Secret life: firsthand accounts of UFO abductions (4 page)

Although a puzzling “mystery airship” wave had taken place in 1896 and 1897, it had long since been forgotten. Strange aerial objects known as “foo-fighters” and “ghost rockets” had been in the news occasionally from 1944 to 1946, but the public had taken little notice of them. In fact, there hadn’t been any science fiction radio programs with extraterrestrial invasion themes (with the exception of the 1938
War of the Worlds
broadcast, which did not include UFOs). The first Hollywood motion pictures with plots of alien visitation were not produced until 1949. Many films had been made about earthlings traveling to other planets (Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, for example), but no major films had aliens from outer space invading earth. UFO sightings did not spring from one of the important shapers of popular attitudes—mass media science fiction.
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At the time, not enough information was available to establish just what people were seeing, but the prevailing assumption was that the
objects were real and could probably be explained as secret weapons or other “conventional” phenomena. Nonetheless their mysterious nature was enough to rattle the nerves of the United States government. In 1948 the government assigned the Air Force the task of investigating the UFO reports to determine whether or not these objects posed a threat to the national security. Government interest in UFOs also spilled over into the Army, Navy, and CIA, which mounted small-scale investigations of sightings. Even J. Edgar Hoover, sensing Communist hanky-panky, had the FBI investigate UFO witnesses for their possible “subversive” capabilities.
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In these early days of UFOs, the Air Force and the public fell prey to several outlandish hoaxes and rumors. A citizen in Maryland reported that a flying saucer had crashed in his backyard and that he had recovered it. The Air Force sent men to investigate; the three-foot-wide toy of aluminum foil made headlines across the country before the Air Force decided that it had been victimized. Other hoaxes proved all too easy to perpetrate before investigators were able to distinguish them from legitimate UFO reports, and rumors of crashed flying saucers abounded almost from the beginning.

From 1948 to 1953, the Air Force and its scientific consultant for UFOs, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, actively investigated the UFO phenomenon. After the Air Force satisfied itself that the objects were not secret weapons from this or any other country, and having found no “hard” evidence for the existence of UFOs, it reasoned that the witnesses were simply mistaken, no matter how detailed the report or how credible the observer. Project Grudge, the Air Force’s official UFO investigation unit, came to the convenient conclusion that any UFO that defied conventional explanation could be accounted for in psychological terms—specifically, that they were attributable to misperception of conventional phenomena, abnormal psychological or physiological states, “societal stress,” and hoaxes. Whatever reports remained were categorized as “unknown.” In the end the “unknown” category became the solution to the mystery—the objects were unknown, case closed. Project Grudge made no attempt to analyze the character of the unknowns, to look for the common properties in the narratives, or to compare the witnesses’ backgrounds.

Project Grudge quite easily assigned psychological answers to this physical puzzle. Although there was no evidence that UFO witnesses
had serious psychological problems, it seemed “right” to suggest that this might be the case. Therefore this scientific judgment, based on no evidence whatsoever, was issued to the public as fact. The scientific community, assuming a perceptual and psychological answer, did not question this evaluation. Scientists preferred to accept this explanation because it conveniently seemed to solve the mystery. The same was true of the “societal stress” argument. No scientist ever attempted to verify the theory that stressful events in the society cause people to look into the sky, see strange objects, and then report these observations as a way of alleviating their personal stress.

From the very beginning, the scientific community, instead of testing the assumptions about conventional explanations of UFOs, gave the military a free hand in UFO analysis and never seriously attempted to confirm its results or investigate the UFO phenomenon independently. A pattern was set: the scientific community assumed that the phenomenon was “illegitimate” and allowed the Air Force to investigate it without questioning either the Air Force’s assumptions and methodology or its own assumptions.

Once the Air Force “explained” UFOs and found no threat to the national security, it attempted to distance itself from the subject, first by proclaiming that UFOs were misidentifications of conventional phenomena, and then in 1950 by dissolving Project Grudge in the hope that the entire fad, now free from government validation, would soon disappear. But by 1951 it was obvious that the Air Force had not solved the UFO problem. UFOs were still being sighted, and even high-ranking Air Force officers were seeing them. The Air Force decided to reopen Project Grudge. Unknowingly, the Air Force’s actions validated one of the critical findings of UFO research: The UFO phenomenon has no relation to societal events. No matter how the Air Force tried to manipulate public opinion or to suggest that UFOs had no objective reality, sightings continued, unaffected by these activities and pronouncements. Even a 1952 Air Force study of publicity surrounding UFOs and its effect on the number of sightings reported failed to show any cause and effect relation between publicity and UFO sightings.

Eager to put the issue to rest, the Air Force appointed Capt. Edward Ruppelt as the head of Project Grudge, later renamed Project Blue Book. Ruppelt made an enthusiastic attempt to study UFOs in the spring and summer of 1952. His efforts would constitute the
high point of Air Force involvement in UFO analysis. He developed plans to equip a special diffraction lens on a camera to analyze the spectrum of the light emitted by a UFO; he was going to photograph radar screens and measure radiation from UFO fly-overs; and he enlisted electronics and weather experts to help him.

But in 1952 the Air Force and Ruppelt were caught off guard. The Air Force found itself swamped with reports. During one month, more reports came in than the total for the previous five years. A series of spectacular sightings over the White House and Capitol Building created sensational publicity and convinced the Air Force that too many people were reporting what it still believed to be bogus sightings, in spite of Ruppelt’s ongoing investigation. The UFO problem was getting out of hand, and something had to be done before it presented itself as a threat to the national security.

The Central Intelligence Agency then entered into the picture. It put together a panel of scientists to study the situation. The CIA convened the Robertson Panel in January 1953 and changed the course of government involvement in UFOs for the next sixteen years. (Ruppelt and others were invited to give a briefing before the panel, but Project Blue Book did not formally participate.) After only twelve hours of briefings and study, the panel concluded that UFOs were not a threat to the national security. It did find, however, that the UFO
reports
were a threat because the Soviet Union could use “UFO hysteria” and public criticisms of the Air Force’s UFO investigations as a psychological warfare weapon against the United States. The Robertson Panel endowed the Air Force with a new mission: to mount a public relations effort to convince people that all UFO phenomena were explainable. Once educated to the great variety of things seen in the sky, the people would forget about UFOs, and the entire ridiculous affair would soon disappear. Solving the UFO mystery was no longer the objective. Public relations became the focus.

With this, the Air Force’s (and the government’s) efforts to study the phenomenon ended. All of Ruppelt’s plans to study UFOs systematically were scrapped. Never again would the government scientifically investigate the UFO mystery. Never again would it consider the UFO problem as anything more than a public relations headache. After 1953 it acted as a “soothing agent,” trying to calm fears and persuade the public that it had everything under control, hoping that eventually the fad would end and the reports would cease. No
one within the scientific community critically examined the government’s actions.

The Air Force was unwittingly aided in its attempt to prove that UFOs were nonsense by the “contactees.” These colorful individuals began telling their stories in the early 1950s and fundamentally altered people’s perceptions of the UFO phenomenon. Led by “Professor” George Adamski, “Doctor” Daniel Fry, Truman Bethurum, Orfeo Angelucci, and Howard Menger, the contactees claimed in ever-escalating sensational accounts that they had not only seen flying saucers but that they had met the occupants of them, engaged in long conversations with them about the differences in their respective planets, and took trips in flying saucers to visit distant worlds. They claimed that the benevolent beings they called Space Brothers had given them a mission to perform on earth, which usually involved giving a message to mankind to stop atomic wars, stop atomic testing, live together in peace, and so forth.

The contactees gained adherents and in the process attracted widespread press attention with their spectacular (and often demonstrably untrue) claims. Many unsuspecting people interested in UFOs were drawn into the web of charlatanism. To complicate matters, a small but growing number of reputable witnesses were reporting small Beings seen in or near UFOs. These reports were all but disregarded in the confusion as the contactees’ media splash resulted in increased public ridicule for all UFO witnesses. The new UFO organizations were horrified at the contactees and spent large amounts of time and energy trying to dissociate themselves from them.

UFOs continued to be an “illegitimate” area of study for scientists, both because of the Air Force’s debunking policies and the ridicule that stemmed from the lack of tangible evidence of their existence and the negative publicity the contactees generated. In 1952 the Air Force’s UFO consultant, J. Allen Hynek, conducted a survey of forty-five astronomers and found them very frightened of ridicule and afraid of jeopardizing their careers if they showed any interest in UFOs.

Since the scientific community and the Air Force had dismissed the validity of the sightings out of hand, it was left to “lay” people to investigate the persistent UFO mystery and to deal with the contactees. In their efforts to distance themselves from the contactees, most researchers reacted negatively to all UFO “occupant” sightings,
and a wave of conservatism swept the UFO research community. A split developed. Some organizations accepted the occupant reports, while others rejected them summarily, fearing that they smacked of “contacteeism.”

The quality of investigating, analyzing, and reporting was wildly inconsistent. Some of the work was excellent, but much of it was worthless. Debunkers exploited the weaknesses of these amateur investigators and suggested that the phenomenon itself was illegitimate because most of the people who studied it were not scientifically trained. This reinforced the notion within the scientific community that UFOs were truly an illegitimate field of study. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The longer the scientific community rejected the subject, the more amateurs filled the void. The amateurish quality of the work, along with the contactees’ gibberish, indicated to scientists that the entire affair was a “silly season” fad unworthy of scientific analysis.

But some UFO organizations in the mid-1950s tried to impress upon the public that the UFO phenomenon was legitimate and that the Air Force investigation was inadequate. Organizations such as Jim and Coral Lorenzen’s Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), the New York-based Civilian Saucer Intelligence, and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), under the leadership of retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe, became more convinced than ever that UFOs were most likely extraterrestrial and that the government was covering up this fact. They mounted intense efforts to make the Air Force reveal its findings and investigate UFOs openly and fairly.

By 1958 it was clear that the Air Force’s continued attempts to eradicate reports were failing. UFO sightings appeared to be unaffected by Air Force policy, contactee yarns, scientific attitudes, and public ridicule. They had continued at a steady pace from 1952 until 1957, when there was another enormous wave of sightings.

The 1957 wave prompted much public criticism of the Air Force’s handling of the problem. When the 1957 wave hit, much of the press began to realize that Air Force statements about UFOs—that they did not represent a threat to the national security and did not display technology in advance of our own—seemed disingenuous. The press put increased pressure on the Air Force to “come clean” and tell what it knew about the UFO mystery. By 1958 the Air Force, frustrated
with trying to eliminate reports, and tired of increasing public hostility, was also trying to rid itself of the UFO program entirely.

The Air Force’s policy of secrecy, however, and its attempts to identify the UFOs at all costs (to implement the recommendations of the Robertson Panel) were firmly entrenched. Only J. Allen Hynek had civilian access to the Air Force data, and he still believed that the UFO phenomenon was the product of conventional sources, although he was beginning to have his doubts.

The Air Force felt that it was under siege. Its efforts to relieve itself of the burden of UFOs intensified. But no matter where it tried to have the UFO project transferred—to NASA, the Brookings Institution, or a scientific area within the armed services—the Air Force could not get rid of it. No one else would assume the public relations headache that went with it.

By 1966, the Air Force was ready to try anything to rid itself of Project Blue Book. The opportunity presented itself in March, when a few sightings in Michigan seized the public’s attention. Eighty-six college students at Hillsdale College had seen a football-shaped object hovering over a field. The object ducked behind some trees when automobiles approached and then hovered again when the cars left. In Dexter, Michigan, a farmer and his son, along with many other witnesses, saw a large red object come flying out of a wooded and marshy area.