Skeptics, I hope you're still reading this. This is where things really begin to get interesting. It's why Hynek became a believer. ---------------------- Getting back to Dr. Hynek. In "Oberg/Cooper rebuttal 1a" (Preface, ¶ 3 ) I mentioned that "it was that Air Force's own scientific consultant who actually proved to us that the Air Force has not been completely honest with us concerning UFOs." This next section focuses on what the Air Force's main civilian scientific consultant had to say concerning Project Blue Book after it was closed and his job there had ended. His revelations would have shattered every intelligent skeptic's "illusion"
concerning the accuracy of Air Force statistics and made them realize that Project Blue Book was a sham and the Air Force had to know a lot more than it was telling. The only problem was that most of the average skeptics never read it and/or, if they did, refused to believe it. It is my fervent hope that those following these essays will become more enlightened in this regard. The accuracy of the following can be confirmed by consulting the sources provided via your local libraries
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HYNEK & PROJECT BLUE BOOK
(The study that wasn't)
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{ . . . . .Spock said to McCoy . . . . . "Remember!" }
When Blue Book closed, Dr. Hynek, having had access to Blue Book files for approximately twenty years, and realizing how little study had been done on some of the best cases, had decided that there was a lot more to UFOs than most other people realized. The problem was, how was he going to get this information out to the public? He needed to let them know, what *he* knew; that Blue Book was a "sham", that the Colorado Study had come to the wrong conclusions and that he had information he felt proved there was indeed something to at least a core of these UFO reports. In 1972, his book "The UFO Experience" was published and was earthshaking to those of us that had been following the UFO controversy closely. Besides the classifications he delineated concerning the phenomena, etc., Hynek also included revealing inside details on both Blue Book and the Condon Study. The most shattering to our consciousness regarding Blue Book concerned twenty pages described as "Excerpts from a letter by J. Allen Hynek to Colonel Raymond S. Sleeper" on Oct. 7, 1968. 1 It aptly demonstrated that Blue Book had been a "non-study" and made those of us who read his book painfully aware of how little was accomplished by the project the Air Force touted as its "scientific analysis" of UFOs. The letter is both his evaluation of Project Blue Book and a plea for the Air Force to take the UFO subject more seriously. After reading this, it is hard to imagine that someone, somewhere wasn't taking it more seriously. Our Air Force has been and is, the finest "human" Air Force in the world. In "Oberg/Cooper rebuttal.4" I made several statements that may have appeared controversial to some. Three of them were:
1) ". . . things concerning the Air Force weren't as we had thought"; 2) "Eventually other things surfaced that made it crystal clear the Air Force had to know a lot more than it was willing to tell."
and
3) ". . . a project (Blue Book) that, as we will discover later, had become an embarrassment to itself."
To say the following data "is extremely important," is definitely the greatest
understatement I have ever made in my life. It proves, beyond all reasonable doubt,
that Dr. Hynek was held back from studying the repository of "verified" evidence in
existence. In other words, the same people that had claimed all along this important
evidence didn't exist, were keeping much of it buried from Hynek and outsiders. As
you will see in these excerpts from his 1972 book, by his own words, Hynek was not
permitted to peruse the files himself. A few questions we started asking ourselves:
"Was it incompetence, a need to feel important on the part of members of the Blue
Book staff or, perhap,s a directive from upper echelon?"
There are five sections of Hynek's letter to which I wish to draw everyone's
attention. One of the sections I haven't included was their own (the Air Force's)
consultant's plea to take UFOs more seriously. Those wishing to view this text in
its entirety can view it in Appendix 4 of his book, delineated in the bibliography below.
The following, labeled by section and general area, are quotes directly from Hynek to
Sleeper.
Hynek's words to Colonel Sleeper:
"Blue Book has been charged with two missions by AFR 80- 17, both ostensibly of the same weight, since the regulations do not specify otherwise. They are: (1) to determine if the UFO is
a possible threat to the United States, and (2) to use the scientific or technical data gained from study of UFO reports. Neither of these two missions is being adequately executed. First, the only logical basis on which it can be stated that UFOs do not constitute a possible threat to the United States is that so far nothing has happened to the United States from that source. First, many reports are not investigated until weeks or even months after they are made; clearly, if hostility were ever intended, it would occur long before the report was investigated. (That is akin to having the Pearl Harbor radar warnings [which went unheeded] investigated three weeks after Pearl Harbor.) Nothing did occur, so it can be gathered that UFOs, whatever they may be, have not so far had hostile intent. Second, many reports of potentially high intelligence value go unheeded by Blue Book. Examples: (a) [Extract from a classified document of reported sighting of 5 May, 1965, contents unclassified, classification refers to name, and location and mission of vessel.] " . . . leading signal man reported what he believed to be an aircraft. . . . When viewed through binoculars, three objects were sighted in close proximity to each other; one object was first magnitude, the other two were second magnitude. Objects were traveling at extremely high speeds, moving toward ship at undetermined altitude. At . . . . four moving targets were detected on the . . . . air search radar at ranges up to twenty two miles and held up to six minutes. When over the ship the objects spread to circular formation directly overhead and remained there for approximately three minutes. This maneuver
was observed both visually and by radar. The bright object which hovered off the starboard quarter made the larger presentation on the radar scope. The objects made several course changes during the sighting, confirmed visually and by radar, and were tracked at speeds in excess of 3000 (three thousand) knots. (jc: bolding and
italics are mine.) Challenges were made by IFF but not answered.
After the three minute hovering maneuver, the objects moved in a
southeasterly direction at an extremely high rate of speed. Above
evolution observed by CO, all bridge personnel and numerous hands
topside." This report was summarily evaluated by Blue Book as "Aircraft," and to the best of my knowledge was never further investigated. By what stretch of the imagination can we say that the sighting did not represent a "possible threat" to the United States? Only because nothing happened. Do we ascribe such incompetence to the officers of the ship, and to the CO, to have such a report submitted unless all witnesses were truly puzzled? Is it conceivable that these officers could not have recognized an aircraft had it had the trajectory, the apparent speed, and the maneuvers ascribable to aircraft? No mention is made in the report of even the possibility that ordinary aircraft were being observed. The very fact that IFF challenges went unanswered should have been a spur to further investigation. This implies enemy craft. But the report does not even suggest the possibility that these were ordinary enemy aircraft. The classified document in Blue Book files does not contain further technical data concerning the sighting itself. Should not the director of Blue Book have exhibited at least SOME curiosity about this sighting? Yet when I brought it up on more than one occasion, it was dismissed with boredom. . . . . . It is hard for the public to understand
how a country whose military posture is so security geared could dismiss a
case like this out-of-hand unless the military knew more than they were
telling." (J.C. again, bolding is mine but the words were Dr. Hynek's.) -------------------------------------------- J.C. Was Hynek only talking about the public understanding or his own as well? After giving a second example similar to the above he says the following: --------------------------------------------
"It must be pointed out that neither of these cases were shown to me by Blue Book personnel. I happened upon them by accident during one of my visits as I scanned through material lying on a desk, and not in the files; I am not permitted to peruse the files themselves. I have access to
the files only when I request a specific case. But how can I
request a specific case, to examine its possible scientific
merits, if I don't know of its existence?" (jc: again, bolding mine)
------------------------------------- J.C. Does the above sound as though they wanted him to examine all the cases? -------------------------------------
"The staff of Blue Book, both in numbers and in scientific training, is grossly inadequate to perform the tasks assigned under AFR 80-17, even were they of a mind to do so."
------------------------------------------------- J.C. Researchers who have looked at the number of people employed had long ago determined that the project was incredibly understaffed & under-ranked. It was felt this showed the real value the military placed on it. -------------------------------------------------
"There has been little dialogue between Blue Book and the outside scientific world or between Blue Book and the various scientific facilities within the Air Force itself." "I know of very little scientific correspondence in the blue book files; this is probably because scientists wish to correspond with persons of like training. It would be pointless, for instance, to query Blue Book on the scientific reasons for evaluating a given case, say, as caused by a temperature inversion: Blue Book has never availed itself of the meteorological know-how within the Air Force itself to determine just how much of an inversion is necessary to produce the effects reported by the witness, if at all."
------------------------------------------------- J.C. Communication has been found in FOIA released documents that suggest Hynek was wrong about this last statement. They
just did it quietly and he wasn't shown the reports. 2 -------------------------------------------------
". . . . . many astronomical evaluations have been made by Blue Book without consulting their scientific consultant (who is, after all, an astronomer) which have brought ridicule in the press. The midwest flap of reports of July 31-August 1, 1965 can be cited as an example."
------------------------------------------------- J.C. Above, Hynek's defense concerning the
erroneous Air Force explanation discovered by Robert Risser, director of Oklahoma City's Kirkpatrick Planetarium. ------------------------------------------------- As mentioned previously, the Exeter, New Hampshire case occurred just one month later. (September 3, 1965)
"The statistical methods employed by Blue Book are a travesty on the branch of mathematics known as Statistics. A chapter in a doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University, soon to be published, deals specifically with this aspect, and I will later quote from it (Herbert Strentz, "A Study of Some Air Force Statistical Procedures in Recording and Reporting Data on UFO Investigations," included in "A SURVEY OF PRESS COVERAGE OF UFOs, 1947, 1967, a doctoral thesis at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University") and preface it with my own observations which, incidentally, I have repeatedly brought to the attention of the Blue Book staff but to no avail."
------------------------------------------------- J.C. Hynek states outright that the statistics being quoted by Blue Book were a joke. -------------------------------------------------
"There has been lack of attention to significant UFO cases, as judged by the scientific consultant and others, and too much time on routine cases which contain few information bits; too much time and effort are demanded of the Blue Book staff for peripheral tasks (public relations, answering letters about evaluation of old cases and answering requests for information from various and sundry sources)." "A scientist who finds something in his laboratory that he can't explain is no scientist if he labels it 'unknown' and files it away and spends the rest of his time in routine matters. It is precisely the Unknowns that Blue Book should be concerned with, not making impressive (?) counts of how many people cannot properly identify a satellite or a meteor."
------------------------------------------------- J.C. It appears the military was more concerned with public opinion than science. Above point made by critics of the Condon Report regarding *that* study as well. -------------------------------------------------
"The information input to Blue Book is grossly inadequate and certainly the cause of much of the inefficiency within the Book by the almost consistent failure of UFO officers at the local Air Bases to transmit adequate information to Blue Book, and, I might say, it was considerably worse in the long period before there were UFO officers so designated."
------------------------------------------------- J.C. i.e. There were probably more cases but we didn't get the proper information on them. -------------------------------------------------
End: Oberg/Cooper rebuttal.5a
To: O/C rebut.5b
HYNEK & PROJECT BLUE BOOK
(The study that wasn't)
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