SEDONA FLASH

SEDONA FLASH                                                       © by Charles Tromblee

I go to about one MUFON meeting a year.  Not being a member, I restrict myself to meetings where the speakers  might be the nuts-and –bolts type of ufologists.  The speaker on a night in May, 2011, was the locally popular Tom Dongo who I knew has written UFO books about Sedona.  Only about 20% of his talk was about UFOs, the rest being about orbs (maybe 40%), vortices (15%), and the rest on underground bases and tunnels that might be near Sedona.  I enjoyed it, and it was worth the ten bucks I paid to get in.

A strange event occurred in the second half of the presentation.  An orange light flashed near the ceiling.   It lasted only a fraction of a second, and was NOT ultra bright like a flash camera going off.  It was about the size and shape of a football and took place about 6-12 inches below the ceiling. The room had about 80-100 people in it, and I was sitting near the back. The venue was the meeting room of a church, and the ceiling is covered with glue-on ceiling tiles. I looked around to see if anyone else saw it too. The guy in front of me reacted to it so I tapped him on the shoulder and asked , “Did you see that?” He said he did, but that it was only a car light from the street. I have seen this guy at previous meetings, and he believes just about everything about UFOs so I was surprised that he dismissed what he saw as trivial.  I have many decades of seeing car lights indoors, and this was no car light. About 5-6 ladies on the other side of the room also showed a very visible reaction to it. The speaker did not notice it, nor did anyone in the front half of the audience as it was directly above or behind them. (Fifteen months after this event, I revisited the event’s site and did see a ceiling vent where I thought the flash occurred. I don’t know whether that is significant or not.)

My reaction to all of this is very unsatisfying because it reminds me of the story of a WWII military airplane encounter with a UFO. On board was a psychologist who refused to look at the UFO because he knew it violated his pre-established beliefs. I feel contempt for this person, and yet here I am putting my own event in the back of my mind and will not investigate further. Investigating UFOs for me is sufficient.

Just to set you straight, I do not find UFOs to be weird. They are unknown, complex, and mysterious, but not weird. Whatever paranormal behavior they exhibit is behavior that I attribute to much higher technology.  After all, what is weird about scientifically advanced beings visiting an alien planet?  Nothing, in my opinion. If they are capable of getting here, then go for it. It is perfectly natural to explore new things.

I left the meeting feeling kind of eerie. This kind of thing has nothing to do with UFOs, I’m sure, but it could have had something to do with the speaker’s wide experience with orbs. Unfortunately, I don’t believe in orbs. I am still wrestling with how to adjust my world view to accommodate a truly paranormal phenomenon like this seemed to be. I acknowledge at least 5 or 6 phenomena outside of UFOs that are unexplained about which I have few to no opinions, such as various earth lights (Marfa, Brown Mountain, etc.), crop circles, and remote viewing. Maybe I have to add orbs to the list, and maybe there’s something to this weird stuff after all.

MY UFOLOGY HALL OF FAME/SHAME by Charles Tromblee

MY UFOLOGY HALL OF FAME/SHAME                    

Following is my UFO Hall of Fame/ Shame. In retrospect, I now realize that this list was compiled only with Disclosure in mind. It never dawned on me that I could have included a list of UFO fakers, charlatans, and liars too. Such a list would be more enjoyable to read than my list. I say this because there is such a list at  http://www.ufowatchdog.com/about_us.htm. I have read it with much enjoyment and agree with almost all of it. Unfortunately, it was discontinued in about 2008. Let me apologize in advance for leaving some noted people off of my lists. Obvious omissions surely will be due to my ignorance. In addition, I compiled my list about 3-4 years ago and at the time was ignorant of the many excellent foreign ufologists. These are my personal opinions only. I also apologize for the political rant feel of some of these statements, but I don’t wish to edit further.

Donald E. Keyhoe—this man was arguably the greatest ufologist ever. He was highly connected, active, and aggressive. He tried mightily to lift the curtain of secrecy imposed by our government. He instantly perceived that disclosure was extremely desirable and that the public deserves to know the truth. He was the leader of NICAP, and saw instantly that a huge coverup was occurring, unlike the leaders of NICAP’s “sister” group, APRO. He wrote 5 books on UFOs, all of them readable and informative.

Stanton Friedman—He is the greatest living ufologist. Mr. Friedman is a great debater, and an excellent representative for ufology in general. He comes out in public and unabashedly states his beliefs that UFOs are interstellar space machines.

Edward Ruppelt—This man wrote only one book, but it is this book that gets UFO fence riders off of that fence onto the side of the believers. It was that way with me. The book, “Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,“ is a must read for all serious UFO students. Late in his short life, he was forced into adding 3 additional chapters to his great book which debunked UFOs, but these chapters were a non sequitur as their conclusions did not follow along with the preceding chapters at all.

Leonard Stringfield—There is nothing like a UFO crash retrieval which excites the blood of all nuts and bolts UFO addicts, and Leonard Stringfield was the first ufologist to specialze in this area of research. He brought to light many such incidents, and honorably protected his sources in order to get them to reveal more. All of his publications are available in Linda Moulton Howe’s excellent website, “Earthfiles.com.” (which costs money.) Most of his publications can be read for free on the web in the MUFON website’s archives.

Paul R. Hill—Here’s another controversial addition to the Ufologist Hall of Fame because this man, like Ruppelt, wrote only one book, “Unconventional Flying Objects” but unlike Ruppelt, most people have not read this book. I have and it is great. This book hypothesizes on the technical workings of UFOs and draws conclusions which I believe are mostly accurate. He worked at NACA/NASA, and was an aeronautical/mechanical engineer, well versed in all kinds of physics and math. UFOs were his hobby, and his notes were posthumously published in 1995 by his daughter.

James McDonald—I have to confess that I have not read any of his UFO works yet, but he is on my list because of the extreme praise and awe given to him by other ufologists. He must have been absolutely great. I look forward to reading his works.

Honorable Mention: Richard Dolan, Timothy Good, Grant Cameron, Stephen Bassett, Robert and Ryan Wood



UFO HALL OF SHAME


Harry Truman—This guy should have stayed down on the farm. He just wasn’t big enough for the UFO issue, much less intelligence gathering. He created the fabulous CIA and MJ-12 organizations, and set the tone for the US policy of UFO secrecy. He probably wasn’t even aware that he had screwed up the whole issue of UFOs and intelligence gathering by giving away control to his secret keepers. He also turned the UFO investigation over to the USAF instead of scientific teams.

Dwight Eisenhower—This man gave us our interstate highway system as his most memorable accomplishment. The UFO issue was still new enough while he served as president for him to have wrested control back from the power elite that to this day enjoys owning this issue which greatly benefits their own power and enrichment. Instead, he let the secrecy established by Truman ride, even though as an ex general, one would think that he could have commanded that the issue be handled in a different way. Then at the end of his term in January, 1961, he made a speech warning against losing control to the the Military Industrial Complex. This shows that he was aware that he had lost out to the power elite. Imagine, he did nothing about the growing power of the elite during his presidency, and then at the end of his presidency, he “warns” the American public about them in such a vague and non-specific way that of course no one understood him.

USAF—The USAF over the years has done a dismal, ignorant, and disgraceful job of handling the the responsibility of the UFO situation. Their lies regarding UFO sightings always were ridiculous, and insulted the intelligence of the American public.They didn’t want the job to begin with, and subsequently did such a bad job with UFOs that the CIA took it over. The Air Force’s Project Blue Book was a joke during most of its seventeen year life.

CIA—This organization screws up a very large portion of their projects, and they never get better at them because they have no oversight. They keep making the same mistakes. They have done a good job at keeping UFO secrecy under control, but of course that is the wrong goal to begin with. They’re not ethical enough to realize that. Their beginning had Nazi underpinnings, and this still shows up in their work. Read about MK Ultra if you don’t believe this. They also probably played a leadership role in the assassination of JFK. A group with no moral compass whatsoever.

MJ-12—This group never had faith in the American public’s ability to handle the awareness of alien visitation. It is so radically, rabidly secretive that they will resort to anything to keep their secrets. It is evil. Imagine, this group was formed in Sept. 1947, and only 20 months later oversaw the murder of its first leader, James Forrestal (undoubtedly with assistance from the CIA.) It is unknown whether they still exist under the same name, but for sure a group like this must exist now and the present group has a continuous timeline back to the original MJ-12. It would have been better for the world if this group had never been formed.

The Media—What more can be said about this effete failure of an industry? They are the patsy stooge of the CIA. When it comes to UFOs, the CIA probably does not have to exercise much influence over the media anymore, because the well trained media will automatically invoke the giggle factor instead of pursuing a serious UFO story. But rest assured that they will continue to publish and spin any story that the CIA wants them to whenever needed.

Edward Condon—The Condon Report will live in infamy and its leader, Edward Condon, will forever be shamefully associated with this non-scientific whitewash. He had established quite a respected name for himself before he took on this UFO assignment, but no one remembers anything about him anymore except for this colossal terrible work. He deserves this too. What a fool. It is a shame when a learned person with many awards and intellectual accomplishments takes the side of lies and stupidity (like not only Condon but also Donald Menzel and H.P. Robertson of the Robertson panel) and this becomes their legacy.

Philip Klass—This cockroach of a man was never very good at debunking UFOs but somehow still had the ear of the media. He may have been secretly on the CIA payroll but this has never been proven. His main tools appear to have been cowardly letters of character assassination written behind his targets’ backs along with his bully pulpit as editor of “Aviation Week and Space Technology” magazine.

Dishonorable Mention: NASA, H.P Robertson

Notice that J. Allen Hynek is not on the list. If he were, he’d be on both lists. He must have known for years that UFOs were extraterrestrial or at the very least worthy of intense and broad study, yet he kept too quiet. Yet his was a delicate relationship as it was his employer, the Air Force, who was running the UFO coverup, and he did probably need the job, so it’s understandable that he kept a discrete silence. The silence went on so long that it became unacceptable and ultimately harmful to the UFO issue. It’s like the story of the double agent who compromised himself so often to maintain his secret identity that after many years he realized that he had become just like the people he was working secretly against. Therefore, he was no better than they were.
©

CIA REDACTIONS by Charles Tromblee

CIA REDACTIONS         9/2012

One of my favorite ufologists is Stanton Friedman. Part of his routine in speaking about UFOs is to show a couple of pages of government released documents on the subject, and these pages shows a shockingly small amount of readable words per page, the remainder being blacked out. In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence that there is a UFO coverup, yet few people who argue the case for UFOs use this piece of evidence to any great extent. Shown below is an example of one of the UFO document’s redacted pages that I copied from Stanton Friedman’s web site. This page looks to be about 80-90% redacted. A few redaction-related quotes from Mr. Friedman are appended.* For another example, you will see Mr. Friedman paging through a redacted UFO document at the 3:18 mark at the following YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeG0RpyxE6Q&feature=related

Now, we all know that UFOs are supposed to be of no interest to our intelligence community, so what is the government’s reason for all of these redactions? The main excuse is that the agency does not want to reveal its “sources and methods.”  Obviously, even an idiot can qualitatively reason that this does not make sense; i.e. that sources and methods should not take up about 95% of any document. 

In 1972 the CIA learned that Victor Marchetti, a former high level employee of the CIA, intended to publish a book about the CIA, entitled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. It is not a UFO book. The CIA blocked its publication, citing a danger of “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.” Thus it became the first book ever to have been censored prior to its publication. Through extensive legal challenges, Marchetti got the CIA to point out what they did not like in the book, and then subsequently got the court system to allow its publication with 300 redactions. Subsequent legal work by the authors resulted in 157 of the redactions being allowed, and the book was published in 1974 **.The publication was done with all 300 of the CIA’s desired redactions highlighted in their original length, even though 143 of them were left blank. All the released redactions are highlighted in the book, and the remaining redactions are shown as the word “Deleted” in parentheses, and the size of the redaction is preserved. Therefore, if one measures the text on an average words per line basis, one can find out for the deleted portions how many words and lines were originally there and convert that to a percentage of the book’s page length. BTW, one page = 45 lines, 333 words avg.

Results of the study of this book are as follows: The median (50% above, 50% below) redaction in the book is 7.5% of a page, NOT 90% or so of a page as with a UFO document.  Now contrast this with the UFO examples that you have seen. “Normal” redactions pertaining to non-UFO subject matter apparently are much smaller than with UFO subject matter. If UFOs are not a matter of interest to the CIA, are not a security issue to the USA, and are not studied by the CIA, then what are all the FOIA extensive redactions pertaining to? Clearly, we have been and still are being lied to.

Out of the 300 total redactions, there were 8 redactions of >1 page in length, and only one redaction > 2 pages in length.

Of the 157 released redactions, 90 deal with sources and methods. The longest sources and methods redaction was 1 page, while the vast majority were 1 or 2 words each, because they were simply revealing a name or a place. Also, none of the 157 certainly could be considered as causing “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.”

Of the 143 redactions left blank, 7 were greater than one page, and the median length was 15% of a page.

Figures 1 and 2 show the frequency of page-percentage redaction lengths in 5 % increments.  I have drawn a “UFO line” at a redaction page % length of about 90-95% which is about the range that Stanton Friedman’s FOIA UFO documents (especially NSA releases) have been redacted. The intent of Figures 1 and 2 is to illustrate how ludicrous the explanation is that only sources and methods would be the reason for 90-95% redaction of a UFO released document.** Clearly, there is a UFO coverup.

At this point I will now move on to mention a few more things that I learned from The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Because this is a book about defining the CIA, there were some redactions which revealed the CIA’s size and organizational structure. There were also some that revealed various policies that they use and positions that they take on various matters. There were also some redactions that were clearly for CYA self protection and to avoid embarrassment. 57 of the 157 released redactions fell into these categories. When you think about these, you realize that in a normal CIA document, none of this type of information would be normally included because there would be no need by the CIA document’s author to define his organization to the readers of his document because they themselves would be fellow CIA employees. If I had “dis-included” these types of redactions, it still would not have changed the dramatic appearance of the “UFO line” versus the typical redaction distributions shown in Figures 1 and 2.

We know that the CIA has moles and employees embedded in universities, state governments, newspapers, etc. but what I did not know is that they also have control over various airlines that they use repeatedly to transport personnel and other mission related things. Air America and Continental Airlines were two of them. The CIA also tries to make money from some of its operations so that they can fill their coffers for mission related expenses without going to the government to ask for more. You can see why there were rumors about the CIA profiting from drug related activity. The CIA also has its own technology division, much like “Q” does in the 007 movies.

Incidentally, there is no mention of UFOs in the text, although I now find that Victor Marchetti did speak of the UFO issue with respect to the CIA in later years. Also, there is nothing much in his book about the Kennedy assassination either. Anybody who has read much of my stuff will know that I believe that the CIA murdered Kennedy. There is an interesting quote in the book by Harry Truman, the person under whom the CIA was (poorly) created: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.” President Truman said this in December, 1963 long after leaving office. Kennedy had been assassinated only 1 month prior. Do you think he had a suspicion that maybe his CIA creation, formed by copying a totalitarian, Gestapo secret police organizational model with no oversight, had done the job? Ironically, one of the criticisms of the CIA by the author is that it is too often used by the President as a personal tool. Clearly, they view the President as their Leader. But as we know from Roman history, many times the emperor was assassinated by his own guards. I suppose that if Marchetti did put anything about the assassination or UFOs in his book, it would never have been published at all, and maybe Mr. Marchetti would have gotten a pine box for his efforts.

*From Stanton Friedman’s website, article entitled “Debunkers At It Again”, published 2/3/2009: “No credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public? Is he really unaware of the many TOP SECRET UMBRA CIA UFO documents that have been released so heavily redacted that many pages say “Deny in Toto” or that many others are blacked out except for fewer than eight words. Is he really unaware that because of a FOIA court case, the NSA has admitted finding 156 TOP SECRET UMBRA UFO documents. When finally released, one could read about one sentence per page with the  rest being whited out. The excuse for redaction was that it is illegal to release sources and methods information. It is absurd to suggest that more than 95% of these UFO documents consisted of sources and methods information. Federal Court Judge Gerhard Gesell agreed the documents should not be released. “The Public interest in disclosure is far outweighed by the potential danger to the security of the United States should this information be released,” he wrote."

5/4/12 UFO Chronicles “The UFO Bestiary: A Rebuttal By Stanton T. Friedman”: “Perhaps you can tell me what is under the whiteout used by the NSA on better than 95% of the material on 156 pages of old TOP SECRET UMBRA NSA UFO documents? All one can read is about one sentence per page. How about the many pages of TOP SECRET UMPRA CIA UFO documents; almost all of which are blacked out? No Cover-up?”

3/9/12 UFO Chronicles: “When finally more or less released, one could read several words per page in the CIA stuff with the rest being blacked out and about one sentence per page on the 156 NSA UFO documents with the rest being whited out.”

**This is clearly an old book (1974), but one must keep in mind that FOIA released UFO documents with all their redactions are of this period as well. Therefore, I think that it is legitimate to compare these redactions to UFO FOIA redactions.

***I am using my own redaction count in this paper because the book’s count is wrong. The book’s count is 339 redactions of which 168 were disallowed, and my own count is 300 of which 143 were disallowed. The publisher used a sloppy method of counting.

CIA REDACTIONS      by Chuck Tromblee   9/2012

One of my favorite ufologists is Stanton Friedman. Part of his routine in speaking about UFOs is to show a couple of pages of government released documents on the subject, and these pages shows a shockingly small amount of readable words per page, the remainder being blacked out. In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence that there is a UFO coverup, yet few people who argue the case for UFOs use this piece of evidence to any great extent. Shown below is an example of one of the UFO document’s redacted pages that I copied from Stanton Friedman’s web site. This page looks to be about 80-90% redacted. A few redaction-related quotes from Mr. Friedman are appended.* For another example, you will see Mr. Friedman paging through a redacted UFO document at the 3:18 mark at the following YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeG0RpyxE6Q&feature=related

Now, we all know that UFOs are supposed to be of no interest to our intelligence community, so what is the government’s reason for all of these redactions? The main excuse is that the agency does not want to reveal its “sources and methods.”  Obviously, even an idiot can qualitatively reason that this does not make sense; i.e. that sources and methods should not take up about 95% of any document. 

In 1972 the CIA learned that Victor Marchetti, a former high level employee of the CIA, intended to publish a book about the CIA, entitled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. It is not a UFO book. The CIA blocked its publication, citing a danger of “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.” Thus it became the first book ever to have been censored prior to its publication. Through extensive legal challenges, Marchetti got the CIA to point out what they did not like in the book, and then subsequently got the court system to allow its publication with 300 redactions. Subsequent legal work by the authors resulted in 157 of the redactions being allowed, and the book was published in 1974 **.The publication was done with all 300 of the CIA’s desired redactions highlighted in their original length, even though 143 of them were left blank. All the released redactions are highlighted in the book, and the remaining redactions are shown as the word “Deleted” in parentheses, and the size of the redaction is preserved. Therefore, if one measures the text on an average words per line basis, one can find out for the deleted portions how many words and lines were originally there and convert that to a percentage of the book’s page length. BTW, one page = 45 lines, 333 words avg.

Results of the study of this book are as follows: The median (50% above, 50% below) redaction in the book is 7.5% of a page, NOT 90% or so of a page as with a UFO document.  Now contrast this with the UFO examples that you have seen. “Normal” redactions pertaining to non-UFO subject matter apparently are much smaller than with UFO subject matter. If UFOs are not a matter of interest to the CIA, are not a security issue to the USA, and are not studied by the CIA, then what are all the FOIA extensive redactions pertaining to? Clearly, we have been and still are being lied to.

Out of the 300 total redactions, there were 8 redactions of >1 page in length, and only one redaction > 2 pages in length.

Of the 157 released redactions, 90 deal with sources and methods. The longest sources and methods redaction was 1 page, while the vast majority were 1 or 2 words each, because they were simply revealing a name or a place. Also, none of the 157 certainly could be considered as causing “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.”

Of the 143 redactions left blank, 7 were greater than one page, and the median length was 15% of a page.

Figures 1 and 2 show the frequency of page-percentage redaction lengths in 5 % increments.  I have drawn a “UFO line” at a redaction page % length of about 90-95% which is about the range that Stanton Friedman’s FOIA UFO documents (especially NSA releases) have been redacted. The intent of Figures 1 and 2 is to illustrate how ludicrous the explanation is that only sources and methods would be the reason for 90-95% redaction of a UFO released document.** Clearly, there is a UFO coverup.

Now I will move on to mention a few more things that I learned from The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Because this is a book about defining the CIA, there were some redactions which revealed the CIA’s size and organizational structure. There were also some that revealed various policies that they use and positions that they take on various matters. There were also some redactions that were clearly for CYA self protection and to avoid embarrassment. 57 of the 157 released redactions fell into these categories. When you think about these, you realize that in a normal CIA document, none of this type of information would be normally included because there would be no need by the CIA document’s author to define his organization to the readers of his document because they themselves would be fellow CIA employees. If I had “dis-included” these types of redactions, it still would not have changed the dramatic appearance of the “UFO line” versus the typical redaction distributions shown in Figures 1 and 2.

We know that the CIA has moles and employees embedded in universities, state governments, newspapers, etc. but what I did not know is that they also have control over various airlines that they use repeatedly to transport personnel and other mission related things. Air America and Continental Airlines were two of them. The CIA also tries to make money from some of its operations so that they can fill their coffers for mission related expenses without going to the government to ask for more. You can see why there were rumors about the CIA profiting from drug related activity. The CIA also has its own technology division, much like “Q” does in the 007 movies.

Incidentally, there is no mention of UFOs in the text, although I now find that Victor Marchetti did speak of the UFO issue with respect to the CIA in later years. Also, there is nothing much in his book about the Kennedy assassination either. Anybody who has read much of my stuff will know that I believe that the CIA murdered Kennedy. There is an interesting quote in the book by Harry Truman, the person under whom the CIA was (poorly) created: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.” President Truman said this in December, 1963 long after leaving office. Kennedy had been assassinated only 1 month prior. Do you think he had a suspicion that maybe his CIA creation, formed by copying a totalitarian, Gestapo secret police organizational model with no oversight, had done the job? Ironically, one of the criticisms of the CIA by the author is that it is too often used by the President as a personal tool. Clearly, they view the President as their Leader. But as we know from Roman history, many times the emperor was assassinated by his own guards. I suppose that if Marchetti did put anything about the assassination or UFOs in his book, it would never have been published at all, and maybe Mr. Marchetti would have gotten a pine box for his efforts.

*From Stanton Friedman’s website, article entitled “Debunkers At It Again”, published 2/3/2009: “No credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public? Is he really unaware of the many TOP SECRET UMBRA CIA UFO documents that have been released so heavily redacted that many pages say “Deny in Toto” or that many others are blacked out except for fewer than eight words. Is he really unaware that because of a FOIA court case, the NSA has admitted finding 156 TOP SECRET UMBRA UFO documents. When finally released, one could read about one sentence per page with the  rest being whited out. The excuse for redaction was that it is illegal to release sources and methods information. It is absurd to suggest that more than 95% of these UFO documents consisted of sources and methods information. Federal Court Judge Gerhard Gesell agreed the documents should not be released. “The Public interest in disclosure is far outweighed by the potential danger to the security of the United States should this information be released,” he wrote.

5/4/12 UFO Chronicles “The UFO Bestiary: A Rebuttal By Stanton T. Friedman” “Perhaps you can tell me what is under the whiteout used by the NSA on better than 95% of the material on 156 pages of old TOP SECRET UMBRA NSA UFO documents? All one can read is about one sentence per page. How about the many pages of TOP SECRET UMPRA CIA UFO documents; almost all of which are blacked out? No Cover-up?”

3/9/12 UFO Chronicles “When finally more or less released, one could read several words per page in the CIA stuff with the rest being blacked out and about one sentence per page on the 156 NSA UFO documents with the rest being whited out.”

**This is clearly an old book (1974), but one must keep in mind that FOIA released UFO documents with all their redactions are of this period as well. Therefore, I think that it is legitimate to compare these redactions to UFO FOIA redactions.

***I am using my own redaction count in this paper because the book’s count is wrong. The book’s count is 339 redactions of which 168 were disallowed, and my own count is 300 of which 143 were disallowed. The publisher used a sloppy method of counting.

MUFON: What Is Going On There? by Charles Tromblee

MUFON: What is going on there?  

Not being a dues paying member of MUFON, I look from the outside in at their activities and wonder what might be going on there. Their website says that their mission is “The Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity”. The MUFON chapter nearest to me is in Sedona, Arizona, and it is their complete lack of scientific interest that has stopped me from joining. Due to this, I even called MUFON’s main office to confirm that this chapter is really a valid chapter. It is. You have probably guessed from this that I am a nuts-and-bolts kind of UFO guy, and you would be right. Any comments that I make about MUFON are done from the perspective of an outsider.

All UFO orgs of the past have had spy scrutiny and infiltration by government agencies. In fact, this was one of the recommendations of the Robertson panel. This activity assisted the government with the dissolution of NICAP and APRO, although these groups also self-destructed to a large extent as well. It appears to me that MUFON in its formation tried to avoid a hostile government by consciously avoiding a political agenda, and that continues to this day. For example, the recent petitions to the government to reveal what it knows about the cover up came from people who were acting independently of MUFON. I happen to believe that MUFON should have a political agenda, and it should have been they, not “regular” people, who first submitted these petitions. It should have been done years ago by MUFON through a lobbying process, a role which now belongs to one lonely person, Steven Bassett.

MUFON has also undergone recent internal turmoil. The well publicized boondoggles with Robert Bigelow and the previous young director of MUFON indicate a seething, cash strapped org.  I can only hope that they survive and prosper beyond these kinds of tempests.

On the MUFON web site, several forms are listed which appear quite well done. The one I looked most closely at was the one the investigators use for sightings of “entities.” Most of my own research is based on Close Encounters of the Third Kind sightings (i.e. entities).  I was pleased to see that the four check boxes for observed alien activity started with “sample gathering” followed by “repairs”. This exactly matches my own research results for the first and second most observed alien activity during CE3 sightings.

One thing that I did NOT see on these forms was any reference to local legends and ghosts. I would like to find out if this sort of coverage area is recommended by the MUFON manual, so that is why I want to obtain one. The reason I bring this up is that I read a report written by a MUFON Star team (or is it A Team?) investigator a few years ago on the UFO Chronicles blog site. The Star or A  Team was composed of the best MUFON investigators, and the report mentioned that one of the first steps was to check into local cemetery lore such as Indian burial grounds and other local paranormal things such as ghosts. (I am going purely by memory here; I cannot find this report on UFO Chronicles anymore.) Given  MUFON’s  stated mission as being the “scientific study of UFOs …” I thought that this due diligence of investigating ghosts, etc. rather odd and unscientific. But then as time has passed, I now think, why not? Certainly UFOs have a kind of paranormal component, and who am I to restrict the boundaries of such an investigation? This investigator was thinking out of the box which is a good thing for UFOs. If I owned a MUFON Field Investigator’s Manual, I could find out if researching the spiritual and/or paranormal is discussed in it, but the only way I can get my hands on it is to pay $70 which I am not going to do.

I just saw a Richard Dolan video in which he speaks his concerns for MUFON. UFO believers need such an organization, so if MUFON falls, what are we all to do? He alludes to concerns/complaints that people have about its Board of Directors. Maybe some of these are valid, but I am sure that most are not. Having served on a subdivision board of directors for 3 years, I can assure everyone with absolute certainty that even a board consisting of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Abe Lincoln and George Washington would still receive a ton of complaints in our litigious society.

THE FUGGEDABOUTIT GUIDE TO SPEEDING UP UFO ANALYSES by Charles Tromblee

The Fuggedaboutit Guide to Speeding Up UFO Analyses    

I have watched lots of UFO video clips on YouTube, and have read over 10,000 case study summaries. It was not fun. There are so few stories worthy of merit that it can make you want to bang your head against a wall. Therefore, I have developed some criteria for rejecting a UFO video or story which will help you to speed up your decision making process on whether to investigate a sighting or a case any further.

VISUAL SIGHTINGS (Includes videos)

1.       If it leaves a wake, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: I am talking about an exhaust trail here, and not about a trailing stream of ionized gas. UFOs do not leave exhausts, but the danger here is in rejecting a UFO that is malfunctioning and burning up while it is in trouble. You could miss a crash related sighting.

2.       If it makes a combustion engine noise, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Pretty much the same as previous. UFOs are silent or at most make a buzz or hum. Once again, the danger is missing a malfunctioning UFO and therefore missing a crash related sighting.

3.       If it tumbles in the air, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Almost certainly it is a balloon.

4.       If it is just a nighttime dot of light, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: What kind of information can you get from a nighttime dot of light? Almost none. Stop wasting your time.

5.       If it looks like an unusual cloud, it probably is so FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Yes, there have been reports about UFOs surrounding themselves with a cloud for disguise purposes, but these are few and far between and they seem to be a thing of the past. Lenticular clouds still are mistaken for UFOs nowadays far more often than good reports of cloud shrouded UFOs, so don’t waste your time on these.

6.       If it is a mass of orbs in the sky drifting like balloons or writhing tubes in the sky, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Whenever I see one of these, I want to know which way the wind is blowing and this info usually is not provided. I think that most all of these are drifting with the wind.

7.       If the video looks like the UFO is propelled by a rippling wave motion at roughly the equator of the object (looks like the swimming motion of a manta ray), then the camera was at too long of an exposure while capturing a flying bug or bird, so FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: No comment needed.

8.       If the video just shows a light that just sits there or drifts and then the video ends, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Why would anyone just film a stationary UFO and not stick around for its departure? If they have a charged up camera, and if they don’t capture the departure of the UFO, then it is probably not a UFO because it may be either a hoax or just a Chinese lantern or the like. The departure can contain lots of information which would validate that it is an actual UFO, such as extremely rapid acceleration and possibly a pre-acceleration brightening of the object. If it looks like a stationary or drifting light, then that is probably what it is. Even if it were a hovering UFO, what could we learn from a dot of light that just sits there?  Nothing.

CASE STUDY SUMMARIES (Let me be clear here: these are suggestions on whether to select an archived case study as a valid data point, and NOT suggestions for interviewing the witness. Also, please continue to report all of your sightings.)

1.       If no UFO was sighted in either time or space proximity as part of the story, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: There are many close encounter cases with no UFO present, so they cease to become a close encounter case and should be disregarded as a source of UFO info. They are more likely hallucinations or an encounter of some other sort. Admittedly, the investigator could miss an actual Close Encounter of the Third Kind case, but I judge that as an acceptable risk.

2.       If it is a story told by children (<16 or 17 years old), FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Children don’t make good witnesses even though they are more than likely to see a UFO than an adult because they are outside playing. However, their stories could prove useful as a supplement to info on the same object sighted by an adult(s).

3.       If the story talks about Jesus or heaven, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: A quote by either Budd Hopkins or David Jacobs, abduction researchers, says it best: : “Mainstream abduction researchers have been unable to find anything paranormal, spiritual, religious, or metaphysical about the phenomenon.” For non abduction encounters, it is entirely possible that the witness has viewed an actual encounter through his/her filter of religious upbringing, and interpreted the story as a religious experience. This further introduces more distortion into the story, making a judgment about the “facts” learned from the story almost impossible.

4.       If the story says, “I was able to remember after hypnosis that …”, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: Hypnosis is a very controversial tool that can lead to confabulation if not handled by a very trained interviewer. Memory recovery under hypnosis is valid only when an expert does it, and in the case of UFO abductions, that expert needs further training against implanting confabulating suggestions. Once again, here is a quote from David Jacobs, abduction researcher:  “The most serious barrier to competent abduction research is incompetent hypnosis.” In my opinion, even an ordinary psychologist, although possibly trained in hypnosis, still easily could get untrue results. And this applies much more broadly to all UFO memory recovery, not just abductions.

5.       If the story says, “I awoke at night and saw in my room …” or “I awoke and for some reason I looked out the window and saw …”, FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: These types of story introductions are highly suggestive of a continuing dream state just after awakening, and therefore reduce the believability of the encounter. There sure are a lot of these stories that start like this, especially abductions.

6.       If the story says, “The witness has had previous encounters  too.”, this gets a qualified FUGGEDABOUTIT!

     Comment: I almost did not include this because we all know of highly reliable people who have seen more than one UFO, such as Coral Lorenzen, founder of APRO, and Dr. Paul R. Hill, author of the book “Unconventional Flying Objects”. Plus some people have an affinity for seeing these things, and others make it their hobby to collect sightings. Plus, in the case of abductions, previous encounters seem to be the norm. However, at the very least, previous sightings should be regarded as a red cautionary flag that should be investigated a bit just to see if the witness can be relied upon.

Yes, following these criteria will result in some good encounters being rejected.  But let’s face it. 80-90% of reported sightings are not UFOs. Our time is limited. We need to increase the odds that our time is spent meaningfully, so mistakenly rejecting a few good stories along with the thousands of non-UFO stories makes sense to me. 

THE DOUBTERS AMONG US by Charles Tromblee

THE DOUBTERS AMONG US                                                          

Many UFO books and articles are written which only address the way that humanity deals with UFOs, and are not about the UFOs themselves. That is, they are about  a person’s reaction to an encounter, a collection of sightings with no interpretation, the government coverup, and so forth. Now, I am not talking about what is written by the nut job part of humanity, but instead what is written by persons of a very level headed nature, by persons who have drawn the correct conclusion that something major is going on which needs clarification. I have read many of their books, and have only recently been struck by a major realization.

The realization is this: To the best of my recollection, few of the major authors in the field of ufology have come out and said that we are being visited by extraterrestrial races and the UFOs are their crafts (Richard Dolan and Stanton Friedman are the top two.)*. It appears to me that most of the remainder always hedge their bets, falling back to a plea for more study. These pleas occur after in depth presentation of lots of case study discussion and/or document review.  Despite the fact that all their good writing compels the reader to believe in the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis), the authors hold back on crossing the line of total commitment to the ETH. It took me a while to adjust to the reality that these well studied people who write books, run blogs, author articles, and give lectures on UFOs overwhelmingly seem to be holding back, at least publicly, on professing belief that these  craft are piloted by alien races. Do they really believe that all the good sightings are advanced military experiments? Practically the whole UFO field appears to be populated by those who don’t even fully believe in the ETH! They do believe that it is a very good possibility, however.  This is like holding back on believing in evolution because of the theory of intelligent design.

Nevertheless, most UFO speakers and authors will admit that UFOs appear to be structured craft under intelligent control. If they think that this is the case, then why hold back in saying that the aliens are here? Yikes! Sure, there could be a residual doubt that the whole UFO things is being misinterpreted, and that it could be something more earthly. Even I have a tiny doubt, but the odds are so stacked in favor of the ETH being the actual truth that it should simply be put in the back of one’s mind while information about the aliens is pursued. What this means is that there is an acceptable risk of being embarrassed by a “false positive”; i.e. that someday the phenomenon could be found to be totally unrelated to alien visitation.

Non-acceptance of the ETH holds one back and wastes time. After all, how many of you have read a UFO book which enumerates lots of sightings and then the author calls for more study? I have, and even though I enjoyed reading them, after the first 5 or 10 such books I ceased to learn anything more about UFOs. Wouldn’t you much rather read the same book in which the author enumerates those same sightings and then states the obviousness of alien involvement and then goes on to analyze those sightings to extract  hypotheses about the aliens and the crafts? Wouldn’t it be nice if the author would go on to speculate about what the hell is inside that thing and what keeps it airborne?  This would push the reader further into an understanding of our visitors. ETH acceptance answers many questions about UFOs, leaving one’s brain free to concentrate on more “alien-centric” questions. Among the questions the ETH answers immediately upon its acceptance are “Are they real? Are they here? Is star or dimensional travel possible? Is there a coverup? “

·   
            * A few more might be Dr. John Alexander, Frank Feschino, James Fox, and Anthony Bragalia, but I sure cannot remember any others as I write. I could put Philip Corso in there too, but I have a problem with the truthfulness of his claims.