MILITARY ACCUSED OF DELIBERATE HOAXES OVER UFO SIGHTINGS
April 9, 1996
By: Martin Hannan / The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
Military authorities are not covering up large-scale contact with extra-terrestrial life, according to a researcher into UFOs. Instead they are covering up many of their own secret activities, Duncan Lunan , a researcher into unexplained phenomena, told an audience at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
According to Mr Lunan, many other UFO sightings and "close encounters" are deliberate hoaxes either
falsified by the military to discourage investigation of their activities or caused by mischief-makers.
In a lecture which set out to demolish many UFO myths - to the dismay of some of the audience - Mr Lunan demonstrated that UFO sightings could be explained by natural phenomena such as meteorites, or by people encountering military testing of secret hardware.
He also said that his researches had shown that statistics on UFOs - the so-called "5 per cent" claim in which one in 20 UFOs are said to be genuinely unidentified - came about because of an international agreement that any satellite or rocket pieces should be returned immediately to their country of origin.
He explained: "If bits of Russian or a Chinese spy satellite, for instance, fall on Western territory they are immediately classified as UFOs, so that you don't have to hand them back to their country of origin but can hand them over to the intelligence services."
He added: "Hoaxes feature a lot in the equation. Some of those hoaxes are deliberately promoted by the military authorities in order to deflect attention from their activities."
Mr Lunan said he had been told by intelligence officers that the "5 per cent" of UFOs over the UK during the Cold War had included planes bringing in drug smugglers and illegal immigrants in order to confuse the Soviets as to what had really been identified.
He also said such famous UFOs as the original "flying saucer" sighting in 1947 and the Roswell incident in New Mexico could now be explained by the release of information about "flying wing" aircraft and remote-controlled pilotless vehicles (RPVs) which were in development by the US military in those areas at the time.
He added: "It would also explain why so many visitors to US Air Force bases claim to have glimpsed UFOs through hangar doors, which in turn led to suggestions that the US government was in contact with aliens."
The most famous incident in Scotland involving a close encounter - "the only one in the world with a local authority plaque to mark the spot", said Mr Lunan - was Bob Taylor's report of an encounter with a downed UFO near Livingston in the 1970s.
Mr Lunan said that a journalist who dealt with the local police on the night that it happened and Mr Taylor himself later said the original police report contained details of a caterpillar-track vehicle which attacked Mr Taylor and slashed his trousers, a detail which has been left out of the official report of the incident.
Mr Lunan said that a more plausible explanation was that Mr Taylor had seen a military operation to recover a downed pilotless aircraft using a "wheelbarrow" bomb disposal type now familiar from its use in Northern Ireland.
Mr Lunan added that "atmospheric phenomena" could explain many other UFOs.
"With Venus brilliant in the evening sky at the moment it is no coincidence we are experiencing a wave of UFO sightings in Scotland."
Back to news menu
All rights reserved to WUFOC and NÄRKONTAKT. If you reprint or quote any part of the content,
you must give credit to: WUFOC, the free UFO-alternative on the Internet, http://www.tripnet.se/home/west/ufocentr.htm