THE CASE FOR THE ET ORIGIN OF FLYING SAUCERS
by Stanton T. Friedman, 2008
One of the standard claims of UFO debunkers is that there is no evidence that any unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. After all, they say, we have only anecdotes, usually from uneducated people looking for publicity. No scientists have seen UFOs; there are no radar cases; there is no physical evidence; governments can’t keep secrets; all that crash-landed at Roswell was an array of Mogul balloons; so on and so forth. As it happens, all of these claims are false. This chapter will replace these myths with the facts. I start all of my Flying Saucers ARE Real lectures with these four conclusions, which I’ve reached after more than 50 years of study and investigation:
- The evidence that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft is overwhelming. In other words, some UFOs are ET spacecraft. Most are not—I don’t care about them.
- The subject of flying saucers represents a kind of Cosmic Watergate. That means that some few people in our government have known since at least 1947, when at least two crashed flying saucers and several alien bodies were recovered in New Mexico, that indeed some UFOs were alien spacecraft. This does not mean that everybody in the government knows. The way to keep secrets is to restrict their distribution to as few people as possible and stick by a strong need-to-know policy.
- There are no good arguments against conclusions number 1 and 2, despite the very vocal claims of a small group of noisy negativists such as the late Carl Sagan, a classmate of mine for three years at the University of Chicago. The debunking claims sound great. However, once one examines the data, they collapse because of an absence of evidence to support them and the presence of evidence that contradicts them.
- Flying saucers are the biggest story of the millennium: visits to planet Earth by alien spacecraft and the successful cover-up of the best data, bodies, and wreckage, for more than 60 years.
I will be focusing on evidence. I seldom use the term proof. Some people have insisted that if I can’t provide a piece of a saucer or an alien body, there is nothing to support my claims. I was quite surprised during my last visit with Carl Sagan in December 1992 when he claimed that the essence of the scientific method was reproducibility. In actuality, as I wrote Sagan later on, there are at least four different kinds of science:
- Yes, there is a lot of excellent science done by people who set up an experiment in which they can control all the variables and equipment. They make measurements and then publish their results, after peer review, and describe their equipment, instruments, and activity in detail so that others can duplicate the work and, presumably, come to the same conclusions. Such science can be very satisfying and certainly can contribute to the advancement of knowledge. However, it is not the only kind of science.
- A second kind of science involves situations in which one cannot control all the variables but can predict some. For example, I cannot prove that on occasion the moon comes directly between the sun and the Earth and casts a shadow of darkness on the Earth because I cannot control the positions of the Earth, moon, or sun. What can be done is predicting the times when such eclipses will happen and being ready to make observations when they occur. Hopefully, the weather where I have my instruments will allow me to make lots of measurements.
- A third kind of science involves events that can neither be predicted nor controlled, but one can be ready to make measurements if something does happen. For example, an array of seismographs can be established to allow measurements to be made at several locations in the event of an earthquake. When I was at the University of Chicago, a block of nuclear emulsion was attached to a large balloon that would be released when a radiation detector indicated that a solar storm had occurred (something we could neither produce nor predict). Somebody would rush to Stagg Field and release the balloon. When the balloon was retrieved, the emulsion would be carefully examined to measure the number, direction, velocity, and mass characteristics of particles unleashed by the sun.
- Finally, there is a fourth kind of science, still using the rules to attack difficult problems. These are the events that involve intelligence, such as airplane crashes, murders, rapes, and automobile accidents. We do not know when or where they will occur, but we do know they will. In a typical year, more than 40,000 Americans will be killed in automobile accidents. We don’t know where or when, so rarely are TV cameras whirling when these events take place. But we can, after the fact, collect and evaluate evidence. We can determine if the driver had high levels of alcohol in his or her blood, whether the brakes failed, whether the visibility was poor, where a skid started, and so on. Observations of strange phenomena in the sky come under this last category.
In all the category-4 events, we must obtain as much testimony from witnesses as possible. Some testimony is worth more than other testimony, perhaps because of the duration of observation, the nearness of the witnesses to the event, the specialized training of the observer, the availability of corroborative evidence such as videos and still photos, or the consistency of evidence when there is testimony from more than one witness. Our entire legal system is based on testimony—rarely is there conclusive proof such as DNA matching. Judges and juries must decide, with appropriate cross-examination, who is telling the truth. In some states, testimony from one witness can lead to the death penalty for the accused. We should take note of the fact that even instrument data is dependent on testimony from the observer of the instruments, and on appropriate calibration and validation under standardized circumstances. Also, our courts place limits on requirements for testimony, such as that against one spouse by the other. Furthermore, there are rules about hearsay testimony, and rules regarding legal evidence are complex and detailed.
When it comes to flying saucers, we must remember that the reason most sightings can be determined to be relatively conventional phenomena, often seen under unusual circumstances, is that most people are relatively good observers. The problem comes with the interpretation of what was observed. People watching the sky late at night may get excited about a very bright light that moved very slowly. Checking on the position of the planets at that time may reveal that that light was Venus, because we have good information as to the angle of observation, the direction of the light from the observer, the relatively slow rate of motion, the location of Venus at that time, and so on.
On three occasions, when living in Southern California, I was called by people who described an unusual object moving rapidly. I tried to make sure that I analyzed their observations, such as: What time was it? In what direction were you looking? In what direction did it seem to be moving? Was there any sound? What was its apparent size, say, as compared to the moon (just covered by an aspirin held at arm’s length)? Two of the people wanted to tell me that the object was just over the next hill. I stressed that this was an interpretation because even huge objects far away can seem to be small objects nearby. In all three cases, I felt that what was being described sounded similar to a rocket launched down the California Coast when the sun had gone down, but while the object was high enough to still be in sunlight. I had seen such a spectacular case once myself.
I checked, in all three cases, with Vandenberg Air Force Base, which launches many rockets down the U.S. West Coast. Indeed, there had been a launch at the right time in each case. One case was especially intriguing because several witnesses were looking out across the ocean from a beach area and described the thing they saw as similar to a string of popcorn. It turned out to be the launch of a special weather satellite with extra solid boosters being dropped off multiple times.
The people were good observers. To say the least, it would be irrational to say that people are good observers when their input allows us to identify the object being observed, and yet poor observers if we can’t identify the UFO as something conventional.
CATEGORIES
Every UFO sighting can be placed in one of three groups:
- A) Those reports of UFOs that eventually, after careful investigation, turn out to be identified flying objects (IFOs). This is by far the largest category. Subcategories include astronomical phenomena, aircraft, balloons, advertising planes, experimental aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, flocks of birds, and hoaxes.
- B) Those reports of UFOs that provide insufficient data on which to base a conclusion. Sometimes, for old reports, people aren’t sure of the exact date and time, for example, or can’t recall the direction of motion, or the color, and so on. Not much one can do with these.
- C) The Unknowns. These are reports by competent observers of strange objects in the sky or on the ground, which cannot be identified by the witness, and which remain unidentified after investigation by competent investigators, and whose appearance indicates that they were manufactured (this rules out most lights), and whose flight behavior indicates that they were made somewhere other than Earth. We Earthlings can’t build things that look and act that way. If we could, we would, because of the military applications of such craft.
Remember that the question is not “Are all UFOs alien spacecraft?” The question is, “Are any?” As shall be seen, my answer is definitely yes. If you were to ask me, “Are any UFOs secret, government-sponsored research-and-development vehicles?” my answer would again be yes.
There are some logical traps awaiting the unwary here. Some people want to claim: “Isn’t it reasonable to say that, if most UFOs can eventually be identified, all can be?” Think about that for a minute. Would it be reasonable to say that because most people are not 7 feet tall, no one is? Because most isotopes aren’t fissionable, none are? Because most people don’t have AIDS, no one does? Because most chemicals will not cure any diseases, none do? Obviously, we learn early on to focus on the data relevant to the question at hand.
The basketball coach is well aware that there are far more people shorter than 7 feet than those taller than 7 feet. But he knows there are some of the latter. When I was at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Dr. Selman Waksman of the microbiology department collected soil samples from all around the world seeking chemicals with anti-disease properties. One of his major discoveries, after checking on many thousands of soil cultures, was streptomycin, the first cure for tuberculosis. He won the Nobel Prize in 1952 for that work. Other antibiotics were later found; most of the cultures were worthless.
Gold miners know that ore is worth mining if there is a half-ounce of gold per ton of ore; that’s less than 0.001% of the ore. I learned early on, when working on designing and testing radiation shielding for aircraft nuclear propulsion systems and other compact nuclear reactors, that by far the majority of gamma rays and neutrons produced in the reactor get absorbed in the surrounding shielding material. But it is the tiny percentage that penetrates the shield that had to be my focus if I wanted to protect crewmembers.
It is the category-C cases that matter: The Unknowns. The problem then becomes finding the Unknowns. Many books talk about individual cases; how can a reader evaluate them? There are tens of thousands of newspaper articles and videos about UFO cases. YouTube has loads of videos—the Internet is chock full of UFO-related material, much of which is worthless. But how can one evaluate this mass of uneven and usually uninvestigated cases?
I think that, in general, the best place to search involves the several large-scale scientific studies… almost never mentioned by the UFO debunkers.
PROJECT BLUE BOOK SPECIAL REPORT NO.14
The largest official scientific study of UFOs performed for the United States government was reported in Project Blue Book Special Report No.14. The work was done by professional engineers and scientists at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. BMI is a highly respected research and development organization that does contract research for private and government groups. This study was the result of a contract with Project Blue Book, a USAF group at the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The contracting agency has had many names throughout the years, including Air Technical Intelligence Center and Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center, and is now known as the National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC). Blue Book, in turn, was the continuation of Projects Sign and Grudge that had preceded it. At that time (mid-1950s), Project Blue Book was the only publicly acknowledged government group concerned with UFOs. We now know that there were others.
It was BMI’s job to review all the UFO sightings in the Blue Book files for the period 1948 through 1953. Exactly 3,201 sighting reports were eventually categorized as something such as Astronomical, Balloon, Aircraft… and UNKNOWN. Every report was also evaluated for quality: Excellent, Good, Doubtful, or Poor. Presumably, a sighting by a priest, a physicist, and a pilot—of something observed for 10 minutes from 50 feet away in daylight—would have been considered a higher-quality observation than a 4-second observation by the town drunk at 4 a.m. of a light zipping by in the sky. Obviously, these are subjective judgments, but they are certainly meaningful. All sorts of data about each case (duration, speed, color, shape, and the like) were stored on punch cards so they could be sorted with the primitive computer systems then available.
The professionals who worked on the project established a number of sensible ground rules and definitions. For example, no sighting could be listed as an Unknown unless all four Final Report evaluators agreed it was an UNKNOWN. Any two could label it as anything else.
The BBSR 14 definition for Unknown (my category C) is:
“This designation in the identification code was assigned to those reports of sightings wherein the description of the object and its maneuvers could not be fitted to the pattern of any known object or phenomenon.”
Their definition of Insufficient Information (my category B) is:
“This identification category was assigned to a report when, upon final consideration, there was some essential item of information missing, or there was enough doubt about what data were available to disallow identification as a common object or some natural phenomenon. It is emphasized that this category of identification was not used as a convenient way to dispose of what might be called poor Unknowns, but as a category for reports that, perhaps, could have been one of several known objects or natural phenomena.”
Psychological Manifestations:
“This identification category was assigned to a report when, although it was well established that the observer had seen something, it was also obvious that the description of the sighting had been overdrawn. Religious fanaticism, a desire for publicity, or an overactive imagination were the most common mental aberrations causing this type of report.”
This includes the crackpot reports that so fascinate debunkers.
It is worthwhile to note that, before tabulating their findings, UFO debunkers have often made negative statements about UFO evidence, such as the following:
“The reliable cases are uninteresting and the interesting cases are unreliable. Unfortunately, there are no cases that are both reliable and interesting.”
—Dr. Carl Sagan, astronomer, Cornell University, Other Worlds
“Almost every sighting is either a mistake or a hoax. These reports are so riddled with hoaxes, and the flying saucer enthusiasts have so many cranks, freaks, and nuts among them that Hynek is constantly running the risk of innocently damaging his reputation by being confused with them.”
—Dr. Isaac Asimov, author, “The Rocketing Dutchman,” Fantasy and Science Fiction
“All non-explained sightings are from poor observers.”
—Dr. Donald Menzel, astronomer, Harvard University, Physics Today
“The Unexplained sightings are simply those for which there is too little information to provide a solid factual basis for an explanation.”
—Ben Bova, writer, editor, Analog
“The number of people believing in flying saucers remains at about 6% of the adult population, according to Gallup Polls.”
—Science
“A two-year-old Gallup Poll reported that more than 3 million Americans believe flying saucers are real. But that still leaves 98% of the country somewhat doubtful.”
—Los Angeles Times
“…[L]ike most scientists, he puts little credence in UFO reports.”
—Science News (speaking of Carl Sagan)
“On the basis of this study we believe that no objects such as those popularly described as flying saucers have overflown the United States. I feel certain that even the Unknown 3% could have been explained as conventional phenomena or illusions if more complete observational data had been obtained.”
—Donald A. Quarles, secretary of the U.S. Air Force
These statements have several things in common:
- None includes any accurate references to data or sources.
- All are demonstrably false.
- All are proclamations rather than the result of evidence-based investigations.
- All are many years old, but my 40 years of lecturing and hundreds of media appearances have indicated that many people still share these views, despite their inaccuracy.
Together, they certainly illustrate the four basic rules of the true UFO nonbelievers:
- Don’t bother me with the facts; my mind is made up.
- What the public doesn’t know, I am not going to tell them.
- If one can’t attack the data, attack the people. It is much easier.
- Do your research by proclamation rather than investigation. No one will know the difference.
A major reason for these false claims can be seen in the comments in the press release issued on October 23, 1955, by the U.S. Air Force, in conjunction with the supposed release of Project Blue Book Special Report No.14. Surprisingly, there is no mention of the organization that did the study: the Battelle Memorial Institute. There is no mention of the names of the authors of the report. There is no mention of the actual title of the report, though it was not classified. If it had been noted, surely some journalist would have asked what happened to reports 1 through 13. The answer, if it had been honest, would have been that they were all still classified at the time. Although a large summary was provided in the press release, amazingly, it includes no data from the more than 240 charts, tables, graphs, and maps that are in the report. How could it be called a summary?
The key quote is given from Donald B. Quarles, then the secretary of the United States Air Force: “Even the Unknown 3% could have been identified as conventional phenomena or illusions if more observational data had been available.” There would appear to be two factual statements here:
- The percentage of the sightings listed as Unknown was only 3%.
- These Unknowns were simply reports for which there wasn’t enough data (my category B).
In that case, “there is nothing to flying saucers” would be a reasonable conclusion. However, these statements are both flat-out lies. Table 1 on page 41 shows the tabulation of the categorization of the 3,201 cases investigated. Notice that the percentage of Unknowns was actually 21.5% of the cases studied-seven times as many as stated by the secretary of the USAF. Note especially the category listed as “Insufficient Information”: 9.3%. No sightings for which there was insufficient data, by definition, could be listed as Unknowns. Clearly, both “factual” statements by Secretary Quarles were bunk. More accurately, he lied big time.
| Categorization |
Designation Number |
Percentage |
| Balloon |
540 |
14.0 |
| Astronomical |
817 |
25.5 |
| Aircraft |
642 |
20.1 |
| Michelinius |
257 |
8.0 |
| Psychological Manifestations |
48 |
1.5 |
| Insufficient Information |
298 |
9.3 |
| Unknowns |
689 |
21.5 |
| Quality |
Sightings (#) |
Sightings (%) |
Unknowns (#) |
Unknowns (%) |
Insufficient Information (#) |
Insufficient Information (%) |
| Excellent |
308 |
9.6 |
108 |
35.1 |
12 |
3.9 |
| Good |
1,070 |
33.4 |
282 |
26.4 |
33 |
3.1 |
| Doubtful |
1,298 |
40.5 |
203 |
15.6 |
150 |
11.6 |
| Poor |
525 |
16.4 |
96 |
18.3 |
103 |
19.6 |
It is tempting to think that perhaps it was only the poor-quality reports—those 4 a.m., 4-second observations by the town drunk—that were listed as Unknowns. This proclamation is clearly destroyed by the data in Table 2. It shows that the better the quality of the sighting, the more likely it was to be an Unknown, and the less likely it was to be listed as “Insufficient Information.” This is not surprising at all, though it is exactly the opposite of the unsubstantiated and false claims of the “true non-UFO believers,” as I call them. It is exactly what one would expect if the Unknowns were really different from the knowns. This tabulation is also not shown explicitly in PBBSR 14. Notice that 35.1% of the excellent cases were listed as UNKNOWN, but only 18.3% of the poor cases were. In other words, the better the quality of the report, the more likely it was to be unexplainable.
Another proclamation often made by the debunkers is that the unexplained sightings were of short duration—certainly not long enough to make a scientific determination as to what was observed. Table 3 provides information on the duration of observation. The average Unknown was observed for longer than the average known: 63.5% of the Unknowns were observed for longer than 1 minute; 36.1% were observed for longer than 5 minutes; and 12.9% for longer than 30 minutes. So much for the nonsense that unexplainable UFOs are only observed for a few seconds.
Some debunkers like to claim that only nutty people report seeing UFOs. Notice that only 1.5% of the sightings were listed as “Psychological Manifestations.” The American Physical Society, to which I (and most other professional physicists) belong, has said that 2% of the papers submitted to it for publication by physicists are crackpot papers. This suggests that there are more crackpots associated with physics than with flying saucers. Fortunately, I am not the only physicist with a foot in each camp.
Finally, comments are often made by the true nonbelievers that there is really no difference between the Unknowns and the knowns. If that were the case, why pay attention to the knowns? The Unknowns must simply be missed knowns. The professional engineers and scientists doing the work presented in PBBSR 14 were clearly concerned about this possibility, so they sought answers to the question: “Is there any difference between the characteristics of the knowns and the Unknowns?” To be technical about it, they performed a Chi-square statistical analysis based on six different characteristics of the UFOs: apparent size, shape, speed, color, duration of observation, and number of objects seen. They found that the probability that the Unknowns were just missed knowns was less than 1%! Unknowns were not missed knowns.
| Duration |
All Sightings (#) |
All Sightings (%) |
Unknowns (#) |
Unknowns (%) |
U/S (%) |
| Under 5 Seconds |
437 |
18.6 |
39 |
8.9 |
7.6 |
| 5-10 Seconds |
167 |
7.1 |
31 |
6.1 |
6.1 |
| 11-30 Seconds |
265 |
11.3 |
56 |
21.0 |
10.9 |
| 31-60 Seconds |
196 |
8.3 |
61 |
31.1 |
11.9 |
| 1-5 Minutes |
508 |
21.6 |
140 |
27.6 |
27.3 |
| 6-30 Minutes |
270 |
11.6 |
125 |
24.4 |
22.2 |
| Over 30 Minutes |
249 |
10.6 |
66 |
26.5 |
12.9 |
| Total (Time Specified) |
2,349 |
100.0 |
512 |
21.8 |
100.0 |
| Time Not Specified |
852 |
17.7 |
177 |
20.8 |
|
Obviously, this does not prove that the Unknowns are alien spaceships. However, it does show that no matter how much they manipulated the data, they could not get a match between the Unknowns and the knowns. One crucial characteristic of the Unknowns—maneuverability—was not considered in this part of the BMI effort.
My reason for stating that some Unknowns are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft is very simple: witness reports clearly indicate that the observed objects are manufactured and behave in ways we cannot duplicate. Generally, they are small, 10-foot to 40-foot disc-shaped vehicles without wings, tails, or visible external engines. Frequently, they demonstrate high maneuverability—right-angle turns at high speed (as observed on radar), the ability to fly straight up and hover, and to go forward and then backward without making a big turn. Usually, there is no sound, no exhaust, and often a glow around the object (not the observer). A much smaller number of observations describe huge “mother” ships, perhaps ½ to 1 mile long. In recent years, several triangular objects have also been observed. If we Earthlings could build such craft, we would—because they would make wonderful military vehicles. There have been several wars in which we have not used such craft. If they were not built on Earth, they were built somewhere else. This does not tell us where they are from, why they are here, or why they do not behave the way some Earthlings would want them to.
Despite all the data available in the Blue Book report, its summary contains none. The press release was given very wide distribution, whereas the report itself was available for review in only a few places. It is no wonder that quotes from the totally misleading press release appeared in newspapers across the United States and in other parts of the world. The deception was clear and effective. No newspaper that I have seen noted any part of the actual report, and the false comments have been repeated over and over again by the news media and so-called scientists as if they were facts instead of lies.
The reader should not get the impression that I consider PBBSR 14 a perfect study. There were serious problems, besides the misleading press release, such as the failure to note relevant data and even the title itself. For example, a shameful effort was made to put together a composite picture of a UFO based on 12 cases—a frankly ludicrous approach, with drawings that would make any sensible artist ashamed. There is no section with recommendations on how to gather more and better data using the available resources of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. There is no discussion of the military and security implications of alien spacecraft violating U.S. airspace with impunity. There is not even an indication of the many highly classified military reports that must have existed. After all, a January 31, 1949, FBI memo stated that the Army and USAF considered the subject of flying saucers Top Secret. Where is all the data obtained by the Air Defense Command? These data are all born classified. Newspapers do not receive listings of military aircraft being scrambled to go after “uncorrelated targets”—a much less intriguing term than flying saucers or Unknowns.
USAF General Carroll Bolender, in a memo dated October 20, 1969, stated that “Reports of UFOs which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 and Air Force Manual 55-11, and are NOT part of the Blue Book system.” In a later paragraph, discussing the impact of closing Blue Book (which was shut down because of his memo) and denying the public a government office where sightings could be reported, he added: “As noted above, reports which could affect National Security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.” The public has never been officially told that the important cases did not go to Project Blue Book—it was not even on the distribution list for cases reported through JANAP 146 or AF Manual 55-11. I managed to locate and speak with retired General Bolender, who clearly understood the implications of having a separate channel for the most important cases. Then, in 1979, when I showed a copy of the Bolender memo to the former Project Blue Book scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, he was very upset and felt that he had been badly used by the USAF: the best cases did not go to Blue Book!
Throughout its existence, Blue Book was not a high-level technical group. Typically, it consisted of a major and a sergeant, some secretaries, and a monthly visit from Dr. Hynek—a professor of astronomy and, by nature, not a boat-rocker. Blue Book did not have sophisticated instrumentation or communication systems, nor did it have a need-to-know for classified data collected by the Air Defense Command.
We know of only two fully classified Top Secret documents connected with UFOs. One was a report of a fascinating observation in the Soviet Union by U.S. Senator Richard Russell and associates in 1955, which was finally declassified in 1985. The other is AIR (Air Intelligence Report) No. 100-203-79, dated December 10, 1948. This joint USAF and U.S. Navy report aimed to evaluate the possibility of UFOs being from the Soviet Union and the implications for national security if that were the case. A history of sightings is given in these documents, but clearly, the authors did not have a need-to-know for Top Secret information about such events as the recovery of a crashed flying saucer and alien bodies outside Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947, or the destruction of U.S. aircraft while attempting to attack flying saucers. I have quietly heard of several such disastrous events and the cover-ups that followed. As an aside, it took many years for Americans to finally learn that 166 aircraft crew members had been lost in U.S. planes shot down while conducting reconnaissance missions too close to the USSR, China, or North Korea, as described in By Any Means Necessary by William E. Burrows.
From a scientific perspective, classified observations by our most sophisticated monitoring systems—radar networks, spy satellites, and the web of observing systems operated by the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office—are of utmost interest. The latter, of course, did not exist during Project Blue Book Special Report No.14. But where are the Top Secret cases?
My experience indicates that the Battelle Memorial Institute and the Foreign Technology Division of the Air Force could produce both a highly classified technical report and an unclassified companion report that made no mention of the classified one. I believe that such a report was Blue Book Report 13, produced by the same two groups. Two people have quietly told me they saw a copy of it in classified files. The Air Force has variously claimed that Report 13 does not exist or that it was contained in PBBSR 14. The old National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) actually published Reports 1 through 12, but nobody I have spoken with has a copy of 13. Based on my 14 years of professional scientific work on classified projects, I am absolutely convinced that secrets can be kept. Chapter 5 goes into much more detail about the “Cosmic Watergate,” which, unlike the political Watergate, has been very successful.
One final important fact about Project Blue Book Special Report No.14: when I check my lecture audiences after discussing it, I find that fewer than 2% have read it—even though one would assume an audience attending my lectures would be biased in favor of believing in flying saucers. I should also note that I once compiled a list of 13 anti-UFO books by debunkers such as Donald Menzel and Philip Klass. None of the books mentioned the report, though I can prove they were aware of it. The rule is: What the public does not know, I will not tell them. Even the University of Colorado study, despite having a long chapter on government involvement in UFO studies, does not mention it. I personally wrote to Dr. Condon about it and even received a letter acknowledging my inquiry.
THE UFO EVIDENCE
Richard Hall, who is still an active ufologist, compiled another outstanding report on UFOs for the Washington, D.C.-based NICAP in May 1964. The 184-page large-format report, The UFO Evidence, has information on 746 Unknowns-or 16% of the 4,500 cases investigated by the (mostly) professional members of NICAP. There are entire chapters on sightings by military and civilian pilots, by police officers, and by scientists and engineers. There are special sections on the major UFO wave of 1952, and on official UFO investigations. It is truly an outstanding volume; copies were given to all members of Congress. Again, fewer than 2% of my lecture attendees are aware of it. Hall put out a huge update, volume 2, The UFO Evidence: A Thirty Year Report in 2000. It has 681 fact-filled pages. There is an 87-page comprehensive section on UFO abductions, and a 10-page overview of the Roswell Incident. The book has very extensive bibliographies, and really should be in all libraries, but isn’t.
CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS
Thanks primarily to the efforts of Dr. James E. McDonald, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona, the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics held a Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 1968. McDonald had become interested in UFOs in the mid-1960s and was shocked when visiting Project Blue Book in Dayton, Ohio, to find a host of sighting reports of very interesting cases. He noted that the explanations often made little sense. He became upset that Dr. Hynek had not called the attention of the scientific community to the wealth of data in the files. (Their battle is discussed in detail in the excellent book by Ann Druffel: Firestorm: James E. McDonald’s Fight for UFO Science.)
Six scientists testified in person. They were:
- Dr. J. Allen Hynek, chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (and Project Blue Book consultant for almost 20 years).
- Dr. Carl Sagan, professor of astronomy at Cornell University.
- Dr. James E. McDonald, professor of physics at the University of Arizona.
- Dr. James Harder, professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Dr. Robert L. Hall, head of the department of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago (and Richard Hall’s brother).
- Dr. Robert M. L. Baker, senior scientist for System Sciences Corp. in El Segundo, California.
In addition, the printed 247-page proceedings (available on the Internet at [URL=https://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/index.html]www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/index.html[/URL]) included written submissions from six more scientists:
- Dr. Donald Menzel, astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, psychologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
- Dr. Garry C. Henderson, senior research scientist for Space Sciences at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas.
- Dr. Roger N. Shepard, department of psychology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
- Dr. Frank Salisbury, head of the plant science department at Utah State University in Logan.
- And myself, then a nuclear physicist at Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory in Large, Pennsylvania. I have taken pride in the fact that I was the only one of the twelve without a PhD.
In my opinion, the best paper by far was that from Jim McDonald. He presented information on 41 separate cases, including multiple-witness radar-visual cases, sightings over big cities, sightings by scientists and astronomers, and clear indications of intelligent control of some UFOs. His paper alone is 71 pages long and should be read by anyone who thinks there are no good UFO cases. John Fuller, who earlier had written The Interrupted Journey, the story of the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, and Incident at Exeter, also wrote Aliens in the Skies, which includes most of the papers, but without the references.
Quite frankly, I have found throughout the years that very few people have read this very valuable volume, The Symposium on UFOs. The reward for Indiana Congressman J. Edward Roush, who presided over the session, was that in the next election he was gerrymandered out of his district. Another member of the Committee on Science and Astronautics was Donald Rumsfeld of Illinois, who later became Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. Hynek, also from Illinois, once told me of approaching Rumsfeld much later, saying he thought he had a need-to-know for what was happening. Rumsfeld told him in no uncertain terms that he did not.
There is a substantial difference between the factual content of most of the papers by people who had really dug into the facts and those of Menzel and Sagan, whose papers revealed a lack of concern with facts and data, instead full of proclamations and little investigation. If Jim McDonald had lived many more years, instead of dying in 1971, I believe the situation today would be very different. He spoke to many sections of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and many other professional organizations and used hard-nosed science to destroy the often foolish explanations of Menzel (who often proclaimed “temperature inversions” without doing the required computations that Jim did) and Philip Klass (who often proclaimed “plasma explanations”—again without doing the scientific calculations that Jim did, which destroyed those proclaimed explanations).
THE CONDON REPORT
There is no doubt that the largest and most publicized study of UFOs is the 965-page 1968 Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Its editor was Daniel S. Gillmor, and the study was conducted under the direction of Dr. Edward U. Condon, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, with funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Many universities had been approached by AFOSR in response to recommendations from the O’Brien Panel (established after the controversy over Hynek’s swamp-gas explanation for sightings in Michigan in 1966). Condon was known as a tough figure and had, much earlier, taken on the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Problems with the Condon study have been described in many places well after its publication. At the time, in early 1969, it was lauded by the press primarily because of the introduction by Walter Sullivan, science editor of The New York Times, and the complimentary comments by a special panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—who did not investigate any cases to evaluate Condon’s work. Of course, he had not investigated any cases either and had made a number of negative comments along the way. Not enough attention was paid to the fact that Condon was himself a member of the NAS, a self-electing body. What might be described as a minority report was later published by Dr. David Saunders (UFOs? YES! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong), who had been fired by Condon. John G. Fuller had written a Look Magazine article titled Flying Saucer Fiasco on May 14, 1968, pointing out, among other important aspects of the unscientific study, a letter from Robert J. Low, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado, describing how the project would be made to look scientific but, of course, would not be. In the August 9, 1966, memo, he said:
Our study would be conducted almost entirely by nonbelievers, who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of thick evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that to the public, it would appear a totally objective study, but to the scientific community would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer…
There is much more, and the article is available on the Internet (at [URL=https://www.project1947.com/shg/articles/fiasco.html]www.project1947.com/shg/articles/fiasco.html[/URL]). The public wound up paying more than half a million dollars for this so-called study. As a young scientist, I was angry about the whole business and the praise given to the study by the press and the National Academy. I have often wondered how many other controversial areas have seen the public so betrayed by what passes for an objective scientific community and an objective press.
As was the case with Project Blue Book Special Report No.14, the press coverage was generally based on the press release and the first chapter—Condon’s summary and conclusions—and not on the facts in the report. Frankly, I got the impression that Condon had not even read the rest of the volume. It comes as a great surprise to many that, according to a UFO subcommittee of the world’s largest group of space scientists—the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics—one could come to the opposite conclusions as Dr. Condon based on the data in the report. Any phenomenon with 30% unidentified classifications is certainly worth further investigation, as the AIAA noted. I am a member of the AIAA, but they would not allow me on the committee (I must be biased because I had reached a conclusion! One would think that after 11 years of effort, I would be expected to have a bias, and that ignorance is the worst bias). Indeed, 30% of the 117 cases studied in detail could not be identified. There are some good sections in the report, and I have talked to some old-timers who say they were drawn into the subject of UFOs by some very interesting unexplainable cases.
One can only wonder how many fields have rejected the exceptional simply because only 30% of the cases examined could not be explained away—think of cures for cancer, great musicians, and elite athletes. My son-in-law works at the Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is a rich diamond mine, producing 3.5 carats of diamonds (less than a handful) per ton of ore—another case of having a small percentage but high value.
Both Hynek and McDonald (along with several others) have written factual negative reviews of the Condon report. Condon later made public statements that the files of the study had not been preserved, yet I found them at the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia. Why lie? Fear of a critical review?
THE UFO EXPERIENCE
Dr. J. Allen Hynek had been a consultant to Project Blue Book for about 20 years, starting at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (close to Blue Book in Dayton), and then continuing later when he became chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He had a PhD from my alma mater, the University of Chicago (1935), as did Carl Sagan (1960). Jim McDonald was a research physicist at the University of Chicago in 1953 and 1954 when Sagan and I were there. As far as I know, Sagan did not know him then, and neither did I. In order to meet with Hynek, I had to pass muster with an associate of his, also at the University of Chicago, who attended my lecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago campus, in 1968. I passed and was taken up to Evanston. Hynek was 58 years old at the time, the same age as my father. I was 33. His first question was, “Why haven’t you received a PhD?” I noted that I had worked my way through college as a union waiter at a Chicago hotel my last three years and was anxious to get out into the real world of industry to work on exciting and challenging programs. We saw each other at conferences and when I was going through Chicago, or in Southern California when I lived there. We existed in very different worlds and had very different personalities. I did arrange a press conference and media appearances for him in L.A. when he published The UFO Experience. It was like pulling teeth to get background info for the press release. He suggested I look in Who’s Who, which contained a very small bio. When I finally got something from Northwestern, UFOs were barely mentioned in it.
Hynek’s book has information about roughly 70 good sightings that could not be explained. It contains the definitions for Close Encounters of the first, second, and third kinds. He was a consultant on the very successful movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and had a cameo role himself. He also made some fairly strong comments about the inadequacy of the Condon Report and some recommendations as to what should be done. He established the Center for UFO Studies, which still exists, to try to accomplish some of those goals. He had a good sense of humor and even collected some of the cartoons that were published about his swamp-gas explanation. The book is well written and serves as a good introduction to the subject, but I do wish he had done more looking at interstellar travel and atmospheric propulsion technology, among other topics.
THE COMETA REPORT
I decided to include this report, even though it is not book length, because it is much more recent than any of the other volumes, was done in France, and comes at the subject from a less academic viewpoint, which gets closer to many of my views. The actual title in English is UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For? It is 90 pages long and originally appeared in a special issue of the magazine VSD in France in July 1999. It is an independent report on UFOs written by the French association COMETA, presenting the results of a study by the Institute of Higher Studies for National Defense. The foreword is by Professor André Lebeau, the former chairman of the French National Center for Space Studies. This is the French equivalent of NASA, but it is hard to imagine NASA leadership having the courage to speak out about UFOs.
The report covers a number of excellent cases from France as well as from the United States and gives a good overview of various non-ET explanations—but is quite willing to seriously consider the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It discusses Roswell and also, in a sensible fashion, the reasons why the United States would keep things secret and not share with its allies what scientists have learned from the examination of Roswell wreckage. The authors of the report definitely seem to understand why it could not be shared with America’s enemies.
The Fund for UFO Research paid to have the report translated. Unfortunately, the French group leaders, for reasons still unknown, were very upset when I offered copies of the translation for purchase. They also rejected the notion of letting the Fund distribute it or collect royalties. This situation arose only because, when the report became a topic of conversation on the Jeff Rense radio program, I mentioned that I had a copy of it. Rense said, “Of course you are going to make it available, right, Stan?” I hesitated and then said yes. As someone who has been complaining about the Cosmic Watergate for decades, I could hardly say no and become part of the cover-up myself. Later, people on my website were threatened, so it is not listed there. Perhaps the French are sensitive because the report is critical of the United States for not revealing more information to its supposed allies.
I have distributed copies of Project Blue Book Special Report No.14 for the same reason. It is a government document, so it cannot be copyrighted. I could hardly say, “It is a very important report, but you can’t see the data… just trust me.” Fortunately, one of the best investigative journalists covering UFOs in the United States, Leslie Kean, managed to prepare a comprehensive article about the COMETA report, which appeared in The Boston Globe and a number of other newspapers. She has continued her efforts, taking on NASA over their attempt to hide information about the Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, UFO crash and retrieval of December 9, 1965. She also helped set up the very important National Press Club press conference on November 12, 2007, in Washington, D.C. She and James Fox, a documentary film producer, arranged for pilots and military personnel from many countries to reveal their own experiences at the conference, and they are preparing a documentary.
A statement worth repeating about the U.S. UFO cover-up appears near the end of the 1999 COMETA Report: “Only increasing pressure from public opinion, possibly supported by the results of independent researchers, by more or less calculated disclosures, or by a sudden rise in UFO manifestations, might perhaps induce U.S. leaders and persons of authority to change their stance.”
OTHER SOURCES
A truly enormous amount of material has been written about flying saucers. Some people do not even want me to use the term, but I use it to make an important distinction: Flying saucers are, by definition, unidentified flying objects, but very few unidentified flying objects are flying saucers. I am interested in the latter, not the former. As an example, all great-grandfathers are men; only a small percentage of men are great-grandfathers.
I cannot possibly take note of all the relevant literature here. However, the studies I have listed make an excellent starter kit. I would add the dozen or so PhD theses that have been done on UFOs and the many excellent books on UFO abductions (though there are some that are very unscientific, such as Dr. Susan Clancy’s Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens). I have a detailed review on my website, at https://web.archive.org/web/20191221095618/http://www.stantonfriedman.com/index.php?ptp=home.
I do recommend books by Budd Hopkins and Dr. David Jacobs. An excellent overview with 11 essays is the book UFOs & Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge, edited by Dr. David Jacobs. I would also point to the outstanding work done by Ted Phillips concerning physical trace cases. Phillips was a protégé of Allen Hynek and has, for more than 40 years, collected information about more than 4,000 such cases from more than 70 countries. These are cases in which a flying saucer is observed on or near the ground, and where, after the saucer has left, one finds physical traces in the dirt or vegetation. In about 1/6 of these cases, humanoids are observed. Phillips still has not written a book about his work, but he has been writing a monthly column for the MUFON Journal for some time. The next time debunkers claim that there is no physical evidence, refer them to Phillips’s work.
Two other topics I am not covering here are crop circles and animal mutilations. These are in my gray basket—they are interesting, but it is not easy to find a direct connection to the flying saucer phenomenon.
Original Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12HUrFpvmgysve8t2gVD7UUy8TUaXd0sj/view?usp=drivesdk
PERSONAL NOTE: I completely distance myself from the positive characterization of Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs that Friedman presented in this piece. I deeply respect Friedman’s contributions to UFO research and acknowledge his extensive work in the field, but I do not agree with his conclusions regarding the abduction phenomenon. He was firmly in the pro-abductionist camp, while I, on the other hand, am more inclined to believe that the solution to the abduction phenomenon is likely to be found here on Earth rather than among the stars. So, while I appreciate Friedman for his outstanding research, his perspective on abductions is one aspect of his work with which I fundamentally disagree.
