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This Black Vault compilation contains a September 1997 reply from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense to John Greenewald's FOIA request, enclosing its UFO records. The enclosures include a Navy information sheet dismissing the Philadelphia Experiment and an Air Force UFO fact sheet listing 12,618 Project Blue Book sightings, 701 of them unidentified. They also include the National Academy of Sciences review endorsing the University of Colorado report and the concluding pages of a 1994 Air Force Roswell report attributing the wreckage to Project MOGUL.
“Anderson”2 pages
tne hillSidE where the Starlight eouipment rs ·mounted. Wh1te-ctad UFO watchers oena to merr tecnrucal tasks am1CI the fumes ot sulfur bombs. They walch a sky ' • a.rptanes. meteors. satellites. kites. IS, turds . ball lrghtnrng. migrating Jlown spiders. and maybe. Just maybe, somettung else. But. as Starlight project C!~rector Ray Stanford told col- leagues at a 1976 UFO conference. "If we search 101' ten years with what we·ve got and we don't find anything. then we're go- · ing to have to admit that nothing is there.· One of tne most visible aspects of the phenomenon is a growing collection of UFO photographs. While the vast majotity of UFO sighting reports are made by hon· est. perplexed. often reluctant witnesses, most photographs are hoaxes. To sepa- rate out the possibly authentiC photos. if any at all. experts use photoanalysis For example. Dr. Bruce Maccabee. a r• searcher for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NtCAP). has made densitometric scans of a fa- mous 1950 photo from McMinnville. Ore- gon. The scans support the skeptical ·condon Comminee· conclusion that the photo could in tact be of a large structured disk 50 feet or more in diameter. But an- other expert. computer spec1alist Robert Sheaffer. concluded that the photo was made wnh a smudged lens and that the obiect appears to be hanging from an ead power line. Condon Comm1nee igators later changed their minds ........ agreed with Sheaffer. Specialists at the "Ground Saucer Watch" (GSW) office in Phoenix atso apply advanced data processing techniQues to photographs. Their work has raised howls o1 protest from traditional UFO groups b• cause many of the more famous photos have oeen denounced by GSW as frauds. However. GSW has compiled a small list of photos that they suggest could be genu- ine. Again, other researchers 01sagree. ano sc1entJfiC aeoate ts rag•r.3 on the va- lidity of such processrng tecl".:-:icues. Computer scient1sts have a lavonte proverb: "Gart>age in. garoa;e out.· It means that bad 1npu1 data can be manipu- lated to produce nearly any output de- sired. but it will be useless. That. so far. seems to be the fate of UFO computerized data banks. since data processing spe- cialists have critic1zed them for not having sufficient control over the validity of input data. UFO proponents. appealing to math· ematical formulas from information theory. claim that a proper computer program can filler out the garbage arid s~ft through to the authentic residue. Nor have laboratories produced any specimen that could not have been Ob· tained from ordinary sources on earth. Ex- otic space metals or anitacts continue to oe reponed, but none have passed the in- vestigation of professional laboratories. Yet these debates have changed mart<- edty from the days when UFOs were the topic for screwball religious cults. nasty in- sjnuations about witnesses' sanity and/or sobriety. and knee-jerk gullibility. Today·s arguments must stand up to the tim~ tested standards of sci entific research. Perhaps they will reveal something, per- haps not. But it's the only way to find out for sure. ••• In tight of the need for better scientific research about UFOs. it is pa!ticularfy frustrating to read published reports that "NASA has rejected a White House r• Quest to reopen the government· sponsored research program.· But the real story is not so open-and-shut as these pessimistic accounts would indicate. Actually. the story began When Presi- dent Carter prom1sed to release all UFO data. it elected. Once elected. he discov- UFO exoerrs g1ve ·me benefit of ftle aouor· to lhl$ Yvngay. Perv pholo and be!ieve 11 "enu•ne. • 30 OMNI ered lhat lhe Arr Force·s "Blue Book· files were atreaoy oe.ng oeclass1lied. and ev- erybody dented havrng any otner lites . ·carter's sc1ence adVIser. Dr. Frank Press. was ass1gneo the task ol answenng UFO- related mail from the public. A fiOOCI ol ma1t arnved. demanding that ltle ·real secret files· be released. Overwhelmed with Queries. Press asked NASA director Dr. Robert Frosch if NASA might handle the mail. In the tener. one paragraph innocently asked if NASA would consider convening a panel to de. cide il a new official investigation was war- ranted. Following seveFal months of consider- ation. NASA sa1G that it could see no rea· son to undertake'a new investigation. However. Frosch oltered to make NASA laborato'ies available to analyze any UFO "physical evidence· that might be submined. Six months later. nothing has been offi- cially submitted. ••• If UFOs are alien spacecraft (and while this $ the leading theory. many other schOOls of thought have come and gone), it's likely that eanh's spaceships may have been able to encounter them in outer space. Stories have sprung up about how "our astronauts have seen them too!· In fact. each story can be traced back to authors' misunderstandings. distonions. exaggerations. or just plain fabrications. There does not appear to be a single case · · on record of Amencan or Soviet spacemen encountering anything extraordinary in lefr!IS of normal space occurrences. me most famous case. however. con- tinues to thrive. It deals with a UFO seen by astronaut James McDivitt on the Gemmi-4 mission in June , 965. McDi\ritt insists that the beer-can shaped object was just another man-made satellite. but some observers have suggested that it was a glimpse of his own booster rocket in a nearby orbit. A "tadpole" photograph was released by NASA soon after the flight. taken from a series ol mqvie frames. McDiv•tt claims he shot a few exposures with two still cam- eras. but they did not turn out. He didn't touch the movie camera. and the b!ob of light released by an overeager photo tech- nician shows only a w1ndow reflection, he insiSts. APRO's Dr. Harder. however. insists that the •tadpole" really was tne UFO. despite wl'lat McDivitt thinks. and that it was being propelled by a plasma jet. Dr. Harder chooses to disregard the astronaut's testi- mony and build his case on a lew frames of reflections. UFO believers can only hope that most UFO evidence is not so in- substantial. • • • Positive proof ot a genu1ne UFO encoumer
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