or New York,’ he predicted—‘probably Washington.’”

A few days later, as if on cue, radar operators at Washington National Airport, Bolling Air Force Base and Andrews Air Force Base were tracking unknowns on July 19 and 20 between 11:40 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. They flew in formation at a leisurely pace but would sometimes hover and other times race off at amazing speeds. The radar sets were checked for malfunction but were determined to be functioning properly. According to Ruppelt, one object was tracked at 7000 m.p.h.! These objects were also sighted by commercial pilots in the area. Casey Pierman, the pilot of Capital Airlines Flight 807 saw what he described as “falling stars without tails” and Capital Airlines Flight 610 was following by an unknown light from Herndon, Virginia almost to National Airport.

By the early morning hours of July 20th, a controller at National Airport reported a target on his radarscope over Andrews Air Force Base. He called to the Andrews control tower and asked operators there if they could see anything. Tower personnel looked outside and saw a “huge, fiery-orange sphere” hovering in the sky. UFOs were also spotted near the White House, the Capitol Building, and highly classified military installations.

What was going on? Was the nation under attack by space invaders? It certainly looked that way. The military must have been going nuts! Or so one would think. National Airport controllers tried for at least a couple of hours to get the military to send up jets to investigate and were ignored. Not until nearly sunrise, long after the UFOs were gone, did a single F-94 fly over the area. Seeing nothing, it returned to base.

The press had a field day and the Washington invasion dominated the headlines. On July 26, the very next weekend, the UFOs returned. At 10:30 p.m. the same National Airport controllers as before picked up a slow-flying formation of unknowns on their radarscopes. Andrews Air Force controllers were also tracking the objects which traveled in a sweeping arc that stretched from Herndon to Andrews AFB with Washington in the middle. Controllers again called for interceptors to investigate.

Members of the press were in the National Airport control tower witnessing both the invasion and the response to it. Not until midnight did any F-94s show up. The press was cleared out to prevent unauthorized publication of confidential transmissions between pilots and radar operators. Two F-94s were dispatched but the blips on the scopes blinked out as the jets were arriving. The pilots saw nothing and returned to base. The press didn’t miss much.

User Image

According to Ruppelt, a few minutes after this incident, witnesses at Newport News near the Langley field called the Langley Tower to report strange lights in the sky that appeared to rotate and throw off alternating colors. Then operators in the tower saw the same light or a similar one and called for an interceptor. An F-94 showed up and the pilot visually spotted the light and raced towards only to have it simply blink out at his approach “like somebody turning out a light bulb,” wrote Ruppelt. The pilot’s radar got several “locks” on the object but each time, the contact would be broken off in only a few moments. Then the object—if indeed an object it was—disappeared for good.

But a few moments later, the UFOs were back over D.C. again. Two F-94s were dispatched and chased after unknown lights that did not blink out this time. But they may as well have. The lights raced away at each approach with seeming effortlessness. One of the pilots, Lt. William Patterson, was later to state, “I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed. I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them.” In all, 22 significant UFO incidents, some lasting as long as six hours, were reported in Washington, D.C. in 1952 that are not easily explained away.
User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #5 on: Aug 5th, 2007, 9:33pm »

Blue Book and the Invasion of D.C. (Cont.)


In a press conference, the military’s official verdict was that the sightings were “probably” temperature inversions that caused false radar images. In what was the longest press conference held by the military since World War II, they managed to insult the intelligence and integrity of radar operators and pilots, all of whom had years of experience under their belts. Ruppelt pointed out that none of the radarmen or pilots involved in these incidents were novices and that all had gone through rigid training and logged in hundreds hours in flight or in front of radarscopes. These were the people upon whom thousands of lives depended daily but who couldn’t tell a temperature inversion from a solid object whether on a radar screen or visually.

But, of course, the military wanted everyone to reach those sardonic conclusions. They wanted people to believe that something BIG was being hidden. They wanted the nation to believe that an extra-terrestrial invasion was perhaps attempted or at least tested by the military of another world perhaps and that we poor earthlings have no way to stop them and that the military is simply too afraid to admit how ineffectual our defenses really are against such other-worldly denizens.

To drive home the alien scenario, the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still was released only a couple of weeks before the Washington invasion and the plot of the movie also centered around a flying saucer landing in the middle of Washington D.C. and all this the same year that the government entered a new phase of UFO investigation: Project Bluebook.

Project Bluebook reflected the government’s official vacillating position on UFOs. The Bluebook staff, especially Ruppelt and Hynek, seemed to accept that UFOs were something real and yet the position of Bluebook itself seemed to indicate that UFOs were merely swamp gas and temperature inversion. An odd position to place itself in.

On July 28, the INS released this report:

WASHINGTON, July 28 (INS) – The Air Force revealed today that jet pilots have been on a 24-hour nationwide “alert” against “flying saucers” with orders to “shoot them down” if they refuse to land. It was learned that pilots have gone aloft on several occasions in an effort to shoot the mysterious objects to the ground, but never came close enough to use their guns.

Why would the Air Force issue this new protocol after insisting that “flying saucers” were merely temperature inversions? This confrontational stance was not new but was rather the very policy that General Charles Cabell had pushed for some four years earlier. “Flying saucers” cannot be ours or the military would not be ordering its pilots to take such drastic action and yet whenever a “flying saucer” is observed and pursued by a military jet, it will never be declared to have been a genuine incident. Project Bluebook seemed to be taking the same “it is but it isn’t” public stance.

What about Ruppelt? Did he really know what was going on? Probably not. He had been a close friend of Major Donald Keyhoe (ret.) of the Marines who had been constantly pushing the military to admit the reality of “flying saucers” and to admit that they come from another world in space. Keyhoe, too, seemed earnest in his “official cover-up” efforts. But, in truth, he seemed unwittingly to be assisting military intelligence in their deception. An anti-swamp gas gadfly is always needed and if he is a retired military officer, all the better—just as Bluebook had grown out of a memo written some years earlier by General Twining about the need to study the UFO phenomenon was certainly the suggestion of a man not in the know. For those in the know, what could be better than to have a public liaison with nothing to hide? That way, those in the know can hide behind him. Keyhoe and Ruppelt served the same purpose. The intelligence community only needed to make certain one thing: The public must never take Keyhoe or Ruppelt with dead seriousness. Keyhoe, as a result, always seemed to be just a little too tightly wound on the subject of an official cover-up. He seemed too eager to lead people to believe in a cover-up of extra-terrestrial contact. The titles of his books always seemed to be rather embarrassing and sensationalistic: Flying Saucers From Outer Space or The Flying Saucer Conspiracy.

Ruppelt, on the other hand, was after all the head of Project Bluebook. His position that UFOs were “real,” which had been serving to throw suspicion off the contention of governmental secret technology obtained from the Nazis—hundreds of whom were still entering the U.S. under the auspices of Project Paperclip—was outliving its usefulness. In 1959, the year after Project Paperclip ended, Ruppelt appended his groundbreaking book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects with three new chapters that now dismissed virtually everything the previous chapters had so painstakingly asserted—namely that UFOs were “real.” Keyhoe had tried to talk Ruppelt out of the revision but was obviously unsuccessful. Keyhoe wryly commented that Ruppelt had more or less debunked his own book (these new editions also made no mention of being appended). Keyhoe also stated that he felt his old friend had been pressured to reverse his stance on flying saucers. Ruppelt, for his part, seemed to want out of the whole flying saucer mess. He got his wish.

The following year, 1960, Edward Ruppelt suffered a heart attack and died. His widow stated that the contactee craze (the subject of my next post) had soured him on the validity and reality of flying saucers.

Rather it appears to me that with Project Paperclip at an end, there was no need for the intelligence community to keep Bluebook vacillating on the subject of its study. By manipulating Ruppelt into reversing his stance, they effectively threw the pro-UFO camp into disarray, kept the public and press in total confusion and therefore disinclined to demand or expect answers. Bluebook did a complete 180 and became Project Grudge all over again only it kept the name Bluebook. One wonders why Project Bluebook did not disband altogether. Apparently, there was still a use for it. We’ll investigate what that use may have been later on.
« Last Edit: Aug 5th, 2007, 9:39pm by globus1 » User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #6 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 7:25pm »

Mantell vs. Venus


The year following the Maury Island-Kenneth Arnold UFO sightings in Washington, an incident occurred that carries the same legendary status of Kenneth Arnold. This one is harder to understand because there are so many versions of it. About 2:30 p.m. on January 7, 1948, over 100 people saw a huge UFO low in the sky. It resembled an inverted teardrop or “an ice cream cone topped with red.” Some witnesses reported that it gave off the colors of the rainbow. Others had seen an object much higher up and it was a large silver discoidal object moving at a very high rate of speed. Others described a disc with an inverted cone on top and a “red spot” that glowed intermittently. The state police were notified and they too sighted the object over Madisonville and heading toward Godman about 100 miles away. They notified the military police at Godman Air Force Base who, in turn, notified the tower. The base commander, Col. Guy Hix, and his 2nd-in-command, Major Woods, were in the tower watching for the object. Shortly before 3:00, they spotted the object through a break in the clouds to the south. The object was enormous and flashed brightly in the sun! Hix and Woods were stunned! They called a squadron to go up and investigate.

Fighter pilot Captain Thomas Mantell of the Kentucky National Guard and two more F-51s were dispatched. “It appears to be a metallic object,” Mantell told Godman Tower, “tremendous in size…directly ahead and slightly above…I’m trying to close in for a better look.” About five minutes later, Mantell was heard to say, “It’s going up now and forward as fast as I am…that’s 360 miles per hour…I’m going up to 20,000 feet and if I’m no closer I’ll abandon chase.” Nothing more was heard from Mantell. Later that day, the wreckage of his plane was found strewn over several miles outside Fort Knox. His body was decapitated. The plane had more or less disintegrated. Everything from an enemy aircraft to a Martian death ray was posited to account for his death. The UFO was last seen zooming past Lockbourne Air Force Base. Witnesses described it as a large silver disc or oval flying very high and changing to amber and leaving behind an amber trail. It disappeared over the horizon never to be seen again.

User Image
User Image
Thomas Mantell and the wreckage of his F-51 aircraft.

The Air Force announced that Mantell had gone up too high and, due to insufficient oxygen, blacked out. This was very plausible. Their statement that he had been chasing the planet Venus, however, was not. The official explanation was met with much derision by both press and public but the Air Force stuck to its guns. Shortly after, General Charles Cabell, Air Force intelligence chief, began pushing for fighter pilots to be kept on alert at all times to chase and challenge any and all UFOs. His actions seemed calculated to counteract the earlier assessment of General Nathan F. Twining, commander of Air Materiel Command, who decided that UFOs were likely our own craft. A conclusion that, if my own thoughts on the matter are correct, was exactly what the intelligence community did not want the public thinking.

User Image

The Pentagon asked Twining to assess the viability of UFOs. Twining responded with a memo stating that he thought they were real and demonstrated what appeared to be manual control. He recommended that a study be commenced to determine a possible threat to national security. On January 22nd, that study was commenced at Wright Field and called Project Sign. The public knew it as Project Saucer. The staff of Sign eventually wrote “Estimate of the Situation”, a memo documenting various UFO sightings and concluded that UFOs were extra-terrestrial. The sign staff delivered the memo to Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vanenburg who promptly rejected it for lack of evidence. The ETers on the Sign staff began to lose power to the ultra-skeptics who were ready to explain away any sighting as meteors, ball lightning, Venus, temperature inversion and swamp gas. By December 16, 1948, Project Sign had become Project Grudge. Grudge’s public purpose was to explain away every sighting as perfectly mundane objects and meteorological phenomena. However, they deliberately left a few sightings unexplained.

The purpose of these projects was not to explain UFOs as extra-terrestrial or as ordinary, the purpose was to muddle the issue beyond hope of ever coming to any meaningful conclusion. The UFO buffs have consistently missed this point. Always quick to point out that the skeptics still left this case and that case unexplained without realizing that it was meant to be that way, otherwise explanations would have been attached to ALL cases. Grudge’s feeble attempts to explain all UFO sightings to the public were MEANT to be met with ridicule and derision. The fact that Sign had kicked out the ETers from its staff was MEANT to make the public take notice and become suspicious. When the two are put together: 1) ETers removed, and 2) Ultra-skeptics installed who still can’t quite explain everything, attention is easily deflected from the truth: UFOs are toys of the intelligence community who would rather the public believe they are hiding alien bodies and reverse-engineering crashed saucers from Zeta Reticuli.

But the best way to hide something is to put it in plain sight. The “secret government experiment” was also made into a mantra and thrown into the mix otherwise it becomes conspicuous by its absence. In 1951, for example, the military admitted to having the Skyhook balloon. Skyhook was an enormous balloon made of a special polymer. It was very baggy in order to be able to assume different shapes at different altitudes. At low altitude, it resembled an ice cream cone or inverted teardrop; at high altitudes, it flattened out into a disc-shape to become more aerodynamic by which it could travel hundreds of miles an hour. Skyhook’s composition made it turn colors at various angles and even turned into a prism and broke sunlight into a rainbow. At other angles, it reflected sunlight so brightly that it looked like it was made of burnished metal. Here, then was the object Thomas Mantell had chased. Skyhook could fly far higher that his F-51 and he would never be able to catch it because his plane was pushing it ahead of him. The faster he went, the faster Skyhook went. The faster Skyhook went, the higher it climbed. The higher it climbed, the more discoidal it became. The more discoidal it became, the faster it went and so on. If Mantell didn’t black out, his plane’s engine would have flamed out and he’d have stalled. He could have never caught up with the balloon.

User Image
Skyhook balloon.

Maybe the balloon had other uses also. No doubt a version of Skyhook was employed in the Battle of Los Angeles six years before Mantell. Suppose a Skyhook flew above the clouds with an apparatus that allowed it to project images on the clouds below it. Ground observers would have no idea what the heck was going on. Perhaps the object in the Los Angeles photo is a Skyhook, all flattened and discoidal. That’s why it reflects the searchlight beams so brightly perhaps—because that is what it does most of the time. But the testimony of at least one witness stated that it turned other colors and mentioned orange. And the Lockbourne people who saw Mantell’s object stated it turned amber. Things that make you go HMMMM!

Skyhook was also to be used to spy on the Soviet Union. All it needed was a camera fitted on it. But the A-11 spy plane came along and then it became the U-2 which became the SR-71 and Skyhooks quickly became obsolete. They still had uses such as weather balloons. But Skyhook was a secret in Mantell’s day, so when the people at Godman AFB saw it, if anyone was in the know, he would not have said anything. The Air Force could not tell people Mantell chased a balloon they had built and let him die trying to catch it and they could not say he died chasing a UFO since they were officially denying such things. Hence Venus was the only culprit they had available to them. When Skyhook was finally revealed in the early fifties, the military had to be careful the public didn’t conclude Mantell had died chasing one so they began releasing articles in Time for example that tried to explain every sighting as a Skyhook which the public found patently absurd as it was meant to. To this day, many UFO buffs refuse to accept that Mantell died chasing Skyhook, it was an extra-terrestrial machine, dammit!—which is exactly what the military wants them to believe.
User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #7 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 7:36pm »

The last post should have appeared before "Blue Book & the Invasion of D.C." Sorry.
User IP Logged

DarkSky
Full Member
ImageImageImage

member is offline

Avatar




PM

Gender: Male
Posts: 67
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #8 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 8:02pm »

on Aug 6th, 2007, 7:25pm, globus1 wrote:
Mantell vs. Venus


The year following the Maury Island-Kenneth Arnold UFO sightings in Washington, an incident occurred that carries the same legendary status of Kenneth Arnold. This one is harder to understand because there are so many versions of it.
<snip>
To this day, many UFO buffs refuse to accept that Mantell died chasing Skyhook, it was an extra-terrestrial machine, dammit!—which is exactly what the military wants them to believe.


Yeah, weather balloons. That explains everything. rolleyes
« Last Edit: Aug 6th, 2007, 8:03pm by DarkSky » User IP Logged

I've never seen a UFO, then again I've never seen a black hole. But I find the evidence for both their existance to be enormous.
.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.
globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #9 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 8:37pm »

I'm not expecting it to explain everything since no one knows what "everything" is in this case nor how factual those issues may be. The skyhook theory fits the data well enough to be able to explain what happened. In fact, the appearance of skyhook and the appearance of the UFO are simply far too similar to be coincidence. So much so that I see no reason to assume that Mantell chased anything but a skyhook.
User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #10 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 9:37pm »

Tall Venusians, Nordic Angels and Hot Chicks


By the early 50s, the intelligence community found itself with a quite a problem on its hands. They had skillfully managed to dupe the public to buy into ET, but that created a problem in and of itself: If the saucer people are here, why don’t they land and show themselves? Also, are they human, superhuman, subhuman or non-human? Are they friend, foe, or neutral? Well, now! Three very good questions. And now that they had created this ET, they’d better set about finding answers.

There was a further even more pressing problem: Civilian flying saucer groups were popping up all over the country. Nobody knew much about what their beliefs and meetings consisted of but if any of them should hook in prominent members of society through membership and/or financing, these people could end up playing a major role in the political climate of the country, which could be good or bad. The intelligence community decided to err on the side of bad and take the bull by the horns.

In 1953, the CIA met with officials of the Air Force and formed a panel to discuss this political problem. From a recently declassified memo, we read the following:

The Panel took cognizance of the existence of such groups as the “Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators” of Los Angeles and the “Aerial Phenomena Research Organization” (Wisconsin). It was believed that such organizations should be watched because of their great influence on the mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind.

Enter the contactee. Unlike the later abductee, the contactee was not a bug to be mounted on a slide and poked, prodded and studied. They decided to make the alien sort of human bordering on superhuman, friend with slightly neutral leanings. They achieved this by inventing the contactee—the earthling chosen by the space brethren through whom to deliver important messages. The contactee ploy also produced a marriage that was unthinkable only a couple of years before: It fused the flying saucer with religion. It was truly the start of what we now so flippantly call “New Age.” This was also the start of the rest of America shaking its collective head in bewilderment while uttering, “Only in California…”

I mentioned in the last post the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still and that it was released to movie theatres across the nation just after the formation of Project Bluebook and just before the UFO invasion of Washington D.C. in the summer of 1952. This movie, although campy by today’s standards, thrilled the average American of the early 50s and dazzled him with hitherto unknown possibilities. In its plot, we saw the contactee movement encapsulated. Flying saucer lands, spaceman and robot companion step out. Military overreacts and destroys the gift the spaceman had brought for us. His motives are continually second-guessed and he is misunderstood and put through tribulations. In the end, the spaceman reveals his purpose. There is an organization, a kind of galactic space council, who have been monitoring earth and have grown concerned for our warlike ways. Our atom bombs threaten their equilibrium. They want us to join them but we must mend our destructive bent. If we do not, they will be forced to destroy us. The choice is ours. And away the space man flies to return at some unspecified time in the future either on a mission of goodwill and brotherhood or as the Angel of Death. His message echoed down through the years in virtually every contactee whose name became almost godlike in UFO literature. The messianic quality of the story cannot be ignored. The story of Jesus Christ had simply been updated for the space age.

User Image

Although some may argue it, the contactee movement appeared to have gotten its start with a Polish immigrant named George Adamski. He settled on the West Coast and held a variety of odd jobs such as a sign painter, a factory worker, a burger cook, etc. He tried his hand at science-fiction, writing a novel called Pioneers of Space which went exactly nowhere. By the mid-thirties, Adamski had taken the way of the charlatan by founding his own occult group called the Royal Order of Tibet. He spoke of “universal law” and other mystical mumbo-jumbo, lecturing before audiences and on the radio. His followers called him “Professor” even though he held no degree and indeed had no real education to speak of.

On November 20, 1952, the Professor and six followers went out into the desert of Southern California to find one of those flying saucers they had been hearing so much about. Lo and behold, a cigar-shaped craft rose up from behind a mountain range. Another craft appeared near the first, materializing in a flash. Adamski, like Jesus and Buddha, set off into the wilderness on his own to await his personal transformation. Unlike Jesus and Buddha, who each met a devil whose temptations they were forced to overcome, the Professor met a Venusian. And not just any Venusian, but a blond-haired blue-eyed Nordic-looking Venusian. His name was Orthon, was of a womanish appearance, and stood about 5’6” and weighed about 135 lbs and wore a chocolate-colored uniform. Orthon’s forehead was very high and he looked to be in his late twenties. Adamski stated that this being was the most beautiful form he had ever beheld and that he “felt like a child in the presence of one with great wisdom and much love.”

User Image
George Adamski with an artist’s rendering of Orthon.

Adamski knew the being was from Venus because the being told him so telepathically. Their entire conversation consisted of telepathy augmented with sign language. The Venusian had a message for humankind. Predictably, we were to give up our wars and aggression and cease the testing of all atomic weaponry in order that the harmony of the universe not be thrown out of kilter. The Venusian also told Adamski that many Venusians lived on earth and looked human enough to be able to walk amongst us without arousing suspicion as to their true origin. Then Adamski was taken for a ride in the Venusian’s spaceship and allowed to take photographs just so long as the Venusian himself was omitted from them. Adamski was the only witness to this entire episode. His followers had seen none of it. Fortunately, Orthon left behind footprints which George Hunt Williamson (referred to by Adamski as an anthropologist) made plaster casts of.

Adamski went on the lecture circuit talking about the “Space Brothers” and how he frequently bumped into them in Los Angeles at bars, clubs, cafes and coffeehouses. He also showed the public his photographs. I found them unconvincing bordering on very bad but apparently the public of the early 50s—a little before my time—ate it up. Adamski wrote two books about his experiences with the Venusians which included a trip into space of which he produced more bad photographs. Shortly after that, Adamski was on television and speaking engagements. He was loved in Europe as well and even met the Queen of the Netherlands. He claimed also to have been invited to the Vatican for a little one-on-one with the pope, although Vatican officials deny this.

But who was George Adamski really? How did he just pop into the public eye just like that with a story that anyone could have made up and trying to prove it with photographs just about anyone could have done a better job of fabricating? Well, George was a talker, it seems, more than he was a listener. He did eventually brag about four high-level government scientists at the Point Loma Naval Electronics Laboratory near San Diego launching his career as earth’s liaison to the Space Brothers. He said they also operated out of another “setup” in Pasadena. It was they who helped him fabricate his photographs, as rank amateurish as I found them (and I first saw them when I was about twelve).

User Image
A frame from footage of what Adamski claimed to be of a Venusian scout-ship. In reality, it appears to be the lid of a type of water cooler that good ol’ George just happened to sell for a living.

Adamski also said that he had help in Europe from an intelligence officer in the British Army. This was no lie for author Jacques Vallee had met the man and spoken with him. This man told Vallee that Adamski (“Good ol’ George” as he called him) traveled under a passport with special privileges. Those who knew Adamski well also knew he regarded the whole saucer business as a lot of malarkey. But he made that malarkey work in his favor. My contention is that he could not have done it by himself. And from what Adamski himself said, he didn’t.
User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #11 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 9:48pm »

Tall Venusians, Nordic Angels and Hot Chicks (Cont)


But was Adamski really the first contactee? Hard to say. Daniel Frye claimed to have made contact with ETs in the California desert in 1949 but never came forward until 1954 where he promptly failed a lie detector test. There was also the case of Orfeo Angelucci also of California. Angelucci worked the night-shift in a plastics factory that made parts for the Air Force’s radarscopes. Heading home from work on May 24, 1952, Angelucci saw a glowing red orb trailing his car. He felt a “queer prickling electrical sensation.” The object then shot up and over his car and hovered there. Releasing two small, fluorescent green discs that descended and hovered just above his car. A voice issued from one or both discs saying, “Have no fear, Orfeo, for we are friends. You are communing with friends from another planet.” The discs projected some kind of a screen in front of him and on that screen appeared the faces of a man and woman who, like Adamski’s Venusian, were of ineffable beauty and nobility. For the next two hours, the three of them had a telepathic talk about things. They told Orfeo, for example, that every man, woman and child on earth were recorded on crystalline discs.

User Image
Orfeo Angelucci

They told him that he was one of only three human beings specially selected for communication by this space race, the others being in Italy and India. The aliens told Orfeo many things about UFOs and talked about the Mantell case that I posted about earlier. According to Orfeo’s alien handlers, Mantell had only pursued a small disc. Strange since Mantell himself and all other witnesses who had seen the object he pursued all agreed that its size was “tremendous” or “huge.” After their talk ended, the aliens promised to contact Orfeo again and then they vanished into the sky.

Nearly two months later, on July 23rd at 10 p.m., Orfeo saw a thirty-foot wide object sitting in a vacant lot. He approached and entered it. He saw a translucent chair and received a telepathic command to sit in it, which he did. Orfeo found himself traveling in space. He looked down upon a globe surrounded by rainbows and was told that it was earth. Orfeo also saw a huge triple-decker dirigible-like object at least 1000 feet long and some ninety feet high from which issued the music of the spheres. “Rotors” of flame issued at each end of it (interesting flame that can burn in an airless vacuum at absolute zero). He was taken back to earth and told to tell everyone about his experience. Orfeo saw no living figures during this particular meeting. Angelucci went on the lecture- and talk-circuit being sponsored spiritually (and we can assume financially) by a weekly radio evangelist who broadcast out of Buffalo.

Not until August 2, 1953 did Angelucci meet the saucer entities again. This occurred at 2 p.m. Apparently receiving a telepathic command to come to a certain road bridge, Orfeo saw a man in a seamless blue uniform emerge from the shadows under the bridge. Orfeo called him “Neptune.” Neptune afforded Angelucci glimpses of earth’s prehistory where humankind had attained great heights of technology. Back then, humanity lived an idyllic sort of existence until they blasted the planet Lucifer that orbited between Mars and Jupiter, creating the asteroid belt (odd when one considers that Lucifer is the planet Venus). After that, humanity fell into suffering and ruin and only in the last few thousand years has begun to rise again. Neptune spoke in pseudo-Buddhistic terms about our world being an illusion and all existence is suffering, sin and sorrow. Neptune also launched into a McCarthy-like tirade against communism and leftism which he compared to venomous snakes. Basically, Neptune was a New Age Right-Wing Quasi-Christian Fundamentalist. Not surprising since a rich evangelist was apparently footing all of Orfeo’s bills. Neptune finished his discourse, worthy of an Ayn Rand award for loquacious philosophical rambling, by asking Orfeo for a drink. Angelucci ran out to the drug store and bought his space brother a bottle of orange pop, deciding against the purchase of anything a little stronger.

Like Adamski, Orfeo had a limited education, and his story was being ghost-written for him by a Santa Monica freelance reporter. The freelancer implied that Orfeo’s saucer entities were Venusians that they made their first appearance back in March of 1953 at an L.A. newspaper office. They stood about 6’6” and had bluish skin, pricked ears, “jointless” hands, high-cheekbones, “a sort of Oriental countenance” and apparent psychic abilities. They were “full of vibrations” whatever that means. They dressed in “loose, shoddy clothing” (they were a type of sailor after all) and claimed to have come to earth from Venus and had landed their little disc ship on the floor of the Mojave Desert. The freelancer claims that the Venusians (curiously different from Adamski’s) were in touch with a reporter named Jim Phelan and that they had demonstrated to Phelan some amazing physical abilities. At one point, one of the Venusians used his fingernail to score a quarter-inch deep scratch into a desktop made of very hard wood. He then told Phelan that he could pick up the entire desk and hurl it out the window to the street below if he’d like. Phelan declined the offer and got the two Venusians a job “in a law office of a department run by the municipality of Los Angeles.” Doing what, I don’t know. While there, one of the beings supposedly took a piece of steel and, with his thumb, made a half-inch deep indentation even though 1800 p.s.i. would have been necessary to fracture the steel (and the steel was indented rather than fractured). A metallurgist supposedly examined the steel and determined that where it had been indented were fourteen elements not present in the rest of the steel (naturally, no info exists on whether these elements were even on periodic tables current at that time). The Venusians were also put on the trail of missing persons whom they located in only a couple of hours compared the LAPD’s record of two or three weeks (naturally, there are no names provided for verification purposes of missing persons they had supposedly located).

The freelancer himself claims to have met one of the Venusians in June of 1953 at 6 p.m. when the being “dematerialized” (?) in front of him at a bus stop on Santa Monica Boulevard. He told the freelancer to “Just call me ‘Bill’.” Of course, “Bill” was 6’6” with bluish skin and a sort of Oriental countenance and all that. “Bill” then told the freelancer about Orfeo Angelucci, whom the freelancer claims he had never heard of before. “Bill” claimed that Angelucci was the first human being ever to fly into space in a flying saucer. Not a claim calculated to endear him to Adamski. It was “Bill” we learn that had requested the freelancer to ghost-write Orfeo’s story and “Bill” also put the freelancer in touch with Phelan who had told him about all these amazing things with the desk and the steel.

When another Santa Monican man read about “Bill,” he called the freelancer up and wished to talk with him. He wanted him to prove his story. The freelancer said that he could and that he might even bring a Venusian with him for this man to meet. The freelancer promised to be at a certain location at a certain time but, as luck would have it, never showed. Perhaps he had gone on a flying saucer trip instead. So ends the saga of Orfeo Angelucci and his mysterious benefactors.

But once you get the crazy Californians on a roll, they don’t stop. Our next contactee was a California mechanic named Truman Bethurum. In 1954, Bethurum got his account of contact with UFO entities published in a book titled Aboard a Flying Saucer. He claimed to have had his first contact in 1953.

The UFO was captained by one Aura Rhanes whom Bethurum describes in his book as “a fine figure of a woman in looks, and has a masculine mind. She wears a black and red beret.” She referred to her ship as a “scow,” which Bethurum stated was about 300 feet long and thirty feet thick. Aura Rhanes claimed to have come from a world hidden behind our moon called Clarion. The scow had come to earth for both educative purposes and also to “replenish our atmosphere tanks; for when we travel in space we, in our scow, are sealed in tight.” She also told Bethurum that her crew was here for “relaxation.” These saucer entities were more or less neutral unlike Angelucci’s violet love entities. They apparently did not hold a high opinion of us but, wrote Bethurum, admire our Atlantic fleets on maneuvers.

User Image
Truman Bethurum
User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #12 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 9:54pm »

Tall Venusians, Nordic Angels and Hot Chicks (Cont.)


The scow had no vents or exhausts but did have a door that, when shut tight, left no seam. The craft also disappeared in sunlight and could remain completely invisible. Aura Rhanes demonstrated for Bethurum how they defend themselves from attack by making a flashlight of his simply vanish into thin air. “That is how your people would go,” said Captain Rhanes, “if they attacked our scow.” After about a half an hour, Bethurum was deposited back on terra firma. No sooner did his foot touch soil than the craft was instantly gone. But Bethurum also claimed to have seen Captain Rhanes and crew in a roadside café in Nevada drinking lemonade after which they simply vanished.

Honestly, how could these people land book deals without someone standing behind them pulling strings? There were even worse contactee stories such Buck Nelson who claimed to have met an absurd troupe of ETs in 1954—what amounted to the wackiest ship in the space fleet. Yes, the public was fascinated with flying saucers in those wild, heady days of the fifties but these were stories anyone could make up. All you needed was chutzpah and a bankroll. Where does a mechanic, a plastics worker, and a burger chef get a bankroll from? Angelucci’s evangelist benefactor raises my eyebrow because intelligence operatives frequently assume such roles (Fred Crisman allegedly did for a time).

By November 11, 1953, the dark side of contactee-ism began to emerge. Once again, California provided the setting. Karl Hunrath, an electrician and former follower of Adamski, and Wilbur J. Wilkinson, radio technician for the Hoffmann Radio Corporation, both of Los Angeles, rented a small plane, in Wilkinson’s name, at Gardena Airport. They did not file a flight plan but were merely to fly around the airport for about an hour. The airport is flat and there was no crash so we can only surmise that Hunrath and Wilkinson took off for the desert. Regardless of what happened, the two men did not return. By March of 1954, not a trace of the men or their plane was found. As far as I know, they have not been found to this day.

What has this to do with contactees? Wilkinson’s wife stated that she believed both her husband and Mr. Hunrath had been “abducted by flying saucers in a California desert.” On the walls of Wilkinson’s garage were found unknown “glyphs” drawn by Wilkinson before his untimely departure. Apparently, Hunrath & Wilkinson had built a very complex ham radio set called "BOSCO" and began receiving mysterious signals that he and Hunrath believed were transmissions from a “saucer fleet.” Wilkinson had supposedly contacted one of the saucers and began a conversation with them. Supposedly, he had made tape recordings of these conversations. Apparently, the saucer entity, named Prince Reggs, claimed to be from a planet called Maser. The entity was also teaching Wilkinson the Maserian alphabet or ideogram system. It was this mysterious alphabet whose glyphs appeared on the walls of Wilkinson’s garage. They resemble the petroglyphs of ancient aboriginal peoples in the Americas and the Pacific. Supposedly, the glyphs are an account of his and Hunrath’s contact with this saucer fleet which had set down somewhere in the desert.

Apparently, Prince Reggs wanted to meet both men out there and so they rented a plane to get to the desired location. Perhaps the men ran out of fuel and crashed, perhaps the treacherous down drafts of the mountainous regions did them in. No one knows. Both men and the plane they rented seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.

But our story doesn’t end here! It gets more interesting. Two other men were trying to get their own contactee book published. They claimed to be in communication via ouija board and shortwave radio with saucer entities from none other but the planet Maser! They too claimed to have learned the Maserian alphabet through the process of channeling and automatic writing through which they encountered the name of Prince Regga of Maser. But they took it one step further by saying that Maser was really the moon! In the course of their channelings, they also met up with another entity named Zo—a being who hailed from Neptune and had seven children and a sort of summer cottage on Mars.

One of the men claimed to be an anthropologist as well as an authority on prehistory and Indian dances while the other claimed only to be a student of philosophy and science (albeit employed in some fashion by the Santa Fe and New Mexico railroad). Mr. Anthropologist had also signed an affidavit claiming to have witnessed George Adamski’s conversation with his Nordic Venusian. An odd claim being that Adamski claimed to have been entirely alone. Apparently we are free to assume the anthropologist was one of the Professor’s six disciples who had accompanied him to the desert.

The anthropologist was George Hunt Williamson, a mystic and saucer enthusiast. Williamson was a fascinating character who wrote some interesting books such as Road in the Sky and Other Tongues, Other Flesh. Williamson often told people his real name was Michel d’Obrenovic—even Jacques Vallee believed it—but this is false. But then, Williamson wasn’t really an anthropologist either.

The California publisher who was apparently contracted to print up the book began receiving anonymous calls from someone making threats to bomb the printery. The prime suspect was Wilbur Wilkinson who had been very vocal that these other two fellows had stolen his and Hunrath’s work. So we can surmise that Hunrath and Wilkinson either had or were planning a book deal of their own.

What happened next is only my guess, but it would appear that Hunrath and Wilkinson may have used their equipment to get back in touch with whoever was posing as Prince Reggs and explained the problem to him. Prince Reggs then told the men to come out to the desert where the saucer fleet would be waiting and he would give them some kind of proof that would put an end to the dispute once and for all. Reggs may have offered to take the men to another planet as Wilkinson had told people prior to his departure that they should not be surprised if he disappeared and that if this happened, it was because he had left for another planet on a saucer driven by the space brethren. Hunrath and Wilkinson then flew into the desert to meet this saucer fleet and either crashed by accident or were made to crash. So who was Prince Reggs? Did the other two fellows steal Hunrath’s and Wilkinson’s data? Was the data given to both parties in order to play one off against the other? If so, was it done to eliminate Hunrath and Wilkinson? Did they become a problem in some way? Unless some trace of the men or their plane is ever found, there is no way to be sure.

User Image
User Image
Wilbur J. Wilkinson and George Hunt Williamson.

While we can be sure that some contactees were just publicity hounds and crackpots off their rockers, others simply can’t be that easily dismissed. We’ve already pointed out that Adamski appeared to be a little too well connected. There is also evidence that Adamski had once been a cohort of William Dudley Pelley. During the thirties, Pelley started a pro-fascist group called the “Silver Shirts.” Pelley was also quite the mystic and he not only believed in flying saucers, he believed that white people were descended from a Nordic-type “Aryan” space race. Then when Adamski has his “encounter” in the Californian desert in 1952, his Venusian is just such a being. Later on, another famous contactee, Howard Menger, would also claim contact with Venusians who appeared to be identical in every way to Adamski’s. Menger also had photos of his encounters and even his Venusian spaceships looked like Adamski’s. Was it all a set-up? Obviously. Among Menger’s photos were supposed close-ups of the moon when he claimed he was taken on a tour of part of the solar system by his Venusian hosts. The photos are obviously not of large craters and mountains but what looks like, and undoubtedly was, a dirt-clod or small, pitted rock photographed up close.

User Image
Howard Menger.

Pelley was outspoken against Roosevelt and war with Germany because he staunchly supported Hitler. He was imprisoned for eight years starting in 1942. After his release, he went on to found Soulcraft and published a racist mystical magazine called Valor. He also wrote a book called Star Guests in 1950.

That same year, Pelley started a close association with contactee George Hunt Williamson. Williamson had co-authored UFOs Confidential with John J. McCoy of Corpus Christi. The book claimed that the solution to the entire UFO enigma was being suppressed by a cabal of Jewish bankers. This, however, seemed to be McCoy’s feelings rather than Williamson’s. Williamson’s solo efforts contained no racist or anti-Semitic rants. Williamson later assured Jacques Vallee that he never embraced the racial ideologies of Pelley or McCoy and he seemed to be sincere about this.

User Image

Also from Corpus Christi were the Stanford brothers, Ray and Rex. They too were part of the contactee movement. They wrote a spate of books on the subject in the fifties, one of which McCoy co-authored. Ray Stanford later wrote a popular book on the Marian apparitions of Fatima, Lourdes, and Zeitoun.
« Last Edit: Aug 6th, 2007, 9:58pm by globus1 » User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #13 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 10:01pm »

Tall Venusians, Nordic Angels and Hot Chicks


The link between racist and pro-fascist groups, contactees, and certain individuals within the military-industrial complex is impossible to ignore. For instance, after World War II, Aleister Crowley set up a branch of his Templar cult in Los Angeles. His right-hand man in this endeavor was the brilliant but very eccentric Jack Parsons. Parsons was a jet propulsion engineer who claimed to have met a Venusian in the California desert in 1946. He went on to help found both Jet Propulsion Laboratories and Aerojet Corporation. All that time, he was fervently attempting to create “the Moon Child” that Crowley had spoken of so much. He was also keeping Crowley abreast of his experiments in this area. The Los Angeles cult also brought in L. Ron Hubbard, whom Crowley greatly disliked but who seemed to have a strong hold on Parsons’ mind. Hubbard would go on to give us Scientology and his famous e-meters were the direct forerunner of the modern polygraph.

The Aryan Nations was started by the late Richard Girnt Butler, who was an engineer at the Tri-Star Jet plant in Palmdale, California. He converted an Army colonel, William Potter Gale, to the racist cause and Gale would become one of its most violent haranguers, giving radio sermons about the “impending anti-Christian bloodbath.” Aryan Nations sprang out of the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian located in Los Angeles and run by the virulent Klan preacher Wesley Swift. Swift was friends with George Van Tassell who was another fifties contactee who was also friends with William Dudley Pelley. In fact, both Swift and another major Klan leader, Gerald L. K. Smith, were former-Silver Shirts.

Pelley was also heavily involved in Guy Ballard’s I AM cult. I AM is a strange mystical movement located at Mt. Shasta in (where else?) California, a mountain they hold as sacred. Much of the Silver Shirt membership were also members of I AM. Pelley and George Adamski, who also associated with I AM, likely met each other through Ballard’s cult. Virtually every UFO and contactee cult in existence is tied in some manner to I AM. Perhaps the most famous of these today is Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Church Universal and Triumphant who, like I AM, venerate St. Germaine, whom they hold to be some sort of immortal, guiding force. Dr. Andrija Puharich also sprang out of I AM through the patronage of Dr. Charles Laughead who associated with the group and then with Puharich (Laughead supposedly founded Lockheed—the corporate name being a variation of his own). While I’ve not had the opportunity to research Heaven’s Gate, I’ll guarantee nonetheless that it will be found to be tied into I AM somewhere, somehow.

The very term “New Age” supposedly comes from a 1942 booklet entitled On the Divine Mission of Nippon—A Prophecy of the Dawn of a New Age by Fujisawa Chikao, a blatant fascist who espoused the belief that Japan was the cradle of all civilization and the Japanese people were destined to play a major role in world affairs which would culminate in a Pax Nipponica weltanshauung united under the emperor. Capitalism and communism were inferior and corrupt ideologies, said Fujisawa, but fascism was closest to what he envisioned as the most conducive for the divine mission of Japan.

Fujisawa wrote: “It is the foremost axiom of the Way of the Gods that without the Japanese Emperor no nations of the world would have ever come into existence, because he proves the sole successor to the Progenitress of the whole cosmos—the Sun Goddess.”

He explains: “In the prehistoric age, mankind formed a single world-wide family system with the Japanese Emperor as its head. Japan was highly respected as the land of parents, while all other lands were called the lands of children, or the branch lands. ... the prehistoric civilization of Japan, whose records are found scattered in some chapters of the Holy Bible.”

Fujisawa accounts for the disunity that developed: “According to our ancient historical narratives, 'the world order' with Japan functioning as its absolute, unifying center collapsed in consequence of repeated occurrences of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tidal waves, and glaciers, and due to these tremendous cataclysms, all mankind became estranged geographically and spiritually from the parent-land of Japan, to the detriment of world peace. As it happened, Japan was immune miraculously from all these natural catastrophes, and its Divine Sovereigns, enjoying a lineage unbroken for ages eternal, have appointed themselves the sacred mission of remoulding this floating and dismembered mankind into a large family community such as existed in the remote prehistoric age.”

Despite his manical ravings, Fujisawa’s booklet had outlined all such fascist ideologies and so it became quite a favorite in certain rightwing and pro-fascist groups. Supposedly, Hitler loved it. And it is apparently where today’s usage of “New Age” derives, believe it or not.
User IP Logged

globus1
Guest
xx Re: Anatomy of a Conundrum
« Reply #14 on: Aug 6th, 2007, 10:04pm »

Intermission


By the end of the fifties, contactee-ism was falling out of favor. It had served many purposes: to throw light on UFO and contactee cults, to defuse the tension the public felt about flying saucers—whatever they were, to gauge the public’s gullibility, to heap ridicule on the subject to make the public less inclined to believe the whole thing, etc. But the innocent romantic notions of beautiful blond Venusians, tall blue-tinged psychic giants, and sexy olive-skinned female ship captains in red and black berets, were losing their charm.

Despite the romantic “Happy Days” notions we have today about the fun, innocent, care-free 50s where everyone wore a leather jacket and looked and talked cool and listened to doo-wop and rockabilly at the local rootbeer stand where gum-popping, wise-cracking gals with beehive hairdos and roller skates took your order, the truth was that many parents were infuriated and fearful of their children listening to this “jigaboo” music.

We laugh today when we see old footage of young, white kids with greased hair or poodle skirts dancing blissfully to Little Richard and Chuck Berry songs, but many whites saw this as a clear sign that white society was being “dragged down to the level of the Negro” and that this could only mean that American civilization was teetering on the brink of collapse. Rocknroll was obviously a commie plot designed to rot American culture from the inside out. Violence and murder against blacks was rampant and society still rigidly segregated.

On top of that, the Vietnam War was heating up as the release of books as The Ugly American proved. In fact, the very title of the book showed a shift in the public consciousness about America’s role in the world.

We went from good ol’ GI Joe fighting Hitler while handing out gum and chocolate for the kids to imperialists turning Cuba into its own personal whorehouse while enticing the very Nazis we fought against to come live in the United States at taxpayer expense. Also the dropping of the atomic bomb was slowly starting to catch up with us. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time but now we were seeing photos and footage of old people, women and children crying, burned, maimed, irradiated, sick, dying—surely this was not the enemy that the bomb was intended for.

Moreover, the bomb had now opened a whole new era of warfare. We were haunted by images of the bright flash, the darkening sky, the fire cloud, black mushroom cloud rising to the sky, the spreading ring of destructing and radiation racing outwards from its base. We had dropped this on people, we had stolen someone’s island and done this to it while tricking our own soldiers into volunteering to stand there and take it. The Ugly American had developed a technology that would surely propel the world forward into a new Dark Age.

Contactee-ism then was not characteristic of the boundless optimism of a fun faddish time; it provided comic relief not only about UFOs themselves, which many rightfully felt was no laughing matter, but it provided a distraction for the racial divisiveness, the Cold War, and the commie scare. Americans of the 50s lived a paradoxical existence—staunchly anti-Communist and ready to turn in anybody who looked like a duck, walked like a duck, quacked like a duck and was therefore a duck—and yet lived in terror that they might themselves be labeled “commie” or “pinko” which was the kiss of death. “Joe McCarthy deserves to be applauded for having the guts to go after those Hollywood Jew-boys making movies about racism and imperialism and showing everyone how well off they really weren’t—sure—go get ‘em, Joe! But…what if a neighbor or coworker points the finger at me? Then what?” So contactee-ism was really a form of escapism that used the very symbol of secret governments and unknown technologies—the flying saucer—as a vehicle to spread love, brotherhood, and a sense of being part of something larger and more grand—the Space Brothers, the Galactic Council, etc.

But with the fall of McCarthy, the nation could breathe a sigh of relief. Even though the average citizen was a full and willing participant with McCarthy to hound and ruin anyone he cared to label a communist, there was still relief that now there would be no chance for it to spread unchecked and cancerous into their own lives. But McCarthy’s demise was a two-edged sword. Each citizen now realized, “I really am on my own. I can’t depend anyone else.” America’s vocal apprehension about the use of the bomb as a new weapon of war was sheer hypocrisy when contrasted to its yet unvoiced apprehension about its own use of the same over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After all, the footage showing the Japanese man with his ears seared to a crisp and horrible burns on the side of his face and his hair singed off didn’t look like the brutal, subhuman, Jap-jabbering killer that we had been taught to hate during the war; he simply looked like some poor guy silently suffering from a terrible disease. He was somebody’s son. And Americans were forced to ask themselves, “What if that was my son?” America was forced to silently appeal to some unknown greater power: “Please tell us that we did the right thing. Please tell us it was necessary. Please don’t let us find out that we dropped those bombs just to see what they could do.” And there was no one to answer. And those flying saucer entities weren’t here to reassure us that we had done the right thing. They were here to accuse of us of a most terrible crime against humanity.

We had gone against nature, we had overstepped our boundaries. This manifested itself in a spate of giant mutant insect movies where atomic testing—man’s continuous fiddling with nature—would come back in a most awful way to haunt him for his arrogance and thoughtlessness. We were symbolically punishing ourselves for developing and using the bomb both for its immediate and long-term effects. Similarly, we were no longer interested in Space Brothers and Galactic Councils, rather, movies showed bubble-headed, bug-eyed humanoids with no empathy or compassion shambling out of landed saucers and invading our towns, terrorizing us.

And it wasn’t the Army or government that defeated them but doo-wop dancing teenaged kids and rockabilly rebels in black leather who banded together to fight off this terrible threat after being blown off and ignored by the police and the military. IOW, the old order had brought this on us and so we cannot depend on them, the New Ones, the young and strong, had to step up and do it themselves. The kids were questioning and rejecting the ideals and values of their parents and the establishment. They didn’t understand! New enemies were presenting themselves—enemies the establishment could not see or hear because they were blinded and deafened by their own ignorance and arrogance. And if our music still wasn’t loud enough to drown out their endless yacking, then it would have to become even louder and it would have to terrify them even more!

And when the innocence of the flying saucers had worn off by the late 50s, and the Vietnam War loomed big and threatening on the horizon, a new enemy was there indeed.
User IP Logged

Pages: 1 2 3  ...  5 Notify Send Topic Print
« Previous Topic | Next Topic »

Become a member of the UFO Casebook Forum today and join our more than 12,000 members.

Visit the UFO Casebook Web Site


New Monthly Ad-Free Plan!

$6.99 Gets 50,000 Ad-Free Pageviews!
| Free Shoutboxes | Refresh Text |

This Board Hosted For FREE By Conforums ©
Get Your Own Free Message Board!