Jay's questions have merit, since even sincere investigators have little to contribute if they are not qualified to investigate. But the questions were clearly posed as a not-so-subtle attack, right out of the gate, and that was not warranted.

What specifically made them attacks in your opinion?

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Because 1) I grant you I'm new here, too, but so far I have never seen a thread opened by a request for credentials as a condition of participation (for either side), and 2) the more polite way would have been something on the order of "Hi, welcome to the board, looking forward to seeing what you have to contribute, what is your training...", etc. I wasn't the only one to notice the implied antagonism in the bluntness of the request. Actually, the man provided a lot of background information about himself--more than most participants offer initially, so he's trying to be up front. And in that light, as an opening, the long threads were probably justified too, but let's see what he has to say before we decide whether to start digging at him. Yes, he asked us to read elsewhere; from his standpoint, probably a reasonable request to initiate an understanding of the subject as he sees it, but he's new here and obviously not versed in board standards, so cut him some intial slack (there's plenty of time to take it up later) and educate him (as some of you have been trying to do). I would really like to think it's possible to discuss an idea with committment, but without spears.

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz

"To complete the picture all the photons can be seen to be synchronising friction on and off throughout the overall cone which itself is synchronised to the equal and opposite reaction of equilateral triangulation"... by a scientificator in ATM, too priceless to be lost to posterity.

Yeah, I see it this way too.

JayUtah was quick with his posts so it's a bit unclear as to the importance of his questions.

The questions serve on the claimants behalf. So it is not antagonism, it's actually in Robert Hastings favor. Admittedly, the posts were short and it's easy to see how it could look that way.

Robert Hastings can choose to address this on his return, and I agree Throkil2, hopefully we can blow past any nonsense and get down to some claims and hashing them out

If I am wrong in my interpretation, you have my apologies, but please bear in mind that if it came across that way to me, it possibly did to Mr. Hastings (as some of his responses would seem to bear out).

__________________
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz

"To complete the picture all the photons can be seen to be synchronising friction on and off throughout the overall cone which itself is synchronised to the equal and opposite reaction of equilateral triangulation"... by a scientificator in ATM, too priceless to be lost to posterity.

I'll admit a couple of things. First, I'm no expert on anything except solid state inorganic chemistry. Second, I usually don't get involved in the UFO threads, so I have not read some of the other current ones.

As far as the point at hand, I'm first a little unclear Mr. Hastings as to exactly what you are claiming. I assume that you are claiming that these UFOs are ETs visiting the Earth and that there is some cover-up as to that conclusion. But I have not seen a clear statement of this. Please correct me if I have this wrong.

I did look a little around your website Mr. Hastings, and even drilled down into a couple of the articles, but I made a pretty quick survey.

Given that, as best as I can tell, most of the evidence consists of personal recollections of observations of things from various military personnel. The following is one example:

Quite frankly, I find such personal recollections and "eye-witness" reports only mildly interesting and completely unconvincing of anything. Claiming that Earth has been visited by ETs is an extraordinary claim, and it will take extraordinary evidence to prove it. These eyewitness accounts, no matter how many there are, are not going to prove it. Not to be insulting, but 10 or 20 or 1000 times zero is still zero.

In one of your posts you state the following:
As I said, I strongly disagree. The fact that this "evidence" can be potentially dismissed as other things means that it is far from "unambiguous". The fact that there are many such reports doesn't make them any more "weighty".

You also say:
Fine, then show us some of this data.

You are painting a very broad picture, both of your primary claim, the supposed attacks against it, and of your evidence. It is not possible to hold such a debate in a meaningful way. On this forum you can't say "Look at my website..... now prove me wrong".

If you have very specific, physical evidence, I would love to see it and discuss it further. Beyond that, it is just a lot of words.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

thorkil2, are we here for a friendly polite chat about the weather and other side interests, or is this purpose of this forum to get to the bottom of (perceived) conspiracies? What does chit chat add to a factual question, except adding opportunities to direct attention away from answering questions?

How a question comes across is inconsequential, as long as the rules of the board are not broken (or abused). A direct question to the claimant must be answered, not dodged. If he finds the question is somehow breaking the rules he can ask for moderator intervention or ask for clarification.

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

My Grandmother described something very similar.

She didn't believe that it was aliens. She thought she was seeing a satellite in Earth orbit.
She described in great detail how it moved up- down- etc...

My grandfather and I both looked. It was just an ordinary star.

Neither of us had the heart to tell her so though. I'm sure she always believed it was a satellite.
Her own imagination and wobbling had created the effect of it's appaarent motion.
I'm an avid star gazer (Which you can tell by my posting times sometimes) and have had a great many sightings like that happen to me. I clear my head and it stops.
Happens when you stare at something. Anything really.

This does not indicate that Brown was wrong or even mistaken.

What it indicates is that it is a natural part of human psyche to misrepresent what you are seeing even in your own mind.
This is a big part of why it's far more plausible that Brown did similar, than that Brown saw Alien Spacecraft.

This is WHY skeptics are skeptical.
People see Madonna on Grilled Cheese.

Even die-hard UFO believers will still be skeptical about the Madonna on a Grilled Cheese.
But when the UFO believer's beliefs have an occurrence of pareidolia that skepticism swiftly fades.
But the Believer sees Madonna. They cannot see anything else. Kisses the sandwich.
The UFO believer sees aliens. They cannot see anything else. Kisses the sky.

...so far I have never seen a thread opened by a request for credentials as a condition of participation...

When was his participation at large made contingent upon the production of credentials?

In contrast, in his very first post Mr. Hastings attempted to set conditions and requirements for our participation with him. His first sentence in response to directly to me took me to task for apparently not having first completed a thorough survey of his cited writings.

All that I have made contingent upon his statement of expertise has been the selection of my personal approach to the study his writings. I certainly have no means at my disposal to affect how he participates here, nor to compel any others to agree with my intent.

I wasn't the only one to notice the implied antagonism in the bluntness of the request.

Who were the others? A minute ago you said that my supposed attack was "clear." Now you say the antagonism was "implied." Have you considered that perhaps you are reading into my statements sentiments that I did not intend?

You are new here, so you can be forgiven for for not knowing my well-established reputation at BAUT. Part of that reputation is that I get right to the point; I don't succumb easily to distraction. The other important part of that reputation is my dispassion. I tend to remain calm and focused.

Actually, the man provided a lot of background information about himself--more than most participants offer initially, so he's trying to be up front.

Exactly. Mr. Hasting immediately attempted to establish himself as an expert, and to demand that we read at length what he appears to consider his learned treatise. My initial examination of his work suggested that it was of a genre that would ordinarily draw upon expertise that he had not yet established. Therefore before proceeding, I felt it important to ask for specific clarifications of the basis from which he presumed to write.

And please note that instead of being "up front" with those clarifications, he side-stepped the questions. Instead of answering, he demanded that I answer the same questions (except I'm not the one writing a book and lecturing around the country on UFOs). He further insinuated that I lacked any expertise, whereas I was careful to avoid any such insinuation; you conveniently overlooked that bit of antagonism.

As I said, Mr. Hastings is the claimant. He suggests that he is making claims from a position of expertise. By stating his education and employment in conjunction with his claims, he seems to have agreed that such topics ought to be relevant to them. You have agreed that an author's expertise is material to the strength of a case he makes.

When a thread begins with a statement of credentials, then I fail to see why an early discussion of them is inappropriate.

Yes, he asked us to read elsewhere; from his standpoint, probably a reasonable request to initiate an understanding of the subject as he sees it...

I have on my bookshelves many hundreds of pages housed in impressively bound volumes, that contain absolute rubbish written by people with no appreciable knowledge of the subjects and little expertise in the art of distilling the truth from anecdotes and documents.

That Mr. Hastings or any other author has produced substantial verbage does not by itself justify taking it entirely at face value. Before I commit to undertake an evaluation of his investigative analysis, I want first to know whether I am looking at the work of an experienced professional, or the self-published aggrieved rantings of an amateur.

Since you have graciously stipulated that the relevant expertise of an author is material to the value of his writings, and since that expertise is the basis of my inquiry, I hope you'll allow me to pursue my course.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

What it indicates is that it is a natural part of human psyche to misrepresent what you are seeing even in your own mind.

This is the basis of my initial line of questioning to Mr. Hastings. In his direct response to me, he asserted that much of his evidence was anecodotal, reported to him by eyewitnesses. I had already come to that characterization myself; that is why I asked what training or experience he had obtained in the interpretation of eyewitness testimony prior to interviewing his sources and writing his book. Nothing in his statement of qualifications lends itself to a belief that he is appropriately qualified, but rather than infer that condition speciously from his silence, I would rather ask and be answered.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

What is wrong with direct questions? why should they be seen as antagonistic?

There, a couple of direct questions.

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Self-evidently, it will be nearly impossible for me to respond to every question, comment and criticism contained in the last several posts, so I will takle what I consider to be the most germaine issues first. I intend to provide a short response to a given point and then insert below a lengthier elaboration. While some people prefer cyber sound bites, I doubt the relevant issues can be adequately addressed in that format. Those who do not wish to delve into the more detailed passages can simply skip over them, however, if subsequent questions or comments arise which have already been addressed, I will simply refer the poster to the appropriate message and ask them to read it.

First Point: Since I am the "claimant", let's be clear about what I am claiming. As I noted in my first post, my research is historical, not scientific, in nature and involves the analysis of thousands of declassified U.S. government documents on the subject of UFOs and the recording of the testimony of nearly 100 USAF veterans who were involved in UFO-related incidents at nuclear weapons sites. My data-gathering spans a 35-year period. As such, I may be considered an informed source on this subject.

There is a distinct and fundamental difference between having an opinion and having an informed opinion. If anyone wishes to debate me on the subject of the U.S. government's covert response to UFOs, please first briefly summarize your own research in this field. (Hence my comment about "educating" those with an interest in learning about an aspect of UFOs about which they may have little or no knowledge.)

In my first post, I also mentioned two scientists, Drs. Haisch and McDonald, who have actually investigated the UFO phenomenon and have expressed informed opinions on the subject. If anyone wishes to debate their findings with me, please first briefly summarize your own research in this field.

The reason I differientated between anecdotal and empirical evidence at the outset was to clearly define the nature of my own data. I note that one poster viewed that careful explanation as "crap". Well, so be it. My attitude has always been one of take it or leave it, so I don't really care what anyone thinks about what I post here. Some will benefit from my input, others never will, for reasons having little to do with my data or arguments.

Second Point: The suggestion that I address the Malmstrom incidents, and the Big Sur Incident, is a good one. Some members have already made factually-inaccurate statements and poor assumptions about both, so my input--verifiable to anyone wishing to do a little research--is certainly in order. But this will take a few days.

In the next post, below, I will briefly mention the Big Sur case, in conjunction with my response to the charge that I have launched a diatribe against James Oberg.

Big Sur

Cyber Sound Bite: Actually, I was merely pointing out that Oberg has made remarkably divergent statements about UFOs: skeptically-oriented in public, but quite different in private. Moreover, I noted that the publisher of Skeptical Inquirer, Kendrick Frazier, was working as a PR specialist for the U.S. nuclear weapons program at the time he attempted to debunk the Big Sur case, a little-known but obviously relevant fact. Finally, I pointed out that a debunker's stenographer named John Fleck ignored my fully-documented investigation of the Big Sur case in favor of Oberg's and Frazier's factually-inaccurate statements about it. If that's a diatribe, so be it. The details are below.

The Detailed Discussion:

REPORTER DUPED BY UFO DEBUNKERS

By Robert Hastings

On August 11, 2008, I sat down with Albuquerque Journal reporter John Fleck to discuss my extensive research on nuclear weapons-related UFO activity and the publication of my 600-page book, UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. Over the last 35 years, I have interviewed nearly 100 former or retired U.S. Air Force nuclear missile personnel, including launch officers, targeting officers, maintenance personnel and security guards. These individuals report ongoing UFO surveillance of our strategic weapons sites, as well as the occasional disruption of those weapons’ functionality, just after UFOs were observed to be in their vicinity.

To verify these veterans’ statements to me, I provided reporter Fleck with copies of verbatim testimony from a few of them, a copy of my book which contained the testimony of a great many more, and four pages of USAF/NORAD documents, declassified via the Freedom of Information Act, which describe multiple UFO incursions at Minuteman missile sites outside of Malmstrom AFB, Montana, in November 1975.

In spite of this well-documented presentation, Fleck subsequently wrote an exceedingly biased and dismissive article about my research, titled “Book Links UFOs to Nukes,” in the August 25, 2008 issue of the Journal, which concluded that my contentions of a UFO-Nukes Connection were “wrong” based on the statements of “independent experts.” More on those alleged experts in a moment.

During my interview with him, Fleck told me that he was especially interested in the so-called Big Sur UFO case. which I will now briefly summarize: Early one morning in September 1964, an Atlas D Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, carrying aloft an experimental enemy radar-defeating system and dummy nuclear warhead. Shortly after nosecone-separation, as the warhead raced toward a targeted splash-down at Eniwetok Lagoon, in the Pacific Ocean, it was approached by a disc-shaped UFO. As the saucer chased and then circled the warhead, four bright flashes of light emanated from the unknown craft whereupon the warhead began to tumble, eventually falling into the ocean hundreds of miles short of its intended target downrange.

Science fiction? Not according to the former USAF officer tasked with filming the Atlas launch through a high-powered telescope located at Big Sur, California. Then Lt. (now Dr.) Bob Jacobs—who was assigned to the 1369th Photographic Squadron at Vandenberg, and held the title Officer-in-Charge of Photo-instrumentation—states that the entire encounter was captured on motion picture film. According to Jacobs, while the UFO’s maneuvers were readily discernable, other minute details—including the object’s domed disc-shape—were only discovered during a in-depth optical analysis conducted at Vandenberg.

Following the dramatic incident, says Jacobs, a 16-mm version of the amazing film was shown to a small, select group at Vandenberg. At the conclusion of this meeting, which he attended, he was told to “forget” the filmed events and to never mention them again. Years later, Jacobs learned that after he left the room, the crucial frames were cut out and quickly confiscated by two “government agents”—possibly working for the CIA—who had been among those in attendance.

Importantly, Jacobs’ account—relating to both the UFO incident itself and the subsequent cover-up—has been entirely endorsed by another officer, retired Major (later Dr.) Florenze J. Mansmann, Jr. At the time, Mansmann had been assigned to Vandenberg AFB’s Office of the Chief Scientist, 1st Strategic Aerospace Division. It was Mansmann who had carefully analyzed the amazing film which, he said, showed a “classic disc” shaped object circling the dummy warhead, shooting four beams of light at the warhead as it did so. It was also Mansmann who had ordered Lt. Jacobs to attend the restricted screening of the film in his office at the division’s headquarters building.

Because reporter Fleck expressed interest in this case, I provided him with copies of private correspondence between Jacobs and Mansmann, from the early 1980s. In those letters, Jacobs and Mansmann were obviously still stunned by, and marveling over, the Big Sur UFO incident—some 20 years later. It is important to note that this correspondence was never intended for publication, to support the validity of the case. Rather, it represents the private musings of two former USAF officers—involved and knowledgeable insiders—who had experienced what was obviously a life-changing event for each of them.

At the conclusion of my interview with Fleck, he told me that he would be contacting Kendrick Frazier, the longtime editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine—which has for decades featured articles debunking UFOs and the notion of a U.S. government UFO cover-up—to get Frazier’s point-of-view on the Big Sur case. Skeptical Inquirer is the publication of the self-styled Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) which recently renamed itself the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

One of the articles published by the debunking magazine, written by Kingston George, an engineer who worked with Bob Jacobs on the telescope project at Vandenberg AFB, claimed that Jacobs’ statements about having filmed a UFO shooting down a dummy nuclear warhead were just “ weird claims” having no basis in reality.

However, when I researched the Big Sur case myself, I discovered that George had badly misrepresented Jacobs’ remarks, repeatedly, and had made other crucial factual errors. Indeed, if one compares his article with Jacobs’ and Mansmann’s published and private statements on the Big Sur incident, it becomes glaringly obvious how erroneous and misleading George’s article really is. Nevertheless, Skeptical Inquirer editor Frazier published the badly-flawed piece, apparently without comparing George’s claims about what Jacobs’ supposedly had said with what he actually had said. Curiously, George’s debunking article contains not a single word about Major Mansmann’s unequivocal endorsement of Jacobs’ account.

Frazier subsequently included Kingston George’s badly-flawed article in one of his own books devoted to debunking UFOs, thereby further disseminating George’s misstatements and factual errors to an unsuspecting public. Incompetence all around, at the very least, on the part of the debunkers—if not something more suspicious. As I write in my book,

“I consider it noteworthy that George’s article was published in CSICOP’s in-house magazine, Skeptical Inquirer. At first glance, this is hardly surprising, given CSICOP’s tireless crusade to discredit UFOs. However, because the Big Sur incident reportedly involved a UFO disabling—shooting down—one of the U.S. military’s experimental nuclear warhead systems, Skeptical Inquirer’s strong endorsement of George’s attempted debunking of the incident is particularly interesting.

Why? Many years ago, I discovered that Kendrick Frazier was in fact employed—beginning in the early 1980s—as a Public Relations Specialist at Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yes, the same Sandia Labs that has been instrumental to the success of America’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s, through its “ordinance engineering” of components for bomb and missile warhead systems.

Interestingly, Skeptical Inquirer's publisher's statement, or “masthead”, which appears at the beginning of each issue, never once mentioned Frazier's employment at the highly-secretive, government-funded laboratory. Instead, the magazine merely listed, and continues to list, his profession as "science writer"—a reference to his having written several books and articles on various scientific subjects. Also curious is the fact that various online biographies on Frazier—including one written by himself—also fail to mention his two-decade tenure at Sandia Labs. An odd omission indeed.

Consequently, here is the situation: In what is arguably the most dramatic nuclear weapons-related UFO incident ever revealed, two former U.S. Air Force officers insist that one of our experimental nuclear warheads was actually shot down by a flying saucer. And who is responsible for publishing the first debunking article about the Big Sur incident, in which it is claimed that the UFO encounter never happened? Why, a PR guy working for the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program!

…Ironically, over the years, a great many UFO skeptics have used the supposedly accurate “facts” presented in George’s article to dismiss the UFO link with nuclear weapons in general, and the Big Sur UFO Incident in particular. Needless to say, very few of those same skeptics will ever buy a book called, UFOs and Nukes, so they will mistakenly continue to believe that Kingston George’s article is the last word on the Big Sur case.

Furthermore, the CSICOP-Nukes Connection does not end with Kendrick Frazier. James Oberg, one of CSICOP’s leading UFO debunkers, once did classified work relating to nuclear weapons at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, located at Kirtland AFB, just down the road from Sandia Labs.

From 1970-72, Oberg was an Air Force officer whose assignments with the Battle Environments Branch at the weapons lab involved the development and utilization of computer codes related to the modeling of laser and nuclear weapons. Oberg also served as a “Security Officer” while at the weapons lab and was, therefore, responsible for monitoring the security procedures used to safeguard the classified documents generated by his group.

After Bob Jacobs went public with the UFO shoot-down story, Oberg wrote to him, chastising Jacobs for revealing “top secret” information. In his MUFON UFO Journal article, Jacobs wrote that after he broke his silence, “I was contacted by a variety of investigators, buffs, cranks, proponents and detractors alike. James Oberg, a frequent ‘mouthpiece’ for certain NASA projects and self-styled UFO Debunker wrote to disparage my story and to ask provocatively, ‘Since you obviously feel free to discuss top secret UFO data, what would you be willing to say about other top secret aspects of the Atlas warhead which you alluded to briefly...?’ I told Mr. Oberg where to put his misplaced cynicism.”

Despite Oberg’s charge, Jacobs has correctly pointed out that because Major Mansmann had told him that the UFO encounter “never happened”, he had no personal knowledge of the classification level attached to the incident.
In any event, it is almost certain that Oberg would not have criticized Jacobs for exposing “top secret UFO data”, had he known that Jacobs would subsequently publish his remark. So, here we have one of CSICOP’s leading UFO debunkers—whose public stance is that UFOs don’t even exist—angrily asking Jacobs in a private letter whether he would also openly discuss “other” top secret aspects of the missile test…

Major Florenze Mansmann’s last written remarks on the Big Sur UFO incident are to be found in a letter to Curt Collier, a producer for the television series, Sightings. Dated November 15, 1995, the letter began, “Dear Mr. Collier, Responding to your Fed Ex letter of November 14, 1995 regarding the validity of the January 1989 MUFON [UFO] Journal story by Dr. Robert Jacobs, it is all true as presented. And yes, I have also responded to other researchers in the past, but only after Dr. Jacobs released the details of these sightings [sic] negating my secrecy bond.”

Mansmann continued, “The Image Orthicon camera system we used in capturing the Unidentified Flying Object on film had the capacity to photograph the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the missile launch and its super sonic flight...In retrospect, I now regret not being able to evaluate the film for more than 3 showings. The only people in attendance of the viewing were: The Director of the Office of the Chief Scientist and his assistant, two Government Agents, Lieutenant Jacobs and myself. [i.e. Kingston George was NOT present! –RH] The two Government Agents confiscated the film and placed it in a briefcase and departed after I had checked their authorization to leave with the film. I was instructed later by the Office of the Chief Scientist, the Judge Advocate General’s office and my Commanding Officer to consider the incident top secret.” Mansmann concluded his letter to Collier, “I am writing to confirm Dr. Jacobs’ account...”

In other words, more than 30 years after the top secret incident and more than six years after Jacobs’ article appeared in the MUFON UFO Journal, Dr. Mansmann was once again unreservedly verifying Bob Jacobs’ report of a UFO shooting down a dummy nuclear warhead over the Pacific Ocean, in September 1964.

Florenz J. Mansmann, Jr. died on July 4, 2000, but he remained adamant to the end that the extraordinary encounter—involving an extraterrestrial spacecraft—had occurred and was classified Top Secret.

My own definitive, extremely well-documented article on the Big Sur incident is available at my website, ufohastings.com. Had reporter John Fleck read it, or the Jacobs-Mansmann letters I provided him, before he wrote his inept and biased article on my research, he would have saved himself a lot of criticism and embarrassment.

Although Fleck knows almost nothing about UFOs, he seems unwilling to learn about the subject, even when provided with credible and documented information derived from declassified government files and the testimony of former military personnel. Instead, he readily swallows the unfounded and suspiciously spun claims of Frazier, Oberg and their ilk—hook, line and sinker. In short, Fleck is the perfect mark—uninformed and vulnerable to misinformation—just the way UFO debunkers prefer their journalists to be.

END OF DETAILED RESPONSE TO "REPORTER" JOHN FLECK

My full, 24-page report on Big Sur is available at my website, ufohastings.com

Enough for tonight. I will address the Malmstrom incidents in detail tomorrow.

As I noted in my first post, my research is historical, not scientific, in nature...

No contrary characterization has been made. BAUT is a diverse bunch; you will find some who are well versed in the scientific method and some who are well versed in the historical method.

What training or education or practice do you believe is required in order for one to do historical research well and defensibly?

I'll mention three books on my bookshelf right now. Two are by William Burrows, one called This New Ocean and the other By Any Means Necessary. The former is an encyclopedic history of the space program. The latter describes covert air operations during the Cold War. Both are well written and were well received by Burrows' peers. Burrows was educated as a journalist and historian, and reported for the New York Times and other publications on matters of space and similar technology.

I also have a popular book by Diane Vaughan, Challenger Launch Decision, which discusses the reasons why the space shuttle Challenger was lost. While the book is somewhat laudable in social science circles (Vaughan is a sociologist), it is roundly criticized by engineers -- including some of the engineers Vaughan interviewed. She doesn't properly describe the practice or theory of engineering and draws conclusions about the engineering design and management process that are simply out of touch with the facts. As one of my colleagues put it, "You can tell she's never been within ten miles of an engineering project." One of the key players in the Challenger launch decision (he was in the room at Thiokol) corresponded privately with me on the Vaughan book, using language toward her claims that I cannot reproduce here without breaking the forum rules -- even though he was one of the figures putatively vindicated by her findings.

Vaughan can be considered well-informed about the facts surrounding the loss of Challenger and the events leading up to it. Probably more so than any layman, or any other sociologist. However, her lack of understanding of engineering practice means she does not put those facts in proper perspective or infer accurate relationships among them. Immersion in the facts does not endow her with the wisdom and experience to interpret those facts correctly.

...and involves the analysis of thousands of declassified U.S. government documents on the subject of UFOs

Who taught you to perform that analysis? Did you learn to do that kind of analysis at any of the institutions where you were educated? Did you do any of that kind of analysis at places where you praticed electron microscopy in support of electrical engineering development? What assurance does the reader have that your analysis is correct or best?

...and the recording of the testimony of nearly 100 USAF veterans who were involved in UFO-related incidents at nuclear weapons sites.

Do you believe there is any technique or training that ought to apply to interviewing eyewitnesses and evaluating their testimony? Are you aware of any individual researchers or body of knowledge that relates to the psychological, sociological, and legal factors involving eyewitnesses?

As such, I may be considered an informed source on this subject.

Do you believe that any researcher in the world who studied your sources would reach substantially the same conclusions as you? Have you submitted your work for peer review by other historians of the Cold War period?

If anyone wishes to debate me on the subject of the U.S. government's covert response to UFOs, please first briefly summarize your own research in this field.

But you are the one setting yourself up as an expert. You wrote the book, which sells for something like $24 on your site. You have traveled to more than 500 universities to give lectures. Did you write the book only to be read by people who already knew its sources? Do you give lectures only to people who already know your findings? Or do you presume instead to educate them?

If you play the role of educator, isn't a prospective student owed some assurance of the teacher's prior preparation? Pointing to stacks of documents and hours of testimony is only a small part of that assurance when the prepared materials also contain inferences, analysis, reconciliations, and drawn conclusions.

In your rush to impose a burden upon the student you have omitted to bear the burden of the teacher. You wrote the book; you tell us how you are qualified to write the book. Then maybe people can make an informed decision whether to read it or not.

In my first post, I also mentioned two scientists, Drs. Haisch and McDonald, who have actually investigated the UFO phenomenon and have expressed informed opinions on the subject.

Have these gentlemen reviewed your book? Do they agree with your analysis? Do they endorse your findings? You mention them, but it's unclear what connection if any they have to your work.

My attitude has always been one of take it or leave it, so I don't really care what anyone thinks about what I post here.

That wasn't your attitude initially toward those here whom you believe had "left" your work. You demanded in your first post that any who desired to engage you must first have read at length what you had to say. And you dismissed comments solely on the basis of your belief that they had not "taken" your work. I cannot reconcile that statement with what you say now your attitude has always been.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

It was never my intention to distract the thread with a side argument, so to put this aside now, I will accede to all of your remarks, with one particular comment. In regard to "others," I misread one input as being addressed to you, when it was in fact referring to you. My mistake, and my apologies.

__________________
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz

"To complete the picture all the photons can be seen to be synchronising friction on and off throughout the overall cone which itself is synchronised to the equal and opposite reaction of equilateral triangulation"... by a scientificator in ATM, too priceless to be lost to posterity.

[snip all the stuff irrelevant to the actual case]

So let me see if I got this straight…

Basically what we have here are three people who claim to have seen a film of a nuclear missile test.

No actual nukes were involved.

Two of these people claim the film reveals space aliens shot it down and the government covered it up.

One of these people claims the film reveals a previously undemonstrated ability to differentiate between actual and dummy warheads and the government classified it.

Zero evidence has been presented to support the notion space aliens were involved other than the opinion of two of the alleged eyewitnesses.

Did I miss anything?

[yawn]

What else have you got?

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Men go and come but Earth abides.

In regard to "others," I misread one input as being addressed to you, when it was in fact referring to you. My mistake, and my apologies.

No problem -- thanks for owning up to it. Oh, and welcome to BAUT.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I'm confused about a couple of things.
I have a degree in Radio/TV and I don't know how to use an image orthicon tube to take 16mm film.
I spent 19 years (1958-1977) as a nuclear weapons technician in the US Army. I was stationed at numerous storage sites on 3 continents. It was a pretty small group and most of the career people knew each other. When we got together we told "war stories", most of which involved classified information. We especially liked tales of screw-ups. In all that time, nobody ever mentioned a UFO incident at a storage site. We were also close to Navy/Marine NW techs, in some cases we shared sites. I never heard them mention UFOs checking out naval bases, ships or aircraft. So we are asked to believe that their intelligence was good enough to distinguish US branches of service, and only snoop around air force sites. Why?

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"Everybody's playing the Game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side." (Tim Rice)
No matter how strong, or brave, or pure of heart you may be; sometimes the dragon wins!

I suspect that a culture of UFO tall stories develops at certain bases, and not at others. This leads to the increased likelihood of servicemen reporting 'lights in the sky' as UFOs.

Lights in the sky happen all the time; it seems likely that none of those lights are extraterrestials in spaceships, but so far that can not be confirmed. It may never be. People on our planet will probably see unexplained lights in the sky for as long as there are people to look, whether there are extraterrestials up there or not.

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Jay, I've mentioned this before, and I'm sorry but I have to say it again: who are you quoting? Take the first quote - it's obviously not the complete statement, so I'd like to know the context. But I'm not going to sift through the preceeding posts to find that snippet. Which means your response is meaningless to me.

I implore you to use the quote feature provided by the forum.

Self-evidently? That's one of those words that inspire fact checking. When you wrote this there were a total of 3, maybe 4 direct questions explicitly directed at you (some of those repeatedly). Responding to direct questions is the minimum requirement for claimants in this forum, and this rule was alluded to, linked to, and even quoted. Being unable to answer 4 relatively simple questions, yet finding the time to write two such lengthy posts seems curious to me.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Apparently, outside the UFO field, McDonald was not as impressive as you claim. I know that McDonald is looked on by UFO proponents as the next Galileo or Copernicus but his investigations lacked any substance, just like a lot of the UFO "data". Carl Sagan wrote in his book, The Demon Haunted World, the following:

McDonald's view on UFOs was based, he said, not on irrefutable evidence, but was a conclusion of last resort: All the alternative explanations seemed to him even less credible. In the middle 1960s I arranged for McDonald to present his best cases in a private meeting with leading physicists and astronomers who had not staked a claim on the UFO issue. Not only did he fail to convince them that we were being visited by extraterrestrials; he failed even to excite their interest. And this was a group with a very high wonder quotient. It was simply that where McDonald saw aliens, they saw much more prosaic explanations. (p. 103)

As for Dr. Haisch, I notice that his website lists only UFO proponent materials as references. He does not even list Hendry's UFO Handbook, which SHOULD BE required reading for any UFO proponent. In his scientific papers, he lists an article about the Apollo 16 film and the object seen in the images. In the paper's conclusions, we read:

We believe that the object is a huge extraterrestrial artifact.

Strange that he would leave that up when it is had been positively shown that this was part of the spacecraft.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/tra...ce/no_ufo.html

If this is the kind of "investigations" and "scientific papers" that he is presenting/endorsing, I begin to doubt if he really is a "skeptic" as he claims but a proponent trying to pretend to be a skeptic.

Just a couple of questions:

1. What was the purpose of "butterfly net"?

2. Out of the thousands of documents you have reviewed, what have you found that supports the story told by Jacobs/Mansmann? Are there any documents that directly state the warhead was lost or destroyed in flight?

3. Out of the thousands of documents you have reviewed, what documents show the upper chain of command was concerned about somebody intercepting missile warheads during flight using a craft with a beam of some kind? Are there any that hint at it? Do they mention possible Soviet interdiction of missile tests?

4. Out of the thousands of documents you have reviewed, what documents show that there was an increased concern for air/launch security during ICBM test launches at Vandenberg after the Jacobs incident? Were there additonal fighters deployed down range to prevent this from occurring or possible additional air defense weapons deployed down range?

5. Is there any relation to operations at Vandenberg during that time and the DMSP?

6. What evidence do you have concerning the launch in question?

7. Have you interviewed anybody else that was present at the BU telescope?

BTW, I notice you like to hurl insults around as if it would help your cause. If you work was so airtight, then you would not need to resort to this kind of debate technique. The evidence would stand on its own and withstand scrutiny. You sound more like a politician trying to get people to ignore or dislike the "other guy" through name-calling than somebody who is really interested in presenting his research in a scientific manner. If critics do not find your work compelling, then they obviously feel the evidence is lacking. It is up to you to provide/find more evidence to support your claim.

Funny that you should mention these books Jay. I am reading one right now by the same author called "Deep Black". A friend at work loaned it to me. He is ex-AF and knew a lot about some of the satellites because he was involved in tracking them during his tour of duty. So far, it is a good read.

I spent over twenty years in the USN aboard Submarines. One tour was on an SSBN (USS Lafayette) and on another tour aboard an SSN, we carried some "special weapons" as they were called. In all my visits to various nuclear facilities to load and offload weapons or during any refits, we never encountered UFOs trying to affect us either. The submarine community is pretty tight and most of what went on during the cold war was fairly common knowledge (I knew some guy that was on the sub that ran into an Echo class sub in the Pacific and another who was on the Seawolf) even though much of it was classified TOP SECRET. We did not know details but we did know basically what was happening. In all those exchanges, I never heard of anyone talking about UFOs (for that matter USOs) affecting the SSBNs or SSNs. Maybe HY-80 steel makes our subs immune to their effects.

Actually the one other person you allude is separate than the other two. Hastings has spent a great deal of time trying to prove that George was not there and that he never saw the film. This is something that George says is not true (or at least that is what he said in his article).

This is the scenario. Two say that it was an extraordinary event that was classified for reasons obvious to UFO proponents. One says it was an unusual event but it was something that could be explained. This implies the other two are not remembering what they saw correctly or are lying about it. So, one has to wonder which scenario is more realistic. Until better evidence can be provided to support the UFO intercept scenario, the George case seems more likely. I suppose Hastings will tell us what evidence he has that supports this scenario but it will have to be pretty good. Otherwise it is a scenario based on the memory of two people contradicted by a third.

Robert,
A couple of questions regarding Malmstrom:

Robert Salas orginally claimed he was present when the incident occured on Echo Flight. FOIA documents document the Echo Flight missile outage. He then changed to his story, saying he was at the Oscar flight:

Did any security or maintenance personnel present during the Oscar flight ever come forward to testify about sighting an ufo? Or do we only have Salas's word for it that someone told him they saw an ufo that day?

Are you aware of any FOIA document stating that the same outage occured at the Oscar Flight as originally described in Echo Flight? If not, why would one event be documented and the other not? Or do we only have Salas' s word for it?

I was thinking that myself. You beat me to the reply.

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Olsen the moderator.

Hastings said: I have reviewed your site pretty well. I considered buying your book until I read the articles -- The data is interesting, but ultimately unconvincing. You spend as much time, or more attacking your skeptics and refuting plausible alternative explanations than you do presenting 'evidence'. Thats a big red flag. I hate to say it, but there are a lot of published UFO books out there; self-publishing is also a big red flag. (Please don't take offense -- I havent been able to get published either)

Your statement above doesn't ring true -- it doesnt matter how much data you've gathered or analyzed, or how long you have done it. Anyone can read eyewitness reports and interview people to their hearts content. Since there is no real evidence you can show, only opinions, recollections and musings of professionals, That in and of itself doesn't make you an 'informed source' about anything that lends weight to your conclusions. The information you have is all circumstantial, with no real evidence that can't be explained in other, more plausible, means.

Now, if you had been a trained observer, or trained in how to interview people to get real facts, read body language and ask the right questions, spot lies or exxagerations, or perhaps a degree in psychology would have been very helpful in establishing how your interviews merit your conclusions. There are such people out there who do that sort of thing for a living very well.

It also isn't a valid argument to demand that others show you proof of their credentials before they refute yours -- you are the claimant. You are attempting to establish that by your work, you are an informed source -- but informed only in mounds of opinion, memory, and testimony, not actual undeniable evidence. This is also a big red flag.

Thats why we want to know your related credentials, to gauge your qualifications to draw your conclusions. After all, I don't have to be a trained professional in order to understand or analyze the results of a trained professional; If I take my car to the repair shop, I dont need a degree in auto mechanics to question my mechanic on whether his diagnosis of my car's poor performance can be trusted. If he were to say -- "show me your relevant experience in repairing cars and I'll discuss it with you, otherwise pay up or leave" -- I'd assuredly leave.

I would give a lot to see real proof of visitation, or evidence of the existance of ET. I want to beleive -- but the evidence presented so far by anyone always has a flaw -- the CIA guys came and took the crucial frames , the photo is at night and my hands were shaking, etc.

Astrophotographer said: well said.

Well said yourself iquestor. And welcome to BAUT...

Brilliant! That's a keeper.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
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