FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1997

Charles Fort, says Philip Klass, would have been delighted by the early puzzlement of the Air Force and scientific establishment about Unidentified Flying Objects. If he had survived until the 1960's he would have agreed with the prosaic explanations for most cases but agreed that some defy scientific explanation.

Klass takes us through the July 15, 1957 case of the UFO over the Gulf of Mexico, a case which J. Allen Hynek had called "classic."

A modified RB47 reconnaissance plane with a six-man crew under a Captain Chase, including three electronic intelligence (el-int) operators, went on a training mission to test the ALA 6 el-int equipment, checking it against CPS 6B air defence radar in US Air Force bases. When one operator, Frank McClure, was testing the equipment, instead of a signal coming from the North West, as expected, there was one coming from the South East, over the Gulf of Mexico. The RB47 passed over Louisiana about 5.10am, while they were still in darkness, and the pilot spotted a very intense light coming towards them. It cut in front of them and headed up to the North East. The el-int operators inside the fuselage could not see the light but heard the pilot on the intercom. This prompted Frank McClure, to think that if it's a UFO maybe it's putting out a signal. He used the el-int equipment to search for a possible signal. After searching for twenty minutes he picked up a signal and assumed it was coming from the UFO, however the bearing of the UFO signal was to the North West in the general direction of Dallas, whereas the visual UFO had disappeared off to the North East in the general direction of "let's say Boston." If he was picking up a signal from the UFO, then it was flying alongside the RB47. Fortunately, McClure jotted down the signal characteristics and he noticed that the signal from the UFO was almost identical to the signal that would come from US Air Force CPS 6B air defence radar. McClure notified the pilot who began to search for a bright light. He soon noticed a bright light at a lower altitude to the right of the RB47, with roughly the same bearing as the unidentified radar-like signal. McClure was then suddenly detecting not one but two signals (a short time later the two joined together). At 5.40 am Captain Chase obtained permission to abandon the flight plan and pursue the visible UFO and the el-int operators' indication of where the UFO was. They spotted a bright light in the vicinity of Dallas/Fort Worth. Two minutes later one of the two signals disappeared and then thirty seconds later there were two signals again. The Air Force radar station did not detect any UFO. Meanwhile, the unidentified signal on the el-int equipment was periodically disappearing and reappearing. Soon Captain Chase lost visual contact with the bright light. Finally, for fuel reasons they went back to base in Kansas but the unidentified radar-like signal was there until they got to Oklahoma City (there was no further bright light). The crew were immediately interviewed by an intelligence officer called Edward Pierwitz [?]. He got a lot of data off them and submitted it in a formal report to Project Bluebook.

Klass' investigation of this case took place in 1971. He went to the North American Aerospace Defence Command and asked them where CPS 6B radars were in the Texas area in 1956-57. They said that they had none in that area but they had had four FPS 10 radars which had identical signal characteristics, one in Duncansville, Texas, which is near Dallas. The FPS 10 was made by General Electric and Klass got an instruction book to it. The FPS 10 was three radars in one - it had three antennas. The book showed what the antenna patterns looked like in terms of distance and altitude. Klass had to compute where those beams would have been relative to the geography of Texas. Knowing the RB47 was at 34,000 feet, Klass had to convert the beam patterns into what distance from Duncansville should that airplane have picked up the signal from the FPS 10 radar [if this sentence doesn't make any sense, don't blame me - BK]. Next he had to correlate this with where the RB47 was at each point of time. Klass had to locate Captain Chase and McClure. He did so and worked with them for many weeks and developed a map of the flight path. They picked up the Duncansville radar signals where they should have. What about the time McClure detected two signals? The ALA 6 el-int equipment was manufactured by Hoffman Electronics and Klass got an instruction book off them. The book cautions operators that occasionally they could pick up what could be two radars. Radar energy can bounce off a building or a hill or a mountain and be reflected - and merge into one when the plane moves on. Klass' conclusion is that the "UFO" signal came from the FPS 10 at Duncansville. But why was there some radar-like object over the Gulf of Mexico? The instruction book to the ALA 6 showed that the outside antenna used two antennas, one horizontally polarised and one vertically polarised. To switch from one antenna to another, the operator would flick a switch which was supposed to operate a relay which would switch antennas. The relay was not very reliable. There might be moisture in it and the moisture would freeze at 34,000 feet. It would not connect the right antenna, therefore the wrong antenna would be used because of the malfunctioning relay. If the equipment was left on for 15-20 minutes the heat would melt the ice and then the relay would work. And there is indication that the radar corrected again. Klass' findings and his 18-page report was endorsed by Chase and McClure.

In UFO reports to NICAP in 1957, the person reporting would be asked if they had "ever seen one before." Repeaters, people who would say they had seen UFO's repeatedly, were not considered to be credible witnesses. During the last decade, says Klass, a change in ufology has occurred due to television. TV "documentaries" are designed to attract large audiences, for the purposes of advertising. "Saucers" are dramatic. Pseudo-documentaries promote public belief in extra-terrestrials (ET's), interplanetary craft, government cover-ups and Roswell. TV has a pervasive influence on what people believe. For example, consider the impact of TV on the Audi 5000. This car was made in 1978 and received only thirteen complaints over eight years, about the car mysteriously accelerating. CBS' programme SIXTY MINUTES conducted an investigation. Audi received 1400 similar complaints during the next month! One hundred times more than in the previous eight years. Subsequent tests by the National Safety Board [?] showed nothing wrong with the Audi 5000. Owners were stepping on the accelerator instead of the footbrake. Advertisers spend billions in the US. The government imposes some truthfulness by imposing advertising constraints. There are no such constraints in what is said in the body of TV programmes.

The Discovery Channel, which specialises in scientific programmes, broadcast four one-hour shows on successive nights on UFO's. The programmes were biased to convince viewers of ET's, government coverup and alien abductions. One segment of one of the Discovery Channel's programmes was based on the December 1980 incident in the UK, just outside Bentwaters US airbase. This was where Colonel Charles Holt and others were coming out from a Christmas party and saw a mysterious light in the woods. The programme referred to the "Holt Memo." The narrator said "An internal memo confirms the incident. Charles Holt wrote it from first hand experience." What the narrator did not tell the viewers was that Colonel Holt did not consider the incident important enough for him to write even a brief report on it until two weeks after the incident. On TV there was no mention of Holt's tape recording that night. The recording shows that the UFO returned every five seconds - with the same rotation rate as the beam from a lighthouse five miles away. Then there was Sergeant Jim Penniston. He had reportedly seen on December 27th a pyramid shaped craft in the forest just outside Bentwaters. When Penniston reported this to Holt he should have notified top Air Force officials but he did not, therefore Holt did not believe Penniston. Penniston had seen "it" from 10 metres/30 feet but in the TV reconstruction he had his hand on it! Also, the original Penniston sketch of the object did not look like a pyramid. Penniston's companion, Burroughs, did not see the craft, just a light that disappeared when he and Penniston approached. Burroughs was not included in the TV programme. Also not mentioned in the programme was that there were at least twenty American airmen from the base that were drug users (marijuana and "other drugs") and they used to take drugs in the forest outside the East gate where the UFO's had been seen.

In the Fall of 1994, CNN's Larry King hosted a two-hour special called "UFO Cover Up - Live From Area 51." Half of the programme was a history of UFO's and the other half consisted of four live guests. Three were, according to Klass, "strongly pro-UFO," and one was "weakly pro-UFO." The guests talked for an hour about alleged government coverups. No live skeptics appeared. Klass and Carl Sagan had been interviewed for the programme one month before and they were presented in ten-second "bites." Because they were pre-taped they could not comment on what the "pro-UFO" people were saying. The skeptics were on for a total of three minutes. Three minutes versus one hour is not exactly fair representation. King closed the show by saying "Crashed Saucers? Who knows? But clearly the government is withholding something!" Klass says that it is the producer of that TV programme that is withholding evidence from the public. Klass had given photocopies to CNN of declassified once-Top Secret government documents never before seen on TV. The documents were not shown or referred to. These documents included a Top Secret December 10th, 1948 intelligence assessment by Air Force and Naval Intelligence in which they suspect UFO's are secret USSR spy vehicles. (This one year after Roswell...) They also included a CIA report dated August 15th, 1952. It was a brief for the CIA director to in turn brief President Truman. "No debris or material evidence has ever been recovered," the document states.

Later, Klass tape recorded an interview for UNSOLVED MYSTERIES' programme on Roswell and here, again, Klass' documents were not used. CBS in the Spring of 1994 did a 48 HOURS programme on Roswell. Klass was interviewed in Roswell during his visit there. During the interview he pulled out a former Top Secret Air Intelligence document and the total interview was cut. CBS News in 1996 did a one-hour documentary called "The Search For ET's". Klass explained to the producer of this programme what had happened to him before re the documents but again, in this show they were not used or referred to.

Klass shows us some of these documents. The first one is the famous letter from General Twining to General Schoelgen. All books and TV shows use the quote "the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or ficticious." You never get to see the next page of the same letter, where Twining write "...the lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects..."

Secondly, we are shown a once-secret report dated November 3rd, 1948. It is a letter from General Kobel (top Air Force intelligence officer at the Pentagon) to his commanding general, General Twining. "The conclusion appears inescapable that some type of flying object has been observed. Identification and the origin of these objects is not discernable to this headquarters. It is imperative therefore that efforts to determine whether these are objects of domestic or foreign origin must be increased until conclusive evidence is obtained."

The third document is dated November 8th, 1948 and is a response to General Kobel, from Colonel H. M. McCoy, commander of Air Intelligence Division at Wright Field base. "Although it is obvious that some types of flying objects have been sighted, the exact nature of those objects cannot be established until physical evidence, such as that which would result from a crash, has been obtained."

The fourth one is the Top Secret Air Intelligence report from December 1948: the "Assessment" referred to earlier. "Either UFO's are domestic or foreign. We doubt that they are domestic. If foreign, the most likely source is the Soviet Union, because they captured the Horton Brothers [aeronautical engineers who were building Flying Wing aircraft]." Flying Wing aircraft have been described as looking saucer-shaped, says Klass.

This was followed by another report by Colonel McCoy. It is a speech made by him in March 1948 to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. "I can't even tell you how much we would give to have one of those flying saucers crash so that we could recover whatever it is and determine what they are."

A 1952 CIA document states "Even though we might admit that intelligent life may exist elsewhere, and that space travel is possible, there is no shred of evidence to support this theory at present."

The seventh document Klass shows us is another 1952 CIA document. It is the once-secret CIA briefing he referred to earlier. Addressing the issue of UFO's being piloted by ET's, the document states "No material evidence has ever been recovered."

There is a cable TV channel called the Learning Channel and it has a popular programme called SCIENCE FRONTIERS. No skeptics were asked to appear on their show on UFO's. The company that produced the show are located in Britain and they sent a camera crew to Washington where Klass lives to interview someone but they could not "spare the time" to include Klass.

Since the Kenneth Arnold sighting, fifty years ago, there has been no evidence. Despite thousands of UFO reports, hundreds of abduction claims, still there is not a single piece of physical credible evidence to show that the Earth has ever been visited by a single ET craft. Budd Hopkins, in his Unconvention '97 lecture, mentioned the famous Betty and Barney Hill case. If only Betty or Barney had said "Look what I picked up when I was on board the flying saucer - this quartz wristwatch!" or something that had not been invented in the 1960's. It would only take one such piece of evidence. Or if only one "abductee" would report scientific knowledge picked up from aliens instead of great wisdom like "Don't engage in nuclear war, it'll be bad for your planet." If only one of the millions of persons who own a video camera would come up with a tape showing a well-defined image of a saucer-shaped craft photographed at close quarters in broad daylight, the UFO mystery would be solved.

"Well," says Klass. "It is for this reason, before I retire every night that I strap my Sony video camera to my wrist while my good wife Nadia prays that I'll be abducted. Half the time she prays they will not bring me back... but my only fear - I don't fear abduction - my only fear is that a tall beautiful nordic type of extra-terrestrial may try to extract sperm the old fashioned way and this could cause marital problems and make my video ill-suited for viewing... I would expect, if I were lucky enough to be abducted, I would expect to sell the TV rights to my video for at least a million dollars and to receive a multi-million dollar book contract, the book would probably be titled WHY ME, ET? I fervently hope that ET responds to Nadia's prayers and my hopes, before the Grim Reaper calls, and time is running out."

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