Two stunning new revelations have emerged from the collection of 1,200 pages of files copied by MUFON's Project Pandora from the files of the late Roy Craig, a physical chemist who was a key investigator for the University of Colorado's UFO study. One, it turns out that late in the study a project scientist wrote a memo admitting that more than 50% of their cases had turned out to be unexplained. Two, proof has now been found that project director Edward Condon had not in fact read his own report before writing up the report's "Conclusions and Recommendations," the opening chapter in the front of the report.
As you read this, keep in mind that, to a very large degree, this is where the UFO "laughter curtain" originated. Without the bogus conclusions of the Condon Committee, the scientific arena would likely be a quite different place, with the condescension that typifies the work of Shermer, Shostak, Randi, et al eclipsed by a healthy respect for a genuine scientific unknown.
That the Condon Committee was never intended to treat the UFO subject as anything but an annoyance is certainly nothing new to UFO researchers. But even the disgust voiced by project scientists, it seems, failed to reflect the severity of Edward Condon's neglect.
In this clip, film-maker Paul Kimball articulately dismantles the obstruction Condon deliberately set out to construct:
The Condon Report constitutes nothing less than an intellectual Chernobyl, a sort of Fortean 9/11. Worse, now that the UFO subject has been marginalized (thanks in no small part to a cottage industry of self-proclaimed "skeptics") there's little to stop a similar scientific failure from recurring.
3 comments:
I would argue the fix was in long before the Condon committee report. The "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects," the formal title of what came to be informally called the Condon Report, commissioned by the US Air Force (USAF), and which was published in 1968, was merely the conclusion of a process begun starting in the late 1940's/early 1950's.
See:
http://www.cufon.org/cufon/robert.htm
Read from page 19 of this document, the Robertson Panel report, for the first official, originally classified, policy recommendations by this CIA-convened panel to create an "Education Program," which included as a central tenet the ridicule and dismissal of ufo reports and witnesses, and to infiltrate, surveill, and disrupt ufo research groups of the time, such as APRO and NICAP. This domestic psychological warfare program was actually quite successful.
This policy was set in early 1953, largely as the result of the July 1952 "Washington National" mass ufo sightings on two consecutive weekends.
Interestingly, Brad Sparks feels the Robertson Panel was a set-up by the USAF of the CIA, which the USAF felt was invading it's turf.
The policy recommendations of the Robertson Panel, which were carried out, to dismiss and ridicule UFO reports and witnesses (for indirect national security purposes related to critical command and control communication vulnerabilities and due to cold war fears of the time of how the Soviets could use a staged ufo incident as a precursor to a first strike, and in order to jam comm links), not only got the CIA off of the USAF's back, but allowed the USAF to conduct further ufo research unencumbered by other USG agencies interests in the ufo phenomena, and outside of the PR campaign called Project Blue Book. I sure wish Sparks would write up and publish his research in this area.
Vallee, Sparks, and others have theorized military investigation and research of the ufo phenomenon bifurcated in early 1953, into two tracks. One was the ongoing public Project Blue Book farce, the other was to take the real research deep black, and where it may still remain today. There is a lot more to this story than is generally known. A hell of a lot.
You're right: the Robertson Panel was the first blow, setting the stage for Condon.
As you probably know, I'm of the opinion that there was indeed a split, probably already well underway when Blue Book was shut down.
The events over Washington DC in July 1952 were widely reported in newspapers throughout the country. Suddenly everyone was aware of the UFO phenomenon, if they weren't already.
Although I was very young at the time I remember gathering in groups on front porches that fall, yes, we actually gathered on front porches in those days, and looked for extended periods of time into the evening sky hoping or fearing what we might see. World War II was not a distant memory for our parents generation, Korea was underway and "death from above" had taken on a whole new meaning with carpet bombing and the introduction of the continued possibility of atomic warfare.
In that context, it's easy to see why the government was freaked out by this episode. In order to stay in control of the people a government must at least give the impression that they are in control. Secrecy and propaganda had reached new levels around the world and the techniques used were being refined into the sophisticated methods we see in use today. Thus you have the Robertson Panel and the various UFO cover-ups that followed. I think that part of the "story" is undeniable. You can ridicule it as a government conspiracy theory if you like, but what are governments if not conspiracies? We attacked Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and were responsible for 9-11, and after all, our government would never lie to it's own people and to suggest otherwise would be tantamount to treason.
Since government agencies couldn't explain the phenomena, at least publicly, and there had been no reported attacks on military aircraft, military facilities, or the general population, it was decided to just assert that UFOs did not pose a threat to the government or to public safety and that they were just a result of weather or atmospheric conditions or simple mistaken identification. That became the official position and remains so today.
Michael
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