Blue Book closed and stated that there was no evidence of a threat by UFO to the defence of the United States. Both Dr J Allen Hynek and Leonard H Stringfield told my late colleague Franklyn A Davin-Wilson that Blue Book had not ended the US military interet in UFOs. We knew that. There were magazine articles and even book giving 'the' code name of thi project -all of them were incorrect because this was the Ufological rumour mill and look at "Disclosure" -every year since 1999 I've heard how "This is it! Thi is the year we get UFO disclosure!" Nothing.
In 1958 Lt General James M ("Jumpin' Jim") Gavin had a book published: War and Peace in the Space Age. Gavin looked at -as the title states- war in the space age and did not touch on the subject of UFOs, however, as US Army Missile Chief he would have been aware and probably saw reports. I often wonder whether he actually considered the possibility of hostiles from space.
Let's just step back from all the UFOs used as cover-up stories for aircraft and mi9ssile teting or even for secret aircraft test flights that reulted in a crash. Even i9f someone in the military or intelligence services thought UFOs and flying saucers a heap of hogwash there was always "Remember Pearl Harbor" and what happened there ingrained into their thinking. What might appear to show no threat to the United States on Monday may well attack it on Wednesday.
Even adopting the "It's all a natural but unknown natural phenomena" stance the military or intel;ligence community would have to question certain cases: Socorro, New Mexico, 1964 like a few other cases, had physical traces left behind -and when M. Maurice Masse had his encounter at Valensole, France, a few months later there were physical traces and when Masse was shown a phopto of a model of the Socorro UFO he was very excited because someone had photographed the object he saw....two objects that looked the same and left physical traces but seperated by thousands of miles.
Marius Dewilde had an encounter that left physical evidence at Quarouble, Nord, France in 1954. Official French investigators ran all the checks and tests. Unexplained.
I could go on because there is the Linke case that took place in Germany that we know the Central Intelligence Agency noted as well as US Air Force. Here is where the "explain-it-all-away" natural phenomenon falls flat. As a young man I knew that lights flashing about the skies could be anything because they were just lights. However, how could I dismiss reports of seemingly solid, constructed objects? One witness -hoax? Two witnesses -still possible hoax. Several people observing the objects and traces left.
To me, the very first question had to be "Who is flying these things?" Most UFO groups or saucer fan I spoke to responded "We have no idea"...unless they were leaning toward the contactee stories. Blond-haired, tall, peace-loving "Nordic" type aliens or even visitors from Saturn, Venus, Mars and Jupiter -even at that point in time (I note there are still followers of this trash in 2020) we knew that Venus and Jupiter would not have supported humanoid life forms. Our interest should not dwell on thi matter, however.
Betty and Barney Hill were mostly dismissed for various reasons including that they were "mixed race" -as far as I know, however, both were human! You accepted the Adamski type aliens or shut up and I was never good at shutting up. Luckily, people like Norman Oliver existed in British ufology who were willing to look at these accounts sensibly.
I still had my doubts but in 1977, under the guise of "Project Fort" I gathered every UFO report I could find from newspapers, magazines, UFO journals and books and as this was by hand within the space of a week I had thousands of slips of paper with reports that needed categorising. In three days something became very obvious. In fact so obvious that I went through the process of analysing the reports a second btime....then a third time. The result were the same every time.
there were three clear categories:
1. Insufficient data and dubious reports -many of these.
2. Some form of unscientifically investigated natural phenomenon/na -what I termed UNP
3. Clearly seen and described and obviously solid, constructed objects. Even if I dismissed single witness accounts I could not do so with multiple witnesses -who in many cases were unconnected and spread over an area.
Obviously, for me, Category 3 was a problem. I had proven that noted Ufologists were not just faking or altering accounts to make things seen "UFOs" but they had for over thirty years carried out no analysis of reports. This is why the results of my work seriously concerned me. Vallee, Michel and, yes, even Hynek (who had at least categorised encounter types but took it no further) had not gone through the process of taking all the reports and categorisiung them to come up with the same results as I had and yet they were in perfect positions to do so.
Category 1 could be dismissed since most of the reports were of stars, planets, aircraft lights or hoaxes.
Category 2 I found a huge data base of cases for.
Category 3 I tried and tried to find solutions for.
My late colleague Franklyn had told me that for research you must never depend on one source: "Find a second source and see what it says. Then look for a third and a fourth and if you can always contact the person who made the report" This is why cases in my books will often have multiple sources as references.
I looked at all the For and Against arguments in cases. Despite everything said about the Hills and their "motives" it seemed as solid a case as you could wish for based on the fact that only they were percipients.
In UFO Contact? I looked at the "Classics" as well as cases previously dismissed by Ufologists -mainly because they were not looking at or considering the psychological aspects involved. Reports were to be millked for publicity and profit -Dr R. Leo Sprinkle shines out as someone who was more interested in the people than profit. The Lorenzens were happy to hypnotise away or pump someone with scapolamine.
The one thing that came across in every case was the psychological stress percipients underwent and how, had it not been for Ufologists inappropriate action and breaches of confidentiality these people were just going to get on with their lives.
Single alleged percipient could be dismissed. The who "Grey" hysteria coul;d be dismissed since those involved in 'investigation' were far from unbiased or even willing to "stack evidence" in their favour.
But this is the point: if you have these seemingly solid reports of strange craft that you know do not belong to you and certainly nothing to do with the Soviets/Russians then who do they belong to and just who/what is flying them?
Military/Intelligence are obviously going to ask those questions after looking at the reports and I have no doubt what-so-ever that there are cases they have investigated and talked to the percipients and, one hopes, they would at least give those percipients the help they need especially if neither party want the story getting out.
Even then it is likely that they would not know more than Ufologists. I have known military people interested in UFO reports and who even discuss ones they knew of and we all asked the same question: Who? Where from? Why? The fact is that the resources available to the military/intelligence community are far superior than anything a civilian Ufologist (or me) have.
Yes, I would love to see those reports but I won't. However, it shows that the official bodies are doing what they should be doing: looking at all the reports to assess the situation. I would be far more shocked if I had been told these people were not gathering information and studying the reports!
It's [Redacted] produce some interesting videos but their agenda(s) and lack of real world knowledge seems to problematic at time: either you are just going to present facts with educated speculation that you can back up by citing cases or just leave the speculati9ng to the viewer.
