I don’t think that Carrion was trying to empty the Roswell saucer, just put a crack in it to see if anything would leak out.

Awhile ago, I wrote a post asking why government people weren’t freaked out about any supposed UFO “reality.” Read it to see what I think.

On the subject of overseas reports, I think that most world governments and local authorities are competent enough to report on their own sightings. Local populations are another matter, but I also see value in listening to their stories, since objective impressions can be useful as well. Perhaps Dolan was calling for more attention from American investigators to help increase the database.

I think that the conference should have been haunted by the real spirit of Mac Tonnies. After all, he was one of the main proponents of a new direction for ufology.

I don’t remember meeting you, unless you didn’t tell me your name!

See you there next year, I hope.

Great seeing you there and hearing more on Maury. I think the crowd was interested to hear how the UFO subject connects to events and people in the “real” world. If not, their loss.

James Carrion was the only one who was soundly beaten about the head. No one who was intentionally trying to muddy the strongly held beliefs in the ET Roswell theory would have risked making himself such an obvious target, especially in front of that particular audience. It was pretty gutsy since I’m sure he knew his statements would be meet with angry protests. No one but no one is going to mutilate the sacred Roswell cow! And if they do, please keep an eye out for black helicopters.

One of the reasons he gave for not seeing the Roswell ET story as valid was that a base so deeply entrenched in secret keeping wouldn’t blurt out to the world that they had found a saucer. They were too smart and well trained in keeping mum for a press release about their find to be anything but a well planned diversion meant to provoke a reaction from counterspies. My unsubstantiated argument would be that the officers at the Roswell Army Airfield probably didn’t know that UFOs WERE a secret. I bet no one had never broached the subject with them. In fact, the government didn’t seem to have a real cover-up policy on UFOs until after Roswell. And if they did, it was most likely on a need-to-know basis and therefore wasn’t shared with the Roswell base. So it wasn’t their secret to keep. In fact, the secret they were asked to keep was already out of the bag once the bomb had been dropped. They may have thought they were out of the secret-keeping business.

I did nothing but scribble questions while I was at the conference. I can’t read them all now because they really were scribbled but:

Greg, once June Crain was convinced of the ET reality, was she freaked out? She sounded like a tough broad, so maybe not.

What happened to the rumor that the US invaded Granada to retrieve a crashed craft? I thought for sure it would be addressed as part of Peter Robbins’ presentation, but alas, no one brought it up, including me.

Why didn’t I tell people I went to Las Vegas for a UFO conference? It wasn’t embarrassment as suggested, it just takes too long to explain.

If there’s a government agency patch that has a sphinx, a star and a flying triangle on it, why doesn’t anyone ask them to explain why? They aren’t very creative in their naming conventions or their use of symbolism so I’m sure the meaning isn’t much deeper than our suspicions, but we should make them justify why it’s so weird.

How is it that when the government can’t find requested documents the first thought is always conspiracy and not incompetence? It’s a bureaucracy. They’re incompetent a large percentage of the time. If they were able to find things the first couple of times they were asked, THEN I’d be suspicious.

When Richard Dolan says there are a lot of terrific sightings coming from foreign countries recently, then okay, but even I don’t take those as seriously as I do the ones that come from here. They’re much easier to discredit since I perceive them as being filtered through a certain amount of ignorance, a lack of knowledge of technology that might lead to misinterpretation of what’s been witnessed, and cultural and religious beliefs that may thwart any sensible reporting. When he says they are good cases in Bolivia, am I the only one who has those thoughts?

How was I going to buy bunches of books? Am I the only one who flew there with one measly little carry-on? Thankfully there’s internet shopping and you know, Christmas is just around the corner.

Observation: Of the two Woods’ I find Bob to be the charmer. He’s a sparkly old dude.

My last observation on the conference is that it was haunted. The spirit of Stanton Friedman was everywhere! The speakers who didn’t mention him were the exceptions. Someone should tell him he was missed, but still somehow present.

I enjoyed having been there and seeing you guys in person and with any luck, I’ll see you again next year.