Where is UFOlogy at in 2015?

[Wombaticus Rex]

Some unsolicited testimony from a Vermont-centric site that I lurk about on:
http://vtdigger.org/2013/08/08/a-cold-w ... ment-66194

From 1956-1957 when I was a First Lieutenant on active duty in the Air Force, I was assigned as a Radar Controller at an AC&W site in Highlands, NJ. We were, as was the site on East Mountain, a unit of the Air Defense Command (not of SAC as suggested in Mr. Jardine’s article) and were responsible for identifying all incoming aicraft from the Atlantic Ocean towards our eastern coast, specifically covering the area from Montauk, at the eastern point of Long Island, to Philadelphia. If we were unable to make a postive ID of an aircraft via it’s flight plan to which we had reference or by it’s specific position which showed up on the radar, then we scrambled fighters from McGuire Air Force Base, NJ (from which I also did my regular flying as an Air Force pilot) or from Newcastle AFB and Dover AFB in Delaware or Suffolk County AFB on Long Island.

We, too, had numerous sightings of UFO’s as reported to us by both Air Force and by commercial airline pilots with all of whom we had constant communication. In the case of larger aircraft, many of the sightings were being confirmed by multiple crew members aboard the reporting aircraft. Infrequently, we witnessed the alleged UFO’s on our own radar.

Among the more interesting experiences I had while on duty during the 4PM to midnight shift was the sinking of the Andrea Doria off the Nantucket coast. We had marked the spot on our screens where the sinking occurred and vectored both aircraft and ships to the site all night long. We also were a primary controller to vector emergency aircraft to the site of an accident of a South American commercial aircraft which took off from JFK one evening and crashed somewhere along its ocean flight path (I can no longer recall all the details) to its S. American destination.

[Wombaticus Rex]

National Security Archives put up a huge U-2 spyplane / Area 51 post today:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/

The Secret History of the U-2

US Spy Planes Targeted China to Help India; Used British Crews to "Confuse the Soviets" and Overflew French Nuclear Sites

Groom Lake/Area 51 Finally Declassified

Less Redacted CIA History Released Under FOIA

[Sounder]

My bias has been to see UFO's as being psychical projections. Given that the style of UFO's reflects the style of the day, a logical conclusion is that they are man made or they are psychical projections. Gurulllia make the point better I could.

http://auticulture.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... ce-part-7/


From the Whitley Strieber thread.

That is where UFOlogy is in 2013.

[elfismiles]

... makin the rounds ...

The Government Now Admits There's an 'Area 51'
National Security Archive / AP
Philip Bump / Aug 15, 2013
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national ... -51/68389/

National Security Archives put up a huge U-2 spyplane / Area 51 post today:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/

The Secret History of the U-2

US Spy Planes Targeted China to Help India; Used British Crews to "Confuse the Soviets" and Overflew French Nuclear Sites

Groom Lake/Area 51 Finally Declassified

Less Redacted CIA History Released Under FOIA

[tazmic]

My bias has been to see UFO's as being psychical projections. Given that the style of UFO's reflects the style of the day, a logical conclusion is that they are man made or they are psychical projections.

Or that the reports are man made? Surely the possibility of a culturally contingent interpretation is even more relevant when we are talking about the explicitly unidentified.

Mind you. If we don't have a dualistic metaphysics but also accept the reality of what one would otherwise consider 'otherworldly' it makes me wonder what advanced technology could actually amount to.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

This piece from The Raw Story has a particularly condescending headline:

CIA crushes UFO conspiracy theorists’ hopes and dreams with Area 51 documents
By Scott Kaufman
Friday, August 16, 2013 11:13 EDT



Newly declassified documents with the dry title “Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974″ reveal that Area 51, long thought by conspiracy theorists to house debris from a crashed extraterrestrial vehicle, was merely a testing site for government spy planes. CIA officials had acknowledged the facility’s existence before, but this marks the first time documents have referred to it by name and addressed its purpose. The report makes no mention of its status after 1974.

The U-2 was a lightweight, single-engine plane that flew [10,000] feet higher than any other plane during that period. The report states that “high-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect — a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).” According to the documents, “U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.” The Air Force responded to reports by linking to them to weather-related phenomena, but the distinctively man-made shape of the planes made residents suspicious.

So too did the secretive behavior of many associated with the facility: “As the deliveries of U-2 airframes to the testing site increased, a major logistic problem arose: how to transfer Lockheed employees from Burbank to Area 51 without arousing a great deal of curiosity.”

Area 51 staff eventually settled on flying essential personnel to and from the facility early Monday morning and late Friday evening, despite fears that the latter would make them especially conspicuous to locals.

The release of these documents is unlikely to end the debate about what actually transpired at Area 51, as much of it is still redacted.

Ummm...question: if Area 51 is supposed to be the place where the remains of the Roswell UFO crash of 1947 were examined, and the recently declassified CIA documents about Area 51 date from 1954-1974, how exactly were any conspiracy theorist's hopes and dreams crushed?

[justdrew]

why is it up to the CIA? I would have though the NRO or something else would oversee spy plane operation.

[elfismiles]

A local friend runs a good basic UFO website http://www.SightingsReport.com

Here is a recent vid he did on the Stephenville, Texas UFO sightings

New Stephenville, Texas, UFO radar data video

https://www.sightingsreport.com/blog_po ... data-video

2008 Stephenville Texas UFO Radar Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiTqlIld1fE

Published on Aug 15, 2013

Video of radar data during the January 8, 2008, UFO incident in the Stephenville, Texas, area. This video superimposes a map under the radar animation and provides annotations to show witness locations and the unknown tracks on radar.

The radar analysis and information shown is from "Stephenville Lights: A Comprehensive Radar and Witness Report Study" by Glen Schulze and Robert Powell. Please refer to the report for details of the witness reports and analysis:
http://www.ufocasebook.com/pdf/mufonste ... report.pdf

Radar animation provided by Rob Jeffs and RADARplot as seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwsbSx...

Law enforcement witness illustrations courtesy of StephenvilleLights.com.

For more information, visit our Stephenville Lights Information Page:
https://www.sightingsreport.com/Stephenville

[seemslikeadream]

Area 51 a Place of Secrets—and Government Evasion


Posted on Aug 21, 2013
Wikimedia Commons/Jimderkaisser (CC BY-SA 2.0).

It turns out there was more going on than UFO conspiracy-inducing tests at the government’s not-so-secret “Area 51” out in the Nevada desert.

“Area 51 was more than a national security site; it was also an alleged crime scene, and at least two good men may have died from what occurred there,” attorney Jonathan Turley charges in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. “They were not hurt by aliens but by their own government, which refused to declassify information they needed to understand what had happened to them.”

Turley, a lawyer for workers who sued the federal government over what they believe were workplace-based illnesses, said employees in Area 51 were regularly exposed to smoke from open pits in which old equipment and unspecified hazardous wastes were burned. But the government, invoking national security concerns, stonewalled requests for information that could have helped the workers seek treatment for subsequent illnesses.

And being the workers’ lawyer was no walk in the park, Turley writes:

During the 1990s, I represented Area 51 workers in two lawsuits. The suits, which forced the first official recognition of the base — though not its name — were the first against a “black facility,” one whose very existence is denied by the government. Over the course of the litigation, the contents of my office were classified, I was threatened with arrest, workers and their families were threatened with prosecution and we had to go as far as Moscow to find images to prove the existence of the base.

The story is reminiscent of the catch-22 that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barry Siegel (disclosure: Siegel is a friend and former colleague at the Los Angeles Times) exposed in his book, “Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, A Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets,” about the federal government’s lies in court over the nature of a classified Air Force flight that crashed in 1948, killing several civilian engineers aboard.

That case helped establish the legal precedent for the government’s ability to avoid courtroom disclosures by claiming to do so would expose state secrets, even though records later showed that the only thing secret about the flight was that the Air Force failed to properly maintain the plane. By invoking “state secrets,” the government kept the victims’ families from recovering damages.

Turley, who teaches public interest law at George Washington University, writes that the government’s official stance on the existence of Area 51, and the work done there, has left the victims hanging, and government officials unaccountable.

“The burning at Area 51 was in all likelihood a federal crime,” he writes. “But the government escaped responsibility by hiding behind secrecy.”

[elfismiles]

'Let's have a ball and a biscuit, sugah!'
By Billy Cox, Herald-Tribune / Tuesday, August 20, 2013
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/1 ... uit-sugah/


http://www.ufomind.com/area51/articles/1996/

ACTUAL VERBAL TRANSCRIPT
CBS-TV -- 60 MINUTES
March 17, 1996.

Transcribed with permission.
Public domain. Distribute without editing.

This 60 Minutes segment orignally aired on March 17, 1996. It follows the
controversy at a top secret air base which supposedly doesnít exist. For
more information regarding the lawsuit and / or Area 51, point your web
brouser at:
http://www.cris.com/~psyspy/area51/


Leslie Stahl: Why this story is called Area 51 / Catch 22 will become
clear as it unfolds. But letís start at the beginning... What if we told
you that someone is dumping truck loads of toxic waste in open trenches,
and setting it on fire, endangering the health and lives of everyone down
wind? Youíd probably want the government to prosecute. After all, it is
a federal crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and a one million
dollar fine. But what if we then told you that the perpetrator, the one
who is doing the open pit burning, is the government. In this case, the
United States Department of Defense. Well thatís exactly what dozens of
government whistle blowers are charging. The problem is, they canít prove
it. Because it took place at a top, top secret air force base, that
officially, doesnít exist.

Stahl: Las Vegas, McKaren Airport. Every morning, civilian contractors,
test pilots, and others, board unmarked planes with whited out windows.
They are flying to an air force installation that has never appeared on
federal aviation pilot charts, or U.S. geological survey maps. It exists
only in what is called the "black world". A place so sensitive, that only
those who take an oath of secrecy for life are allowed in.

Stahl: The perimeter of the base is blanketed with ground sensors and
listening devices, and patrolled by security guards in unmarked white
jeeps who are authorized to use deadly force to keep intruders out. They
kept a close watch on us as we approached the border. This is as close as
you can get to the base, which is thirteen miles back off (points behind
her) in this direction. Itís known as Area 51, Groom Lake, Dreamland,
any one of a dozen names depending on who you ask. But just donít ask
anyone at the defense department. They donít want to talk about it.

Stahl: But Jonathan Turley is only too happy to talk about it. Heís a
law professor representing Area 51 employees, past and present, who say
they not only witnessed dumping of toxic waste at the base, but in many
cases participated in it. Turley is suing the government on their behalf,
trying to get the defense department to acknowledge the burning, and to
get a federal court order barring it from happening again. He isnít
asking for punitive damages, all he wants is information about what toxins
his clients were exposed to, and help paying their medical bills.

Stahl: But heís been about as successful as we were in getting the
defense department to say anything about the base, seen here by a nearby
mountaintop, even that it exists.

Jonathan Turley: Oh, they would not confirm itís existence or itís non
existence.

Stahl: They wouldnít say it wasnít there. They wouldnít say that it was
there?

Turley: Right. The only problem of course is that you can see the damn
base from public land. You can take a picture of it. This is in the
middle of the desert!. Itís a large facility. Itís about as concealable
as a pig in the parlor.

Stahl: And about as secret. UFO groupies from around the world,
convinced that the air force is hiding flying saucers there, trek to the
perimeter of the base by the busload. There is an Area 51 research
center, an Area 51 viewers guide, and in downtown Las Vegas, the base that
doesnít exist has a bar and a video game named after it.

Turley: We finally said listen, if you are going to deny the obvious,
then we are going to prove the obvious. Then I took a series of pictures
and submitted those in evidence. I submitted affidavits of people who
worked there, which said they were real people and this is a real base. I
even had satellites from Russian and French satellites take pictures of
the base

Stahl: The Russians have satellite pictures of this base?

Turley: Not only do they have satellite pictures, under treaty, the
Russians are required to be flown over this base. Itís called..

Stahl: Required?? Required to be flown over this base???

Turley: Yeah, itís called the Open Skies Treaty. The United States
Government must fly the Russians, upon the demand of the Russians, and
other countries over this facility. And they have to do the same at their
bases.

Stahl: And they still deny it existed?

Turley: Yeah!

Stahl: "They" meaning the Pentagon?

Turley: Right..You sorta sit there and ya think, ya know.. this is like
an out take of Maxwell Smart.. (laughs) These guys are gonna grab a
phone or something..

Stahl: After nine months of hand to hand litigation, over whether or not
the base exists, Air Force attorneys in November of 1994 finally confirmed
the obvious. That yes it does exist. But then they dug in on a new
front. This one, over whether or not the base has a name.

Turley: Well the name was important because we have a lot of documents
that show that they had hazardous waste here. Weíve got testimony and
affidavits.

Stahl: You needed to link the name with what you have in your documents..

Turley: Yes, and by denying Area 51, which was the common name, they
made, or at least they tried to make all those documents irrelevant.

Stahl: But if the base has no name, as the Air Force insists, then how
does the Pentagon explain this old film produced by Lockheed Skunk Works,
the legendary defense contractor that flight tested the U2 spy plane, and
the F117 stealth fighter among others, at Area 51? If you look closely,
you can see this man write ëmove out to Area 51í. And how do we know that
those planes were flight tested at the base? We asked Jay Miller, the
man Lockheed Skunk Works hired to write the companiesí official history.

Jay Miller: Once the manuscript was completed, one of the things that the
Department of Defense asked me to do is remove the words Area 51, Groom
Lake, Dreamland, The Ranch, ..those are all names that have been utilized
for this one particular facility.. and uh.. to refer to it as the "test
location".

Stahl: So they didnít mind that you described it, but they did mind that
you named it. Explain that??

Miller: I have no answer for ya, I wish I did.

Stahl: The Air Force also refuses to answer any and all questions about
the dumping of hazardous waste at Area 51, which as we said is why the
workers are suing. Workers like John Doe #1, who is pressing the case
anonymously, since anything he says about the base would violate his oath
of secrecy, a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison.

John Doe #1: (producers altered his voice to mask his identity) You could
not tell anyone that you even worked there. The acknowledgment of the
operating location is strictly forbidden.

Stahl: He and other Area 51 employees say security is so complete that
nothing except the workers ever leaves the base, not even garbage. It is
either burned or buried right there, everything from food scraps, to
jeeps, to jet parts. And those drums of toxic chemicals and wastes used
in classified programs.

Stahl: This former Area 51 worker says the open pit burning was executed
with extraordinary security.

JD#1: There was armed guards which would stop us approximately 100 yards
or even more near the dump area.

Stahl: There were armed guards?

JD#1: Yes..

Stahl: Come on.. Armed with what?

JD#1: Rifles, side arms..

Stahl: You are talking about something thatís in the middle of a totally
secure, secret air base, and in the middle of this, there are armed
guards?

JD#1: Yes maíam..

Stahl: The burning he says, lasted for hours, and generated plumes of
toxic smoke that swept over the base like London fog.

JD#1: Your eyes would water, sting, your throat would go dry, and uh, you
felt like you were drug through a pig pen, so to speak.

Stahl: Do you think that you were exposed to something that was harmful
to your health?

JD#1: Yes. Definitely, yes.

Stahl: And why do you say that?

JD#1: Skin irritation. ..wonít go away. Thereís no cure for it that I
can find.

Stahl: What do you mean by skin irritation? Is it a rash?

JD#1: Cracking, bleeding. Itís gets pretty scaley.

Turley: Not surprisingly, people that were downwind from this operation
became ill. And two of them have died.

Stahl: Youíre absolutely sure they died from the wastes that went up in
this open pit?

Turley: No, Iím not absolutely sure. What Iím trying to find out is
whether they did die because of this.

Stahl: One of those that did die, Robert Frost, also had cracking scaley
skin, which can be caused by exposure to cancer causing chemicals like
dioxin. This anaylsis by a Rutgers University biochemist found
substantial quantities of dioxins in Robert Frostís fatty tissue. He also
found other toxic chemical compounds he couldnít recall having ever seen
in human tissues.

Stahl: Instead of responding to the specific charges, the defense
department asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that neither
the government nor the workers can make their case without divulging top
secret information.

Turley: I donít care if theyíve got Jimmy Hoffa buried in those trenches.
What I care about is whether they burned hazardous waste and exposed my
clients to the burning of those hazardous wastes. We can handle that
without getting into sensitive areas.

Stahl: The Air Force maintains that if they answer your question, then
the enemy will be able to piece together a mosaic about the specific
operations at Area 51.

Turley: Yes, and thatís just facially absurd.

Stahl: Didnít you ever ask them any specifics?

Turley: Yes.

Stahl: Like what?

Turley: Oh, we asked if they have jet fuel there.

Stahl: Jet fuel.. What did they say?

Turley: They said to "admit or deny the presence of jet fuel at an air
base would put American lives in danger."

Stahl: They said that?

Turley: Oh yeah..

Stahl: Címon.. What else did you ask?

Turley: We asked about paint.

Stahl: What ? (laughs)

Turley: Not the magic paint, not the stuff that makes planes disappear..
Paint.. Like in your house.

Stahl: What was the answer?

Turley: "American lives would be put in danger if we answer that
question."

Stahl: No...

Turley: Yeah...

Stahl: What else did you ask?

Turley: Pesticides.

Stahl: Answer?

Turley: "Oh well.. Thatís a national security question." We asked what
about if they have a single discarded car battery.?

Stahl: You actually asked that?

Turley: Yeah..

Stahl: What was there response.

Turley: "This is a top secret question that we could never answer."

Stahl: If itís so top secret, how come this manual distributed to Area 51
employees, identifies a gas station, a paint storage building, and yes,
even a motor pool battery shop all on the base. The manual is available
on the Internet. It was for years, unclassified, and widely distributed
in the public domain. But when Turley introduced it into evidence, the
defense department suddenly classified it, and everything in Turleyís
office that quotes from it including notes and legal briefs.

Stahl: Congressman Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, has been following the Area 51 lawsuit.

Lee Hamilton: The Air Force is classifying all information about Area 51
in order to protect themselves from a lawsuit.

Stahl: The Air Force says, quote, "to reveal this information increases
the risk to the lives of United States personnel, and decreases the
probability of successful mission accomplishment." I mean, thatís very
strong..

Hamilton: Itís very strong and itís completely unsubstantiated. Iím not
personally prepared to take the word of a person who has, or an entity
which has a huge financial stake in the outcome here, that this
information needs to be classified.

Stahl: There in court, a judge agreed with that, and has said yes, that
they can keep these things secret.

Hamilton: I think that judges are often snowed by the national security
establishment.

Stahl: Because of the lawsuit, the Environmental Protection Agency
inspected Area 51 last year for the first time, and prepared a hazardous
waste inventory. They did a hazardous waste inventory, but they wonít
admit there is hazardous waste there. But it gets better because they
stated in court that they would put this facility on the hazardous waste
docket.. Itís a list of federal facilities with hazardous waste. And
they said, "weíre gonna put it on that list." And I said, "Well,
Hello!", "doesnít that mean you have hazardous waste??!!" [Their
response] well, not necessarily...

Stahl: Turley asked to see the hazardous waste inventory, since the law
requires that it be disclosed to the public, unless that is, the President
of the United States personally exempts it. You guessed it.. The Air
Force asked President Clinton for the exemption, and got it.

Turley: There are very comical aspects to this case. The government is
so absurd. And even in my office, we sit there and sort of guffaw they
are claiming these things are secret. But at the end of the day, Iíve got
two dead clients, Iíve got other people who are ill, and Iíve got
defendants who committed crimes. They know they committed crimes. So do
I. And so does the court. And the question is, whether they are going to
be held accountable? Because ultimately, that is what this case is
about. Whether there is something unique about the United States
Government that either makes it accountable or exempt from it own laws.

Stahl: On March 6, 1996, the Federal judge overseeing the lawsuit
dismissed it, ruling that pursuing the case risked "significant harm to
national security". Turley is appealing.

http://www.ufomind.com/area51/articles/ ... 60317.html

[justdrew]

"area 51" get's all the attention. Whatever happened to ol' Hanger 18?

[elfismiles]

"area 51" get's all the attention. Whatever happened to ol' Hanger 18?

I loved that movie as a kid.

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!! SPOILER ALERT !!! SPOILER ALERT !!! SPOILER ALERT !!! SPOILER ALERT !!! SPOILER ALERT !!!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfNh1daJ6ms#t=86m20s

Recently re-watched it and realized it features a "remote controlled plane as missile".

As the researchers discover evidence aboard the spacecraft that the aliens were planning to return to Earth, government agents remotely fly a jet filled with explosives into the hangar — a move aimed at killing off all involved in the cover-up in a final attempt to maintain secrecy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film)#Plot

[Wombaticus Rex]

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... -UFOs.html

Money and Britons join US quest for truth about UFOs

A handful of British stars are helping America's believers mount an increasingly professional-looking search for the truth on UFOs, reports Raf Sanchez

In a conference room two blocks from the White House former members of Congress are being shown photographs of chopped-up cows. Specifically, cows that have been chopped up and had their organs removed by alien visitors to planet Earth.

After a handful of slides, Lynn Woolsey, an ex-congresswoman from California, tilts her head and asks the panel of witnesses in front of her to explain one more time why our extraterrestrial visitors are so interested in bits of bovine. "It's a genetic harvest," comes the patient reply.

The exchange is a fairly typical moment in the course of the five-day Citizen Hearing on Disclosure (CHD), a mock-congressional committee intended to expose the US government's attempt to cover-up its knowledge of UFOs.

But while the claims are familiar - bright lights in the sky, bunkers in the desert, and conspiracy in the White House - the project's scale and ambition is new. Funded with $1.1 million from a Canadian donor, the CHD hired six former politicians to participate in the elaborately-staged hearings in front of banks of television cameras and more than 40 witnesses.

And its end goal? "I would like to see the President of the United States come out one day and say my fellow Americans we are not alone in the universe and we have visitors now," says Stephen Bassett, an organiser who has spent a decade mulling the idea.

At the heart of this earnest American exercise in representative democracy are a handful of British stars.

Speaking in a broad Lincolnshire accent, former British Transport Police detective Gary Heseltine makes a passionate call for the disclosure of government files, at one point being rebuked by a ex-congresswoman for interrupting.

"I believe that that time is now to lift the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the subject for more than 60 years," he tells the panel.

Mr Heseltine's own fascination with UFOs began on a balmy summer night in Scunthorpe in 1975. The then-15-year-old was walking under the stars with his girlfriend when a bright light swooped overhead, seemingly knocking out the power in parts of the village of Ashby below.

Leaping onto his bicycle, he rode furiously and reached his parents' house on Baysdale Road moments before the light crossed above it. "No sooner had it flown over then out went the lights."

Mr Heseltine has no exact date for his close encounter, making it impossible to confirm his account of the power outages, but whatever he saw affected him enough that four decades later he is in Washington offering his testimony to the panel.

"We're sensible people, we're not looney tunes," he says. "All we ask is don't treat us like fools. Listen to the evidence and make your own minds up."

Mr Heseltine's full-throated performance wows many in the American audience and a crowd of admirers cluster around him afterward, including one woman who urgently describes photographs of alien bodies that a friend sent to her.

On the other side of the UFO community's broad church is Nick Pope, a bookish-looking former civil servant who spent three years studying sightings for the Ministry of Defence.

Unlike Mr Heseltine and many of his fellow Ufologists, Mr Pope believes the world's governments are probably "as mystified as everyone else" and doubts that there's "a spaceship in a hangar somewhere."

But he's impressed with the professionalism of the hearings and the brisk stewardship of the often-sceptical former members of Congress. "If the UFO community wants to be taken seriously - and they do - this is a very good start point," he says.

The Holy Grail of UFO sightings used to be Roswell, the 1947 crash in the New Mexico desert of an object which the government described as a surveillance balloon but believers are convinced is a flying saucer.

But as decades passed and Roswell witnesses died, interest has shifted to less exotic locale: Suffolk. It was there in December 1980 that US Air Force personnel based at RAF Woodbridge claimed to have seen a triangular metal object and later recorded unusually high levels of radiation.

"Roswell is almost passing into legend, Rendlesham Forest is now the most potent sighting available to us," said Mr Pope.

Mike Gravel, a Left-wing former Alaska senator who ran against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, is among those convinced by what he's heard.

"I've seen enough evidence that there's no question that there's an unidentified phenomenon taking place," he says, calling for a international conference on the matter hosted by the UN.

And is there a danger that taking a $20,000 fee to participate in a panel on UFOs might hurt his credibility? The 82-year-old grins broadly. "At my age I could care less."

The hearings sometimes go through periods of unsettling normality, as minutes are taken, oaths are taken and witnesses scolded for going over their time limits.

And then, just in case there's a danger of things becoming too mundane, an exasperated attendee in gold trousers and a cowboy hat walks out of the conference room complaining into her mobile phone.

"I don't know why they can't just hurry and come down and beam me up," she says.

[elfismiles]

At first I thought this was a new article as I thought I'd heard / seen a headline like "Bassette to Double Down on Disclosure Efforts" but ...

Yeah, that event back in May has had little or no impact since then ... and the monetary compensation to the participants pretty much ensured noone would pay it any mind.

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... -UFOs.html

[elfismiles]

again via http://www.Anomalist.com

Bluebook Director Claims He Was Forewarned Of DC UFOs Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/article/blue-bo ... f-d-c-ufos

Did intelligence officers know about the 1952 DC UFO flap months before it took place? It certainly seems possible, says UFO investigator Mark OC who uncovered evidence in a book by Captain Ruppelt, former head of Project Bluebook in the 1950s. Writer Mark Pilkington believes the theory also but adds his own spin on the theory, suggesting that the UFOS weren't technically UFOs but rather weapons testing.

EDIT/ADD:

search.php?keywords=pilkington+palladium

Grand-daddy of All UFO Sightings
Thursday, August 1, 2013
http://www.highstrangenessufo.com/2013/ ... tings.html

Grand-daddy of All UFO Sightings -- Part II
Thursday, August 15, 2013
http://www.highstrangenessufo.com/2013/ ... rt-ii.html