From: | hatch@CompuTech.reno.nv.us |
Title: | CONTROVERSY CONTINUES UNABATED |
Source: | Electronic Engineering Times |
Date: | March 04, 1996 |
On the heels of landmark UFO sightings in Washington State in late June
1947, a report two weeks later that an unidentified spacecraft had crashed
in Roswell, N.M., made worldwide front-page news. Though the U.S. Air Force
issued the report -- "remnants of a flying disk had been recovered" -- one
day later it officially changed that to say instead that an "errant weather
balloon" had been found. The controversy stirred up by those events
continues unabated.
"Ufologists" believe that there have been continuing and far-reaching
government cover-ups concerning just what U.S. and other worldwide security
agencies and their armed forces know.
And the Roswell incident continues to provide grist for their mill. The
Air Force helped by again changing its story in 1994, this time claiming
that the weather balloon was a sophisticated device involved in Soviet
satellite detection for a mysterious "Project Mogul." Before that, the late
1970s saw more witnesses come forward to discuss the so-called Roswell disk
as well as another "crash" in nearby Corona, that one apparently involving a
handful of dead or dying aliens.
A recent television special, "Alien Autopsy," shows what it said was
one of those dead aliens being autopsied. For 17 minutes, grainy,
out-of-focus black and white film showed either the real thing or one of the
better hoaxes of modern history, according to Hollywood special effects
people.
Similar controversy in UFO circles centers on Area 51, known as
"Dreamland." Government land about 95 miles north of Las Vegas, it is
surrounded by the Nevada Test Site and the Nellis Air Force Range.
Within the area is a large Air Force base that the government keeps
ultra-secure -- off-limits to even most military pilots.
The base has traditionally been America's testing ground for "secret"
aircraft, including the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117A stealth
fighter.
But that's not what brings hundreds of travelers from around the world
to set up camp (and telescopes) to watch the skies there. Rather, it is
rumors of captured aliens, underground bases and alien-government technology
tests -- all of which have been claimed to take place in Area 51.
What is very real, however, is that when unauthorized visitors wander
across the unfenced military borders they are arrested by the "Cammo Dudes,"
the private security force that patrols the military border, wearing
camouflage fatigues and driving white Jeep Cherokees with government plates.
One answer to the question of why government agencies haven't produced
one shred of hard evidence of alien visitations or related technologies
could be the most obvious: there isn't any. But Stanton Friedland, a noted
Ufologist, said there are reasons for the authorities to keep a lid on such
information. "Governments," he said, "want to study the technologies they
find before the other guy does."
Or, he adds, there could also be an "economic discombobulation," where
new methods of ground and air transport, communications, agriculture, energy
and industrial production could begin development due to newfound alien
technologies. --- Larry Lange