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UFO
REVELATION 5
Dr.
Barry H. Downing
SCIENTISTS
AND UFO SECRECY
One
hearsay memo discovered by Dolan and Zabel involved a conversation
between Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower. An RAF pilot had
been paced on his way back to England by a flying metallic object.
After discussing the UFO sighting, Churchill “said the report
should be immediately classified because it would ‘create mass
panic amongst the general population and destroy one’s belief in
the Church.’” (A.D. After Disclosure,
p. 107; also see my review of the Dolan and Zabel book in the May
2011 edition of The MUFON UFO Journal, p. 3,
18, 19.)
I
would call this a reasonable reaction by Churchill, and probably
representative of the instant reaction of any authority in Western
culture at that time. It seems likely that Eisenhower agreed to the
UFO secrecy that Truman had put in place in 1947, but by the time
Eisenhower retired as President in 1960, he understood that UFO
secrecy, with its black budget billions, would lead to a dangerous
“military-industrial complex.” Dolan and Zabel believe the danger
has arrived.
The
more billions—or maybe trillions—of dollars poured into secret
UFO research, the more comfortable everyone would be, especially
everyone on the inside of Dolan’s “Breakaway Civilization,” the
new “chosen people” whose manna dropped not from the sky, but
from U.S. taxpayers, whose elected leaders did not even have the
“need to know” what was going on.
In
some ways keeping UFO secrets has been difficult, but in other ways,
fairly easy. For one thing, the aliens cooperate. They do not land
on the While House lawn and say, “Take me to your leader.” Even
with a mass sighting, as in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997, with the
Governor falsely making fun of those who saw the UFOs, the UFO water
is very muddy, and confusion wins. (Governor Fife Symington III did
not admit until years later that he had seen the UFO which he had
publically ridiculed.) The media is especially good at making fun
of real UFOs, while making science fiction space films that gross
millions.
But
one concern of the secret keepers would be that scientists are by
nature curious creatures. Donald Keyhoe had been arguing since the
1950’s that flying saucers were real, and the government was
covering up this truth. The Air Force did have Project Blue Book,
which received UFO reports. Some scientists might suspect that where
there is smoke there is fire. (J. Allen Hynek, for 20 years a Blue
Book consultant, would eventually admit that the best UFO reports did
not come to Blue Book, but were sent to a higher level.)
If
the government had a crashed UFO and some dead alien bodies, and had
formed the MJ-12 group to manage the UFO challenge (Richard Dolan,
UFOs and the National Security State,
Vol. I, p. 82ff), then the very existence of Project Blue Book was
against the best interests of the secret keepers. The less publicity
about UFOs the better. The secret keepers needed scientific cover to
get the Air Force out of the UFO business.
What was needed was
the help of scientists who would say, “UFOs are not a serious
scientific issue.” What this means is the secret keepers would
need scientists who would, either knowingly or unknowingly, help with
the UFO cover-up. Who are these scientists? We can only guess, but
there are some good candidates.
PAGE,
CONDON, SAGAN AND MENZEL: THE UFO DEBUNKING ‘A’ TEAM
Thorton
Page, Edward Condon, Carl Sagan and Donald Menzel are all deceased,
but each was a scientist with a high reputation who was involved in
the public discussion of UFOs. Each contributed to keeping UFOs
scientifically and publically under wraps.
Page
is perhaps the least known of the four, but he was a member of the
CIA formed and resourced “Robertson Panel” who met in January of
1953 and recommended that the government carry out a “debunking”
program of UFOs, explaining them not as spaceships, but as weather
balloons, birds, Venus, or cloud formations. Making fun of those who
report UFOs, getting UFOs out of the news, was the Robertson Panel’s
recommended goal. (Dolan, Ibid,
p. 194 ff) Taken together, Page, Condon, Sagan and Menzel represent
America’s “UFO Debunking ‘A’ Team.”
Page
was professor of astronomy at Wesleyan University, and a research
associate at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. He had a
security clearance, and was trusted by the CIA, which confirms his
political loyalties. Those like Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell
are convinced some UFOs are extraterrestrial. Did Page with his NASA
contacts secretly share Mitchell’s view?
With one or more
flying saucers tucked away in underground laboratories, along perhaps
with dead alien bodies, the government did not need civilians calling
their local Air Force base to report a flying saucer sighting. Some
people saw the existence of Project Blue Book as “proof” flying
saucers were real. The Air Force gave a contract to the University
of Colorado to get them out of the flying saucer business. The
contract came to Colorado because of the connections of Professor
Edward Condon to the University.
Condon
was a physicist who pioneered in the field of quantum mechanics, and
had helped develop nuclear weapons during World War II. This means
he well understood the need to keep state secrets that were
scientific in nature. At one time Carl Sagan was a student of
Condon’s.
The
Colorado study was controversial, some members of the staff charged
the project was a cover-up, and so when the Scientific
Study of Unidentified Flying Objects was
published in 1969, it was received with skepticism.
In
his “Summary of the Study,” Condon said that there are some who
believe the government is involved in secret UFO studies. “Some
have gone so far as to assert that the government has actually
captured extraterrestrial flying saucers and has their crews in
secret captivity, if not in the Pentagon, at some secret military
base. We believe that such teachings are fantastic nonsense, that it
would be impossible to keep a secret of such enormity over two
decades, and that no useful purpose would be served by engaging in
such an alleged conspiracy of silence.” (Condon, p. 14-15)
Any
UFO researcher would ask a series of questions concerning Condon’s
statement. How many restricted military facilities have you visited?
Have you been given unrestricted access to private research
corporations such as Lockheed’s “Skunk Works,” and are the
employees permitted to answer questions without a “censor” being
in the room? If the government did have a crashed UFO, wouldn’t
the government want to keep the advanced technology a secret? In
terms of keeping secrets, how long were our Stealth Aircraft kept
secret from the public? They were built in America, and flown by
Americans, but the press did not acknowledge their existence. From
the point of view of many UFO researchers, the Condon report was
presented as a “scientific smoke screen,” a cover-up for the
scientific reality known to the secret keepers, the “Breakaway
Civilization.” From the point of view of Dolan and Zabel, Condon
clearly named what is being covered up—crashed UFOs, and aliens.
Did Condon know he was part of the cover-up? Or was he too dumb to
know he was being used? Many would have trouble believing the “dumb”
explanation.
The
Condon report recommended that the Air Force discontinue Project Blue
Book on the grounds that nothing of scientific importance was being
found. This is what the Air Force wanted, and Blue Book was
discontinued. Now out of a job, J. Allen Hynek began to show another
side to the UFO challenge than what came from the Condon report. He
and Dr. James McDonald were giving scientific respectability to UFO
studies.
What
was needed was a “scientific debate,” between scientists who
believe UFO reports were of scientific significance, and those who
did not. In one way this was legitimate. In the eye of the public,
there was not really “proof” of the ET hypothesis. Even now,
Leslie Kean in her carefully written book, UFOs:
Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record
(2010) does not say that the ET hypothesis is proven, only that it is
a good hypothesis, not yet proven. In a scientific sense, if I do
not have a crashed flying saucer in my basement, I do not have
“scientific proof.” This is the doubting Thomas test. (John
20:19-29) As far as Dolan and Zabel are concerned, the “Breakaway
Civilization” is way beyond the doubting Thomas test, but the Day
of Disclosure has yet to happen.
In
any case, a decision was made to delay a scientific symposium on UFOs
until after the Condon report was released. The “symposium on
Unidentified Flying Objects, sponsored by the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, was held in Boston, Massachusetts, on
December 26 and 27, 1969.” [UFO’s: A
Scientific Debate, ed. Carl Sagan and
Thornton Page (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. ix] Carl
Sagan, Condon’s former student, took a lead role in organizing the
event, together with Thornton Page, formerly of the CIA Robertson
Panel of 1953. They then published the results of the symposium in
the above cited book.
WAS
CARL SAGAN A SECRET KEEPER?
Dolan
and Zabel devote a substantial section of After
Disclosure to the question of whether or not
Carl Sagan was in on the secret of the Breakaway Civilization, but
silenced by a non-disclosure agreement. Their chapter subheading is:
“Carl Sagan: They’re Everywhere But Here.”
Zabel
was in a position to evaluate the possibility Sagan knew more about
UFOs than he admitted. “As an investigative reporter for PBS,
specializing in space science, Bryce Zabel met Carl Sagan several
times in 1981. Cosmos
was still airing on the network, and the unmanned Voyager
spacecraft was approaching the planet Saturn.” (p. 269)
Zabel
had a private parking lot conversation with Sagan, and posed the UFO
question. Sagan stood strongly with his public position, that most
UFOs can be explained as natural phenomena (birds, clouds, ball
lightning, military air craft).
But
Dolan and Zabel suspect that someone like Sagan might be given a
choice—you will not be allowed to know the UFO secrets, or if you
are allowed to know, then you must help provide the scientific smoke
screen to keep other scientists from wondering about the truth.
Dolan and Zabel do not prove, of course, that Sagan was a secret
keeper. But they see him as an excellent candidate.
They suggest that
“Just as Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel had done before him in
the 1950’s and 1960’s, he would have to deflect people from the
truth. Or he could insist on his right to speak freely—but then
the real truth would be withheld from him.” (p. 271)
Dolan
and Zabel believe that “a major portion of the scientific community
has known about these things [UFO reality] all along. It is just
that their work was classified for decades. And the rest of the
scientific establishment bought into the ‘deny and ridicule’
concept so deeply that they were forced to simply ignore inconvenient
facts for fear of losing grants, prestige and promotion.” (p. 268)
We
need to forget the romantic notion we have that scientists are “pure
souls in search of the truth.” The major governments of the world
have long known that it is science that gives them the technological
power to rule their world. Our modern scientists, especially in
regard to UFO technology, are very much like Pharaoh’s magicians,
who try to imitate the rod of Moses. (Ex. 7:8-13) If our scientists
work for our modern Pharaohs, they may lie for the sake of “the
national security state.” In the choice between the Truth (Jesus)
and Caesar, they may choose Caesar.
SAGAN
AND MENZEL: UFOS ARE RELIGION, NOT SCIENCE
If
Dolan and Zabel are right, then Sagan was perhaps the heir to Donald
Menzel’s chairmanship of “UFO disinformation.” Menzel, who
died December 14, 1976, was author of UFO books that “debunked
UFOs” as a modern myth. Sagan and Page summarize Menzel’s
position as “that all of the UFO reports can be understood in terms
of misapprehended natural phenomena.” (Sagan and Page, p. xvii)
Menzel’s books include Flying Saucers:
Myth—Truth—History (1953) and The
World of Flying Saucers: Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
(1963).
There
is of course a major mythological dimension to UFOs. In my UFO
travels I have come across a few people who seemed to be caught up in
some kind of UFO mythology. (I am sure to some I am seen as one of
the myth makers.) The noted Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung had
published Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of
Things Seen in the Skies (1958). Jung
suspected that in our scientific age, space aliens have replaced
angels as our means of connecting with some kind of ultimate reality.
In his book Jung explored UFOs in dreams, and studied UFO “prophets”
like Orfeo M. Angelucci. (Jung, MJF edition, 1978, p. 112 ff.) In a
letter to Donald Keyhoe, Jung stated that UFOs were of interest to
him as a psychologist whether they exist or not. Jung also said, “I
follow with my greatest sympathy your exploits and your endeavours to
establish the truth about the Ufos.” (Ibid,
p. 138)
The
book, UFO’s: A Scientific Debate,
covers a wide range of issues ranging from public education and UFOs
to UFO photos, radar echoes, and a major section on “Social and
Psychological Aspects.”
Two
presentations gave a “hard science” point of view, “Twenty-one
Years of UFO Reports,” in which J. Allen Hynek surveyed the Blue
Book cases he had seen, and “Science in Default: Twenty-two Years
of Inadequate UFO Investigations,” by James E. McDonald, professor
of atmospheric physics at the University of Arizona. (McDonald died
of suicide June 13, 1971, before the Sagan/Page volume was
published.)
Two
presentations gave a “mythological” point of view. “UFOs—the
Modern Myth,” by Donald H. Menzel, and “UFO’s: The
Extraterrestrial and other Hypotheses,” by Carl Sagan.
What
Sagan did in his presentation, after citing statistics about the
possibility of life on other planets, was to suggest the modern UFO
mystery is a new form of religion. “As Darwinian evolutionary
views became popular and mechanistic interpretations of the origin of
the solar system and of cosmology became widely disseminated, part of
the traditional domain of religion contracted, whether for good or
for ill. At the same time, traditional forms of religion have been a
very firm portion of nearly every culture of mankind; it is unlikely
that the needs for belief in the gods, whether valid or not, can be
destroyed so easily. In a scientific age what is a more reasonable
and acceptable disguise for the classic religious mythos than the
idea that we are being visited by messengers of a powerful, wise, and
benign advanced civilization?” (Sagan and Page, p. 272)
I
find this point of view from Sagan very reasonable, as I am sure did
most of those scientists at the Boston conference. But if Sagan was
in fact one of the “secret keepers,” then it is very interesting
to see how he is framing the cover-up. He is saying to any
scientists who will listen, “UFOs are not really about science,
they are about religion, about our need to keep believing in the
religious myth of angels.”
It is interesting to
see how religion keeps showing up in our quest for UFO truth.
Early
UFO sightings would have made government leaders (like Churchill)
worry about loss of religious faith, or about an outbreak of end of
the world and Second Coming fanaticism. But if we have crashed UFOs,
and aliens, a story that the aliens put Jesus on earth could be used
to shut the mouth of a President who wanted to expose UFO truth. At
the same time, if you are trying to tell scientists who might be
curious about UFOs to forget it, shame scientists by telling them
“UFOs are really religion, not science, don’t ruin science by
mixing it with UFO religious fanaticism.”
MENZEL,
UFOS AND THE BIBLE
In
his presentation, “UFO’S—The Modern Myth,” Menzel presented
several UFO cases, and interpreted the reported objects as natural
phenomena in various ways. But interestingly from my point of view,
the final section of his paper was entitled, “Flying Saucers in the
Bible.”
He
begins by saying that he opened “Pandora’s box” when he brought
up Ezekiel in one of his books. “I pointed out that two famous
visions of the prophet Ezekiel, recounted by him in chapters 1 and 10
of Ezekiel, were in fact singularly accurate descriptions, albeit in
symbolic and picturesque language, of a phenomenon well known to
meteorologists, technically called ‘parhelia.’” (Sagan and
Page, p. 177) Parhelia he explains is seen when there is a ring
around the sun. A double ring caused the “wheel within a wheel”
appearance that Ezekiel reports. Menzel says he has only seen two
examples in his life, and it is no wonder that uninformed people
throughout the ages “have regarded them with superstitious awe, as
portents of some dreadful event.” (p. 178) What Menzel does not
explain, of course, is the “voice” that Ezekiel hears coming from
the “wheel within a wheel” directed to him. From Menzel’s
point of view, explaining the voice was unnecessary—no wise
scientific person these days would believe Ezekiel heard a voice.
Nor would anyone believe that Ezekiel was taken for a ride in this
“parhelia,” as Ezekiel reports. “The Spirit lifted me up, and
brought me to the east gate of the house of the Lord, which faces
east.” (Ez. 11:1) Nor would Menzel believe that Elijah was taken
up into the sky in a chariot of fire. (2 Kings 2:11)
Menzel
then moves on to the story of Moses and the burning bush in Exodus.
He quotes directly, “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in
a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and
behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”
(Ex. 3:2) Menzel goes on to suggest this was an example of “St.
Elmo’s fire,” caused by an occasional electric discharge from a
tree. (p. 179)
What
Menzel does not do of course is explain that this is not just a
burning bush, it is a talking bush. Moses hears a voice coming from
the bush, a voice speaking in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. (In The Bible and Flying Saucers,
I suggest that the burning bush may have been caused by the pillar of
cloud and fire, or a similar UFO, landing in a clump of bushes,
causing them to glow, but not burn up. Had Menzel read my book,
published 4 years before this article by Menzel? Was Menzel’s
article meant to distract scientists and Christians from asking
important questions about the burning bush text?)
Menzel
even goes on to imply a connection between the Star of Bethlehem,
UFOs and Venus. Then he discusses the parting of the Red Sea.
“Another account that appears to require a temporary suspension of
the laws of nature appears in Exodus, chapter 15, the parting of the
waters of the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to pass through on dry
ground. And then the waters returned to entrap the pursuing
Egyptians.” (p. 180) According to Menzel, the parting of the Red
Sea was a mirage. The Egyptians saw what looked like a body of water
in front of them, thought the army of Israel had drowned, Israel
looked back, and thought the Egyptians had drowned.
Maybe
Menzel really believed his interpretations. Or maybe not: was he
just blowing scientific smoke to protect government secrets? One of
the most interesting things about Menzel’s Red Sea analysis is that
he cites the wrong chapter. Chapter 15 of Exodus is not the Red Sea
narrative, rather it is a song of celebration for the Red Sea
victory. The narrative is in chapter 14, as I have shown in UFO
REVELATION 4. Chapter 15 begins with the words, “Then Moses and
the people of Israel sang a song to the Lord.” (Ex. 15:1) The
song celebrated the Red Sea victory. Then Miriam, the sister of
Moses, led the Jewish women in a victory dance.
How
did Menzel manage to list the wrong chapter? Because he was a dumb
scientist who did not know his Bible? Or was this a deliberate work
of scientific and religious “disinformation,” blessed by the CIA,
or the “Breakaway Civilization?” By not referring to chapter 14,
Menzel avoids the problem of explaining the “pillar of cloud and of
fire,” which is the main UFO of the Exodus. It seems strange that
in an article on “Flying Saucers in the Bible,” Menzel, this
careful scientist from Harvard, would make this kind of error.
Had
Menzel read my book? If the “Breakaway Civilization” was doing
its work, they would have agents reading every book published that
might threaten the “secrets of the national security state.” To
connect UFOs to the Exodus, and the parting of the Red Sea, could
have been seen as potentially dangerous to keeping UFOs secret,
especially if Christians began to ask questions. If Menzel did not
find my book on his own, the secret keepers would make sure he saw
the book, if Menzel is, as Dolan and Zabel suspect, one of the main
voices of “disinformation” to an all too credulous scientific and
religious community. (When I read this article by Menzel, I
responded as a theological consultant to MUFON by writing the paper,
“Some Questions Concerning Dr. Menzel’s Biblical Exegesis,”
1973 MUFON Symposium Proceeding, Kansas City, Missouri.)
If
Dolan and Zabel are right, then scientists like Sagan and Menzel used
religion as a smokescreen to cover up UFO truth. If Dolan and Zabel
are not right, I
apologize for disparaging the memory of Thorton Page, Edward Condon,
Carl Sagan, and Donald Menzel. But from my point of view they appear
to be very good candidates for the position of “America’s UFO
Debunking ‘A’ Team.” And up to this point, Christians march
on, not as soldiers, but as the people of God who are mostly blind to
the truth that “the children of darkness” have worked very hard
to keep under cover. But some Christians have wondered about those
strange lights in our modern skies. Not everyone trusts what our
modern Pharaohs have said about UFOs. Next we will examine how
various Christian groups have responded to the UFO mystery.
Dr.
Barry H. Downing
May
23, 2011
http://thestrongdelusion.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1621&Itemid=9 Part 4
http://thestrongdelusion.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1608&Itemid=9 Part 3
http://thestrongdelusion.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1593&Itemid=9 Part 2
http://thestrongdelusion.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1574&Itemid=9 Part 1
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