MILITARY BRASS GO PUBLIC

Fri, 6 Dec 1996 01:57:55 -0500 (EST)
Source: Francisco Lopez

SENT ANONYMOUSLY

            MILITARY BRASS GO PUBLIC WITH EXPLOSIVE NEW INFORMATION
                                       
   By COLMAN JONES 
   
   While for most people the subject of UFOs and aliens  arouses no more
   than mild amusement, if not outrigh t derision, the recent recruitment
   of high-profile former doubters to the believers’ side is shaking up a
   new round of dissonance.  
   
   In recent weeks, some of these converts have joined a long list of
   credible UFO enthusiasts who have been featured in a flurry of
   television and radio programs in the U.S. and En gland, programs
   that are no longer treating the extraterrestrial issue as a comedic
   interlude.  
   
   These newcomers to the cause wonder how long we will continue to stand
   idly by and let deliberately evasive governments shield the world’s
   peoples from what may be the most important and potentially dangerous
   news ever to surface — that we are not alone in the universe.
   
   The most significant military UFO recruit is Nick Pope, the British
   government’s appointed investigator of UFO sightings who headed
   Britain’s secretariat air staff 2A division between 1991 and 94.
   
   Unlike his predecessors, who merely rubber-stamped sighting reports,
   Pope contacted witnesses and civilian UFO researchers, checking
   aircraft movements, airship flightpaths and weather-balloon launches
   and ordering radar tapes to be impounded and sent to him for analysis.
   
   
   “After rigorous investigation,” Pope says, “I uncovered conventional
   explanations for around 90 per cent of sightings. But 10 per cent
   simply could not be explained, and it was my belief that some of these
   were extraterrestrial in origin.  
   
   “There were too many cases where we were obviously not just talking
   about lights or shapes, but we clearly had evidence that there were
   structured craft, where the technology went way beyond even the
   cutting edge of our own.”
   
Not pleased

   
   
   Pope is still working as a major for the UK ministry of defence,
   although his higher-ups have been none too pleased with his work and
   have attempted to discourage publication of his book, Open Skies,
   Closed Minds, due for publication in June by Simon and Shuster.  
   
   “(What lay behind the resistance) was the closed-minded attitude,” he
   says. “It was people’s embarrassment that perhaps I was going to talk
   about cases where we had visual sightings and radiation readings and
   where we could show that, unfortunately, the end response of the
   department was to do nothing.”
   
   Another high-ranking addition to the UFO cause is Edgar Mitchell, the
   65-year-old Apollo 14 astronaut and the sixth man to walk on the moon.
   In 1971, he and Alan Shepard spent 33 hours roving the desolate lunar
   hills. It was here that Mitchell first courted an avant-garde
   reputation, conducting mental telepathy experiments by transmitting
   symbolic images to an acquaintance in Chicago.  
   
   Shortly thereafter, he left the astronaut corps and founded the
   Institute for Noetic Sciences in an effort to integrate various
   scientific disciplines into the study of human consciousness. (Noetics
   comes from the Greek work for mind.)
   
   Mitchell’s upcoming book, The Way Of The Explorer, addresses his
   latest research, including his conclusions about extraterrestrial
   intelligence.
   
   Speaking from his home in Florida, he says, “The evidence has
   accumulated to the point that it can no longer be ignored. There is a
   body of solid, powerful, credible evidence — surrounded by a whole lot
   of disinfo rmation, misinformation and silliness.”
   
Solid evidence

   
   
   Mitchell has tried to gather up as much first-hand data as possible.
   “I have personally gone out of my way to interview government people I
   can have some respect for, who have given firsthand accounts of
   (extraterrestrial) contact of different sorts. I can’t reveal these
   people, because they are under security restriction.”
   
   Their accounts have convinced the former astronaut to join the growing
   campaign to press for lifting the gag orders on talking about UFOs. He
   is also pushing, along with 20,000 others, for an executive order to
   declassify any U.S. government-held information on the stirring 1947
   affair at Roswell, New Mexico, where the U.S. air force allegedly
   retrieved the remains of a crashed spaceship complete with alien
   occupants — a tale that continues to fascinate millions.  
   
   Mitchell is only one of several astronauts to go public with what they
   know about UFOs. Another is major Gordon Cooper, one of the original
   seven astronauts who helped pioneer space exploration efforts. But
   unlike most of his colleagues, Cooper has said for decades that he
   believes at least some UFOs are alien spacecraft, testifying to that
   effect in front of the UN in 1978.  
   
   Cooper, who today runs an aerospace management company in Van Nuys,
   California, had already been a firm believer before he flew into
   space. Ten years earlier, in the early 50s, he was assigned to a jet
   fighter group in Germany. While stationed there, he remembers sighting
   an entire formation of circular metallic objects as he piloted his
   F-86 Sabrejet.  
   
   “We saw these objects coming over at quite a good altitude, flying in
   fighter formations,” he says. “We tried to get up to them, but we
   couldn’t get anywhere near as high as they were. They continued for
   about two days, coming over in great numbers.”
   
   With so many reports of strange happenings, UFO types trained in
   military culture are astounded at governments’ apparent indifference
   to the possible strategic implications of all these unexplained
   phenomena.
   
   That’s the concern of retired British admiral of the fleet Lord
   Hill-Norton, former chief of the defence staff and chair of the NATO
   military committee during the mid-70s.  
   
   The government “says that the matter is investigated,” he says from
   his home near London. “They admit readily 300 or 400 reports a year,
   which they investigate. The ministry’s official line is this is not of
   any defence interest. This is silly talk, of course.”
   
   The security aspect of such sightings has been exhaustively explored
   by British writer Timothy Good, whose definitive 1987 book Above Top
   Secret soared up the best-seller lists. His latest entry, Beyond Top
   Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat, with a foreword by
   Hill-Norton and published just last week, is a fully revised edition,
   citing over 100 new sightings reported by military and civilian pilots
   around the world.  
   
   The new book’s focus is on the potential defence risks posed by UFOs.
   Good notes, “They interfere with aircraft communications systems and
   military weapons systems and jam radars. There have been quite a
   number of aircraft which have gone missing during close encounters
   with UFOs, in countries as far apart as the U.S. and Iran.  
   
   “These devices have been seen over nuclear missile bases and atomic
   energy commission installations in the U.S. since the 1940s. They have
   been known to paralyze launching systems of guided missiles. Here in
   Britain, at the famous Woodbridge case in 1980 (where U.S. military
   officers reported a bright triangular-shaped object landing in a
   field), at least one of the witnesses has confirmed that beams of
   light were shone down at a nuclear weapons storage area. Surely this
   poses a security threat.”
   
Lobbying friends

   
   
   The latest figure to enter the fray is the 85-year-old environmental
   activist and venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller, son of John D.
   Rockefeller Jr. and brother of Nelson. For the last few years,
   Rockefeller has been lobbying his friends in political circles for any
   information they may have on extraterrestrial life. More recently, he
   agreed to fund a research report presenting the strongest proof of
   alien visits.  
   
   The 169-page document, entitled Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing
   Document: The Best Available Evidence, has the support of the three
   major American UFO organizations and has been sent to U.S. president
   Bill Clinton, Congress and other world leaders.  
   
   The report, a copy of which has been obtained by NOW, includes case
   histories of UFO sightings.  
   
   “It is this large quantity of evidence of the existence of something
   completely baffling,” the document says, “which motivates many of us
   to urge the governments of the world to release all they know about
   UFOs so that the people of the world, and especially scientists, can
   begin to come to grips with a mystery that has far too long been
   subjected to secrecy and ridicule.”
   
   With all this ferment, it’s somewhat sobering to note that the
   Canadian government is utterly uninterested.  
   
   In Winnipeg, at the Canadian forces’ aerospace control and
   surveillance centre, staff officer captain Jim McLean tells me that
   our air force gathers reports of UFO sightings, but little else. “In
   essence, what this office does is accumulate all the files and
   reports, and keep them on file — we don’t assess or investigate them.”
   
   
   McLean says the government used to look into unusual sightings, but
   “it took up too much time for things that used to prove to be natural
   events, i.e. meteor showers. It took up many, many man-hours. We hold
   them on file, and can copy everything and send it off to anybody who’s
   interested.”
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   Nick Pope
   Edgar Mitchell 
   UFO sighted over Belgium - 1990
   Alien visitor?


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