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OGDEN MAN IS NOW A BELIEVER IN UFOS

By Zack Van Eyck, Staff Writer

For most of his 77 years, Ogden resident Jack Layton was skeptical about UFOs. He tended to believe official statements that flying saucers were nothing more than meteors, weather balloons and sunlight reflecting off clouds, if not outright hoaxes.

Then, in June of this year while visiting their son in Las Vegas, Jack and his wife, Bessie, saw an enormous egg-shaped object hovering low in the daylight sky near the mountains. The observation was a bit unsettling. Layton had to question his sanity.

Imagine his relief, then, to hear a speaker say last week that some UFOs really are extraterrestrial craft, and that the United States and other world governments have known this for decades but have lied to the public so people won't become hysterical or create panic on Wall Street.

The Laytons were among about 500 people to attend a lecture by New Mexico-based UFO research-er Robert Hastings in Weber State University's Shepherd Union Ballroom. Hastings, a 15-year-veteran of the lecture circuit, presented documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that support his belief in a massive government coverup.

It was the second-largest crowd of the six talks given this fall as part of the school's convocation lecture series. A hundred more came to see Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady on ``The Brady Bunch.'' And while Hastings couldn't tell amusing stories about the actress who played Cindy, he did persuade many in the audience that the United States has been hiding the truth.

Some, though, were already convinced.

``I was a witness to some sightings in '47,'' said Art Carpenter, a professor of library science at the university. ``I was only about 7 or 8. It was near Manti in the fall or winter. . . . It was an experience I kind of value. It was so unusual it stays indelibly impressed in your memory.''

Carpenter said he saw a half-dozen circular lights with cone-shaped ``tails'' fly across the Utah sky. In the spring of 1947, the sighting of similar objects in Washington state by pilot Kenneth Arnold made national headlines and is generally accepted by UFOlogists as the event that kicked off the modern era of UFOs.

Hastings' research, presented in a 90-minute slide show and lecture, picks up the story from there. Using previously classified materials, many obtained in a 1979 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Hastings disclosed one document after another that detailed how the Air Force, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Central Intelligence Agency and other governmental entities reacted to UFO sightings as they became more prevalent.

A 1948 Air Force intelligence report assessed the situation by concluding UFOs were interplanetary spaceships involved in a ``systematic surveillance of our world.'' A 1950 letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the Air Force had recovered flying saucers in New Mexico.

And in 1953, Hastings said, documents and interviews reveal the CIA took over management of UFO information and began a coordinated campaign to debunk all sightings.

He believes public reaction to the 1939 radio broadcast of ``War of the Worlds,'' a dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth mistaken by some people for the real thing, helped convince the government that hiding the truth would be best for the public.

``The secret debunking campaign has been in place ever since,'' Hastings told his audience. ``Whether it's justifiable is up for debate. The fact that it has occurred is irrefutable.

``This is not a self-serving coverup like Watergate. They view it as best for the public.''

Hastings said he has spoken with 21 people who worked at nuclear missile sites during the Cold War and said they were present at launch-control facilities when UFOs descended and in some case knocked out power to the launch systems. He told the Deseret News he has spoken recently with almost a dozen ex-military sources, including radar operators, who reported UFO sightings during the more recent Desert Storm operation in the Persian Gulf.

This year, UFO sightings have been reported throughout the world, including in Utah, and the phenomenon is a favorite subject of tabloid TV and the entertainment industry. But at no time has a UFO landed in a public place, like the White House lawn, and presented itself for all to see. Hastings speculates that if in fact intelligent beings from other worlds are operating UFOs, they may feel earthlings are not yet ready for such a dramatic event.

Declassified federal documents concerning UFOs can be obtained by writing to the Fund for UFO Research, P.O. Box 277, Mount Ranier, MD 20712.

© 1995 Deseret News Publishing Co.



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