Dec 30 2006
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20 Most Important Dates In Ufology (Pt.2)
Second and last installment. Feel free to debate and suggest other dates and incidents. Remember, these were chosen with three criteria in mind: 1) The effect on Ufology in general 2) The effect these events have on the perception of the phenomenon and 3) The effect on public awareness.
11) March, 1966 - “Swamp Gas” Incident
At 10:30 on the night of March 21, students in the women’s dormitory of Hillsdale College in Dexter, Michigan called the Civil Defense office with a report of something with red green and white pulsating lights that had flown over their building. At about 11PM, they called back to report that the object had returned and had settled into a hollow in a wooded area about 1/2 mile east of the dormitory. The place was maintained as a park by the College. Police were called and dispatched to the area to check things out. Seeing a few lights which they could not get close enough to investigate, they returned to the dorm and observed orange and white lights flashing near where they had been looking. The reporting officer watched as the lights ascended to about 150 feet and back down to the ground several times. He was able to observe a convex surface on the object. At about 4:30 AM, the lights disappeared and nothing more was seen. Bluebook sent Dr. J. Allen Hynek out to investigate. After consulting with witnesses and the policemen who had seen the object, and under pressure from the Air Force to come up with any sort of explanation, he told reporters that the phenomenon could have been due to luminous methane gasses coming from a nearby swampy area. The press picked up on this as the Air Force’s official explanation and roundly criticized and ridiculed Hynek for it. The incident began to turn the tide of public opinion against the official policy of debunking reports.
12) September, 1967 - Snippy the horse mutilation
From Wikipedia:
“On September 7th, Agnes King and her son Harry noted that Lady, a three-year-old horse, had not returned to the ranch at the usual time for her water. This was unusual, given the heat and the arid conditions. Harry found Lady on the 9th. Her head and neck had been skinned and defleshed, the bones were white and clean. To King, the cuts on Lady seemed to have been very precise. There was no blood at the scene, according to Harry, and there was a strong medicinal odor in the air.The next day, Harry and Agnes returned to the scene with Agnes’ brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Berle Lewis. They found a lump of skin and horse flesh; when Mrs. Lewis touched it, the flesh oozed a greenish fluid which burned her hand. They also reported the discovery of fifteen “tapering, circular exhaust marks punched into the ground” over an area of some 5000 square yards. The medicinal odor had weakened somewhat, but was still present.”
(Researcher Chris O’Brien talked with the original witnesses in the 1980s and found that the horse was indeed the one named “Snippy.”)
Cattle mutilations would not become a major part of Ufology until the late 1970s, when a wave of incidents swept through the Western states.
13) November, 1968 - Condon Project Report
In 1966, the Air Force ordered a survey of UFO reports to determine once and for all the merit of the phenomenon. Physicist Edward U. Condon was picked to head the project. Condon sent a memo around to committee members early in the study suggesting that they would find little evidence for any “real” UFOs. This angered many members, some of whom quit, and a few who issued their own assessments after the report was released. The conclusion of the study was that UFOs represented misidentification and hoaxes only. This was what the Air Force wanted to hear, and the press and public were satisfied that an unbiased scientific report had finally put the matter to rest. The UFOs didn’t see it that way, and blithely continued to befuddle and fascinate everyone despite the infallibility of science.
14) 1969 Bluebook closed down
From 1952 to 1969, the U.S. Air Force conducted a public survey of UFO reports, mainly to determine if the sightings were a threat to national security, but also to calm public fears about unknowns and where they might be coming from. The mere fact that the government took any public interest in the subject brought UFOs further into the limelight.
15) 1977 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The film that bought UFOs back to public attention and revitalized Ufology, for better or worse. J. Allen Hynek made an appearance and Jacques Vallee was played by Francois Truffaut.
16) 1979 - Paul Bennewitz begins filming strange lights
Yes, I know. I’m biased on this, but the fallout from the Bennewitz incident stained Ufology well into the 1990s, and is in a sense still with us today. When the Air Force found that Bennewitz was looking in on some of their most secret projects, the set up a plan to fill him with so much disinformation that he was eventually committed to a mental institution by his family. The stories he was fed were picked up on and encouraged by the Air Force and other agencies with a new generation of hobbyists who spread the horror stories to a willing audience. Legends of underground bases, deals with alien races, and perhaps even MJ-12 all stemmed from the Bennewitz operation.
17) December 29, 1980 - Cash/ Landrum Incident
Driving back from dinner in west Texas, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum’s grandson Colby were startled to see a diamond-shaped craft hovering over the trees near the road. As they slowed down to take a look, the object floated over the blacktop, spewing flames from the bottom. Cash stopped the car and stepped outside to get a better look. The heat from the exhaust was so intense that she had to use a leather jacket to open the car door when she tried to flee back inside. Weeks later, the impressions of Vickie Landrum’s hands were still visible on the dashboard. As they watched, 23 army-type helicopters came into view and appeared to “shepherd” the object away until it seemed to gain altitude and the roaring flame stopped. In the weeks that followed, the witnesses, particularly Cash, began to show signs of radiation poisoning.
Although they were secretly offered a deal by the Air Force to drop a lawsuit, they declined based on advice by their lawyer, Peter Gersten. The case was finally dismissed, the cited reason being that the witnesses could not prove that the U.S. military flew any of the helicopters described, and that the government did not have any diamond-shaped aircraft. Based on open-source information, the government has experimented with nuclear-powered aircraft, and one undocumented source has confirmed that the craft was a hybrid nuclear/ antigravity-type platform. As usual, many clues, but no conclusion. In short-a perfect setup for advanced technology masquerading as a UFO.
18) 1987 - Intruders and Communion published
In a one-two punch, these two books signaled the start of the abduction phenomenon as the star attraction of Ufology, for better or worse.
19) 1989 - Robert Lazar and Area 51 stories begin
Beginning in 1988, listeners to the Billy Goodman radio show began hearing stories of a secret government UFO testing area in the rocky wastes of southern Nevada. Soon, the anonymous source of these tales emerged in the person of physicist Robert Lazar. After an in-depth investigation by Las Vegas TV reporter George Knapp, the story spread like wildfire through the UFO community.
20) July 2, 1989 - Bill Moore comes clean
Amid growing suspicion that Moore was a government agent, Moore announced, in a dramatic presentation at the annual MUFON conference, that he had indeed cooperated with elements of U.S. Intelligence in a deal to get official documents on UFOs released. Although he told just about everything he dared, most who saw or heard about the speech chose to vilify him, rather than take the information for what it was–a warning not to confuse the reality or accuracy of the message with the messenger. In other words, don’t believe an inside source just because it’s an inside source. It was the end of innocence in Ufology.
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December 30th, 2006 at 8:43 am
One of Nick’s links pointed out that Gerald Ford’s congressional district included “Swamp Gas” Dexter, and he called for hearings to get a better explanation than what Hynek had offered. One hearing was held by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which actually grilled Robert McNamara of all people about UFOs.
So at least taxpayers got some small use out of Ford before he went on to the presidency for the sole purpose of pardoning Nixon.
Also, Maury Island should be on somebody’s top ten list!
December 30th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
…and McNamara said that there was nothing unknown about the subject. I wonder if Ford is still lying in state out there in Palm Springs. My girlfriend and I are going to be there tomorrow.
More associations–Palm Springs is supposedly where Eisenhower was vacationing when he was taken to see some frozen aliens.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
…in February 1954, five months prior to the C-T memo! In 1955 Ike also had a meeting with Reich according to Reich biographer Jerome Greenfield, and shortly thereafter Reich traveled to Roswell. (Neither the 2/55 alien meeting nor the Ike-Reich meeting are contradicted by the official record.)
and…and…AND Richard Nixon showed Jackie Gleason the alien bodies in Palm Springs in 1973!
Poor Ford–had to compete with Saddam and James Brown for swan song TV time.
December 30th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
footnote on McNamara:
He’s the one who pushed for the General Dynamics bid for the TFX fighter over the Boeing bid that the Department of Defense wanted. That switch led to JFK’s assassination according to Jim Garrison, who said Fred Crisman shot from the knoll under the employ of Boeing. (And the Clay Shaw business from Oliver Stone movie fame was just a toe-hold on the broader conspiracy.)
General Dynamics’ design appealed to the hyper-efficient McNamara because of the multiplicity of its uses. It eventually became the F-111 and was sold to Australia, opening a funding corridor that led to the development of Pine Gap.
I realize that’s probably more than you wanted to know, but I rarely get a chance to blog with someone with enough background to understand what I’m talking about!
December 31st, 2006 at 1:48 am
I forgot about Nixon!
Don’t get Kenn started, or you see what happens. I actually enjoy it.
When you say “not contradicted by the official record” you mean that the official record makes no mention of the Reich meeting, right? I know no one has found anything on Eisenhower’s mysterious absence from a lunch party in Palm Springs, although he was supposed to have been at a dentist taking care of some sort of emergency, but that this does not account for all of his time off the record that day.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:54 am
Incidentally, the 1988 stories about Area 51 coincided (or were actually preceded) with concurrent letters to Paul Bennewitz telling him what had been going on out there, and stories about two alien races fighting for control of the planet. The letters were written by an NSA (or CIA, or DIA) operative overseeing counterintelligence on the Stealth Fighter program at Lockheed. It seems that someone or some group was priming the pump for the Area 51 mania that was to follow.
December 31st, 2006 at 8:39 am
As contrasted with the attempt to make Lee Harvey Oswald out to be a lone nut in part to cover up his connectiion to the U2 plane, developed at Area 51.
Yeah, Ike supposedly lost a tooth cap in some chicken and made a late-night visit to a Palm Springs dentist. Evidence for this does not appear in Ike’s existing, extensive medical records. The only witness was the dentist’s widow, whose recollections were suspiciously vague.
I did an article entitled “Wilhelm Reich: Eisenhower’s Secret Ally Against The Aliens” with all the particulars on this for Phenomena Magazine that appears in my new book, Parapolitics.
Happy New Year, guys!
“)
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I think another important event in 1989 was a radio interview by John Judge on KPFK in L.A. entitled “Unidentified Fascist Observatories” linking the whole UFO scene emerging during that period (ala Bill Cooper, Bob Lazar, John Lear, The Bill Moore revelations) as part of a government psy ops operation dating back to the rocket programs that started in the 1940’s–basically as a coverup and programming device that has continued in the form of mk-ultra operations, current day.
Another “interesting” player in this whole scene was Martin Cannon and his samizdat masterpiece “The Controllers” which I put a certain amount of stock in, Cannon’s flakiness not-withstanding. So all of this is another important aspect of that whole scene that emerged in 1989 when I used to listen to Billy Goodman’s grovvy program into the wee hours.
Good times…
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
When talking about 1967, I think the whole Mothman craze should be noted as a sudden twist in the whole UFO scene, as well.
January 4th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Adam,
Again, these are OUR favorite and important dates, not the ones most people associate with the UFO subject. The fact that we’re having this discussion will spread this. That’s one of the purposes of this blog, blogging in general, and the “cursed net” as Moseley calls it.
Perhaps I’ll do MY favorite 20 dates and start a whole new discussion.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
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