TO : ALL
RE : The Monthly Report - February 1997 by Stanton Friedman
[http://207.179.129.61/index.htm]
[[email protected]]
[=-NOTE: The following text has been edited down from HTML and formatted to
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A Korean Adventure
I was really anticipating my first Asian trip, for a Conference arranged
through MUFON for Jan. 16-21 in Seoul, Korea. When I arrived, I was met at
the airport and told that the Conference had been cancelled! This was
because of the political and labor unrest (riots and demonstrations) as the
result of new hurriedly passed legislation. (The fax informing me had
arrived after I had already left Canada). The host California Event Group
had reserved a room for me at a different hotel. So no one knew where I was.
I was however more fortunate than Antonio Huneuus, New York based UFO
columnist for ''FATE'' and a Japanese periodical. He arrived in Seoul at 6am
the next morning, was not met, but took the airport shuttle to the
conference Hotel anyway. They hadn't heard of him or the conference!
Finally he made contact with CEG and was brought to my hotel which was much
closer to what we thought would be a small UFO exhibit.
Were we wrong! The exhibit took up the entire 10th floor of a building, had
cost $3-4 million, and was the largest either of us had ever seen. That
Saturday alone there were 12,000-15,000 visitors, who paid between $9 and
$15 each. Antonio and I each gave a short pre-sentation in a corner of the
exhibition. We both agreed that a number of the exhibits were based on
fraudulent stories ranging from George Adamski & Billy Meier to Bob Lazar and
many contactees. In the Asian cultural milieu it would apparently be almost
unthinkable to make up a fraudulent story. Our hosts were most kind and took
us to a real Korean restaurant complete with low tables and sitting on the
floor... not easy on these old bones.
They still talk of holding a real conference. Seoul is a huge city of 10.4
million people almost completely rebuilt after the Korean War. Canada has
only 30 million people in almost 4 million square miles. Korea has 45
million people in less than 40,000 square miles.
Many of the books we saw at the exhibit were translations of contactee books.
My copies of ''TOP SECRET/MAJIC'' and ''Crash at Corona'' and my CD-ROM
''UFOs: the Real Story'' were all purchased along with the 2 volume sets of
my video ''Flying Saucers ARE Real.'' The German, UK, and Australian versions
of ''TOP SECRET/MAJIC'' should be out during l997... who knows, maybe a Korean
version...
Roswell Unlimited
Perhaps because 1997 is the 50th anniversary of the recovery of at least 2
crashed saucers and several alien bodies in New Mexico in early July, l947,
many Roswell-related books will be appearing. A real surprise was the
announcement by Pocket Books of a new book The Day after Roswell by retired
army Colonel Philip J. Corso to be published in July. Supposedly he will say
that there was a Roswell crash, bodies were recovered and he knew all about
it having been asked to check into back engineering saucer technology for the
Army's Foreign Technology Division. Corso had surfaced by 1994, and had
visited Roswell. He is best known for making claims about over 1,000 US POWs
being taken from Korea by the Russians in the 1950s. He has testified to
various congressional hearings and was even featured in ''Time'' Magazine,
Sept. 30, l996. The claim is that he was a key adviser to the National
Security Council under President Eisenhower. He certainly was with the
Intelligence Liaison Staff at the NSC Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) for
three years (l953-l956) according to Official documents which I have. My
concern is two fold:
1. Because of his background, the major media are likely to pay far more
attention to him than they have to serious researchers on Roswell. In
the United Kingdom, for example, in l996, Nick Pope's superficial and
often inaccurate book ''Open Skies, Closed Minds'' got far more attention
than Timothy Good's much more deeply researched book ''Beyond TOP
SECRET'' because Nick had worked for the MOD (Ministry of Defense). He
was touted as the real Fox Mulder of ''The X-Files''- a grossly
undeserved connection.
2. If Corso's claims turn out to be strictly based on reading available
literature and not substantiated by new documents and other evidence,
this could easily discredit the Roswell story. The comparison here is to
the supposed alien autopsy footage still being touted by Ray Santilli,
the UK distributor, and Bob Kiviat, who produced the FOX TV show. Time
will tell.
Concerning the autopsy footage, an interview with the purported military
cameraman was actually shown on Japanese TV. Enhanced frames showing the
cameraman's face were spread around the Internet although it wasn't
supposed to be seen. Unfortunately there is still no documentation that the
person really is a former military cameraman, had a high security clearance
or was anywhere near a crashed saucer near Socorro, NM, in May-June l947.
Acceptance of Santilli's autopsy footage as genuine is also the basis for a
new book ''Beyond Roswell'' due at the end of March by UK researcher Philip
Mantle and German publisher Michael Hesseman. Supposedly Michael has found
Santilli's new ''Roswell'' crash location near Socorro, NM, 170 miles from
Roswell and occurring at the end of May 1947.... and having no connection
with the recoveries near Corona and in the Plains of San Augustin well west
of Socorro in early July as described in ''Crash at Corona.''
Attacks on Roswell Witnesses
Karl Pflock, now living in New Mexico and partly responsible for getting
Albuquerque Congressman Steven Schiff to get the General Accounting Office
to search for documents related to Roswell, has changed his entire tune. He
had stood strongly behind the case and especially Roswell Mortician Glenn
Dennis for some time, even writing a lengthy report for the Fund for UFO
Research. Now he is totally accepting Bob Todd's vicious attacks on Jesse
Marcel Sr.'s integrity and rejecting Glenn's entire story. The basis seems
to be that because no documentary proof has yet been provided that there was
a real nurse at the base who meets Glenn's description, she must not have
existed. He also, for reasons not well defined, accepts the USAF Mogul
Balloon explanation even though it doesn't match the facts of the case.
Though it makes certain fiction writers angry when I repeat it, I must once
again say that absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence of that
evidence, especially in situations where it would not be easy to provide that
evidence. Todd complains that some of Marcel's claims about his military
records are not supported by his personnel file, therefore he was lying.
This despite the fact that many old time military men agree that records,
especially during wartime, were generally not complete.
It would not be surprising if a military nurse, directly involved in handling
alien bodies, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, would have been
moved in the equivalent of a Secret Witness Program. I should note that
years ago I had located a number of people who had worked in the medical
group at Roswell. I gave the names of the nurses in the base yearbook in
alphabetical order including Glenn's, to one who had demonstrated an
excellent memory of the nurses. He recalled her by name. I asked him what
she looked like and he described her similarly to the description given me
by Glenn. An outstanding young researcher, Victor Greg Golubic, has located
many people who were at the base hospital in the l946-48 time frame and were
not in the yearbook. He hasn't yet given up on Glenn's nurse, though no
records of her have yet been found nor other direct memories.
In effect, Karl is calling all the other witnesses either liars or totally
mistaken and is attributing to the very mundane equip-ment of the Mogul
project very special properties. He is also accepting CIC man Sheridan
Cavitt's totally changed description of what he saw despite it not matching
anybody elses. As the one person who has been in the homes of Jesse Marcel
Sr., Jesse Marcel Jr., Walter Haut, Bill Rickett, T. J. DuBose, Dennis,
Gerald Anderson, and with many other others, I can't throw out everybody's
testimony. Some have accused Pflock of still being connected with his
former employer, the CIA, and playing out their agenda. I have seen no
evidence to support this notion.
Telstar 401
Some unknown person has published a false story that I supposedly faxed Art
Bell that a UFO was responsible for the disappearance of AT&T's Telstar 401
Communications Satellite on January 11. I hadn't faxed him and said no such
thing. I see no reason to think its failure (NOT disappearance) was not
caused by the huge solar storm that enveloped the earth on January 10-11
with a billion ton cosmic cloud of ionized gas from the sun dissipating more
than 1,400,000 megawatts of energy (twice the power production in the USA) in
the Earth's magnetosphere. I wonder if my signature was forged as
well....see ''Science News,'' Feb. 1, l997, pg.68.
High Tech
For many years I have talked (in the context of flying saucer technology)
about Friedman's Law ''Technological progress comes from doing things
differently in an unpredictable way. The future is NOT an extrapolation of
the past.'' Two recent articles fit right in. Dr. Hal Puthoff, President
of Institute of Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas, and author of many
exciting highly technical papers about creating energy from a vacuum has a
fascinating article ''Space Propulsion: Can Empty Space Itself provide a
Solution'' in the Jan./Feb. l997 issue of ''Ad Astra'' (To the Stars), the
publication of the National Space Society. ''SCIENCE'' (10 January, l997,
p.158) has a piece about exciting new test results measured by Steven
Lamoreaux of Los Alamos of the Casimir Effect so important to Puthoff's
theories.
Old Secrets to be Declassified?
Coming soon an expos� on the US Government's new executive order focusing on
the Classification review of old classified documents.
Last Month's Report
At the end of l996 I did four telephone interviews with radio stations in
England. They had been arranged by Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd. a
major publisher in London. After a test selling in a small area, they
published over 700,000 copies of a new fortnightly publication about the
paranormal named ''The XFACTOR.''
It is slick, loaded with artwork and has no advertising. An interview with
me is featured in the first issue and I supplied articles and graphics about
Roswell and Operation Majestic 12 for later issues. I was featured in some
of the press releases, hence the interviews. Also ''TOP SECRET/MAJIC'' will
be published in England next month with copies being awarded as prizes in a
contest.
I was suddenly joined during one of the interviews by Stewart Campbell, a
well known debunker. The host also seemed to be totally skeptical and, as
was the case with 40 plus UK interviews I did in October, 1995, totally
devoid of knowledge. Campbell tried to make three strong arguments:
1. All sightings can be explained.
I noted that 20% out of 3201 cases investigated by the Battelle Memorial
Institute for Project Blue Book in BB Special Report 14 (252 pages $20
from UFORI) could NOT be identified and that 30% of the 117 cases
reviewed in the University of Colorado study remained unidentified and
that over 700 Unidentified were listed in the UFO Evidence. He insisted
that was just because there wasn't enough data. I pointed out that there
was a separate category in BBSR 14 called ''Insufficient Information.''
It is not surprising that 12 debunking books about UFOs don't mention
BBSR 14 even though all the authors were aware of it.....
2. It would take too much energy to go to stars across the galaxy.
Of course, I am only interested in stars in our local neighborhood.
There are 1000 stars within 54 light years of which 46 are very similar
to the sun and of which some are a billion years older than the sun and
have near neighbors only a few light weeks away. I tried to point out
that the amount of energy it takes is entirely dependent as to how one
makes the trip and how much cosmic freeloading one uses.
Dr. Campbell's calculation in 1941 as to the required initial launch
weight of a chemical rocket able to get a man to the moon ad back was too
high by a factor of 300,000, because of all the wrong assumptions he
made! I worked on fusion rockets capable of star travel...
3. Finally Campbell tried to pull the old ''Occam's Razor'' ploy.
The simplest explanation is likely the best one... Therefore, since most
sightings can be explained, all can be. I pointed out that from my
viewpoint since we know how to get to nearby stars with round trip times
shorter than the average person's life span, and since there are reports
from all over the world of round manufactured craft with flight
capabilities well beyond any we have been able to produce, and often
disgorging strange humanoid creatures, that clearly the simplest
explanation is that earth is being visited by intelligently controlled
ET spacecraft, even if that doesn't answer such questions as from whence
they cometh, or for what reasons, or why they don't land on the White
House lawn... I hate wasting my time on this sort of nonsense, but I
guess somebody has to forcefully deal with the facts as they are as
opposed to the way the debunkers would have them be.
TV Shows
I watched three supposed UFO Documentaries this past week and was dismayed
indeed. I would say that even though these were on the Discovery Channel and
A and E one can't believe anything on the tube.. (I had brief roles as did
Dr. Bruce Maccabee). It was as if truth had become a four letter word to
be avoided at all costs.
One program dealt with the government and UFOs but no documentation was shown
or discussed. No mention of BBSR 14. No mention of the Congressional
Hearings of Monday, July 29, l968 which included testimony from 12 scientists
such as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Donald Menzel, myself, and,
most importantly, Dr. James E. McDonald whose outstanding report to Congress
(71 pages, $10.00 post paid from UFORI, POB 958, Houlton, ME 04730-0958) has
information on 41 separate unexplainable cases.
No mention of the government sponsored Condon Report in which 30% of the 117
cases studied by the U. of Colorado could not be identified according to a
UFO committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
There was no mention of the fact that the NSA has withheld 156 UFO reports
on the basis of ''national Security.'' That the CIA has withheld UFO reports
for the same reason.
The Project Mogul Explanation for Roswell was pushed while showing a large
Skyhook type polyethylene balloon rather than the totally conventional small
neoprene balloons used in Mogul. They showed a general at a press
conference explaining Roswell away, without noting that it was General
Samford in l952, not l947, and that he was not talking about Roswell. There
was much else that was nonsense. The army air force cover story was
presented for Mac Brazel without a hint of the inconsistencies between that
story and what Mac and his son and others stated.
The shows were loaded with a sort of equal time for pro and con even when
the ''con'' artists hadn't done their homework and were doing their
research by proclamation, baseless psychological explanations, silly attacks
on hypnosis.. UGH!
The worst of it is that there is sure to be an abundance of garbage laden
broadcasts and books published as we are now in the 50th anniversary year for
Roswell and Kenneth Arnold.
Don't bother me with the facts, we are only interested in presenting
stories....
- End of File -
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Till later, MAC??? / tNATOA / [PRo-iauR]