There is a temptation to extrapolate territorial behavior found in many species to the realms of outer space to buttress the property thesis. Here, the difficulty is that territoriality is typically directed to forms of one’s own species. It would limit noncontact only within one species of aliens, not many, as UFO lore tends to favor. Property is also not a cultural universal. Many alien cultures quite possibly would not recognize the idea of property and ignore warnings not to trespass.
There is then the question of whether the owners would feel the Earth is worth defending against other aliens. UFO behavior gives no evidence that resources are being exploited. No special care is lavished on humans or other animals leading to doubts about us being regarded as highly valued. There is no blatant evidence of cultivation, weeding, domestication, or artificial breeding on a planetary scale.
Having granted that UFOnauts seem indifferent to the state of human life leads naturally to a different explanation that has been advanced to explain noncontact. Maybe technologically advanced life evolves to a higher plane of existence. All their desires are taken care of eventually and they live in a state of perpetual satisfaction due to the march of technological advance and scientific inquiry. Maybe they are gods of their own realms and no longer notice, let alone care about, those beings more primitive than themselves. This can be justified by analogy to the universal indifference humans have towards protozoa.
This could work for Fermi’s Paradox—the absence of aliens on Earth despite a fecund cosmos—but this is less than compelling when applied to the UFO phenomenon. The universe is far too big for aliens to arrive here randomly. Some motive must target them into the onionskin of Earth’s atmosphere. When we see alien theme parks scudding along the rings of Saturn, then talk of indifference will make some sense. Needless to say, the many abduction stories of aliens examining humans do not support the notion of indifference either.
Ultimately, one can never escape the fact that the problem of no degraded aliens lies in the shadows of any variation of the ETH that can be offered. There are just too many possibilities in a universe full of life. The Problem of Noncontact can only be defeated if the UFO phenomenon changes radically and strips away from its label the prefix un-. If aliens identify themselves and make open contact then the problem goes away. Until then, UFOlogists will keep encountering it.
—MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER
References
Asimov, Isaac. “The Rocketing Dutchmen” in The Planet That Wasn’t (Avon, 1976).
Baker, Robert M. L. and McDonald, James. Symposium on UFOs—Hearings Before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 90th Congress, 2nd session, July 29, 1968.
Clarke, Arthur C. “Last Words on UFOs” in The View from Serendip (Ballantine, 1978).
Fort, Charles. “Have Martians Visited Us? British Observer Argues in the Affirmative and Seeks News of Future Manifestations” (The New York Times, September 5, 1926).
Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned (Ace Star, undated; originally published by Boni & Liveright, 1919).
Friedman, Stanton. “A Scientific Approach to Flying Saucer Behavior” (Thesis-Antithesis, AIAA Los Angeles, no date).
Hendry, Allan. The UFO Handbook (Doubleday, 1979).
Hopkins, Budd. Missing Time (Richard Marek, 1981).
Keel, John. Why UFOs? (Manor Books, 1970).
Klass, Philip. UFOs Identified (Random House, 1968).
Kor, Peter. “Saucer Clubs—20th Century Cults” (Flying Saucers, October 1961).
Lipp, James. Appendix D of Project Sign, December 13, 1948.
Markowitz, William. “The Physics and Metaphysics of UFOs” (Science, September 15, 1967).
McCampbell, James M. UFOlogy (Celestial Arts, 1976).
Menzel, Donald. Flying Saucers (Harvard University Press, 1953).
Plank, Robert. The Emotional Significance of Imaginary Beings (1968).
Sheaffer, Robert. The UFO Verdict (Prometheus, 1981).
Program for Extraordinary Experience Research, The (PEER) PEER was founded in 1993 by Harvard professor of psychiatry John E. Mack, M.D. to formalize his study of reported alien encounters and other experiences that seem at odds with the Western worldview. PEER’s work is motivated by the understanding that expansions of human knowledge come with the exploration of unexplained phenomena.
PEER’s mission is to explore and integrate extraordinary experiences within a context of personal, societal, and global transformation. This comprehensive vision and integrative approach has evolved from the understanding that no single field or human perspective can account for the anomalies we are encountering in our research.
PEER is a project of the Center for Psychology and Social Change. Through the Center’s twenty-year history, we have been committed to the exploration, understanding, and integration of personal and collective identity: tribal (ethno-national conflict), species (human potential), interspecies (relationship with Earth’s ecosystem), and cosmic (relationships with intelligences in the universe).
PEER’s knowledge of the exploration, integration, and application of experiences not readily understood is called upon as a resource by diverse groups. PEER representatives have been invited to speak to and educate political, religious, and spiritual leaders about extraordinary experiences and their relationship to social, environmental, economic, spiritual, epistemological, and ontological matters. These relationships and initiatives may, we feel, ultimately have a great impact on our society, encouraging others to reconsider their views of the universe in which we live.
Address:
P.O. Box 398080
Cambridge, MA 02139
U.S.A.
E-mail:
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Web site:
www.peermack.org
Project Blue Book For over twenty years, the U. S. Air Force was charged with investigating and evaluating UFO reports brought to its attention in the United States and at U.S. bases, stations, or property in other countries. Project Blue Book was the responsible unit within the Air Force during most of that period-from 1952 until the end of 1969.
The first UFO project, located within the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) of Air Matériel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, was Project Sign, created in January 1948, with a Restrictied classification. It was replaced by Project Grudge in February 1949. While Project Sign had reportedly suffered from an internal ideological battle concerning the origin or cause of UFO reports, Project Grudge took a more negative approach to the question and soon became a relatively dormant operation. The project was revitalized under the direction of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, and the new, unofficial code name of Blue Book was assigned to it. Most of this early history of the Air Force involvement with UFOs is known through a book authored by Ruppelt (see The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956), and much of what he wrote has since been verified by declassified Air Force documents.
Ruppelt was a World War II veteran who had returned to active duty during the Korean conflict. With a degree in aeronautical engineering, he was assigned to ATIC and was involved in the analysis of the Soviet MIG-15 jet fighter. According to Ruppelt, ATIC was ordered to undertake a new study of the UFO situation at a special Pentagon meeting in September of 1950, during the Grudge dormancy. The study report was delivered to General John Samford, the new director of Air Force Intelligence, by Ruppelt and Colonel Frank Dunn, the head of ATIC, in December of 1951. Ruppelt was then assigned to reactivate the project, and the name was changed to Blue Book. Under Ruppelt’s direction, Blue Book grew into a better-organized unit, but over the next two years, it was barely able to handle the volume of reports it received for analysis and, sometimes, additional investigation. It was during Ruppelt’s tenure that some of the most famous incidents in UFO history occurred, such as the Lubbock Lights, the Washington National radar/visual reports, and the Robertson Panel meeting. Ruppelt was responsible for briefing the Robertson Panel members on the
then-classified UFO material.
After retiring from the Air Force, Ruppelt wrote his book detailing the history of Air Force involvement with UFOs up to that time, and it has since become a classic in the UFO literature. The book took a positive approach, leaving the reader with the impression that Ruppelt accepted the reality of UFOs. A subsequent edition of the book, published in 1960, included three new chapters, and Ruppelt seemed to have considerably mellowed his enthusiasm. Perhaps this was due to the increasing contactee claims, or perhaps to the attacks being directed at the Air Force by the newly created National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). As Ruppelt was an engineer at Northrop Corporation at the time, some writers have speculated that the Air Force, embarrassed by the first edition of Ruppelt’s book, applied pressure on Northrop, a large Air Force contractor, to have him update the book with a more negative conclusion. No evidence for this has ever surfaced. Ruppelt died in 1960.
After Ruppelt’s departure from Blue Book, the operation was directed during the 1950s and 1960s by Captain Charles Hardin (1954-56), Captain George T. Gregory (1956-58), Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Robert J. Friend (1958-63), and Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Hector Quintanilla, Jr. (1963-69). The project never again enjoyed the large staff and support of the Ruppelt days.
Indeed, under the premise that there was no real underlying, unconventional phenomenon behind UFO reports, its new, low-key operational approach was changed to that of explaining as many reports as possible by any means possible, preferably without additional investigation. Exceptions were made in special instances, particularly in cases that received widespread publicity, and the Air Force, as a public relations measure, had to “show the flag.” Thus, Blue Book became little more than an Air Force showpiece, always subject to the political needs of senior Air Force officers in the Pentagon, who, in turn, were subject to pressures from the press, the public, and even the Congress.
The scientific community generally did not involve itself in the controversy, erroneously assuming that the Air Force had a dynamic research project underway. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Blue Book’s scientific consultant, who had been retained originally under Project Sign, was not always happy with Blue Book’s approach, but he felt that directly confronting the Air Force would serve little purpose. Other pressures on the Air Force came from Donald Menzel, a well-known Harvard astronomer, who dismissed the entire business as nonsense, and, at the other extreme, NICAP, which lobbied actively in Congress and had some influence on the press.
It was in the mid-1960s that the UFO controversy again climaxed, with highly publicized sightings, accusations against Air Force secrecy, and/or incompetence by the press and some members of Congress (including Representative Gerald Ford), and, finally, the awarding of an Air Force contract to the University of Colorado to conduct an independent, two-year study. During that period, Blue Book (formally known as the Aerial Phenomena Branch) was located within ATIC’s successor, the Foreign Technology Division (FMD), Systems Command (still at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), and was directed by Major Quintanilla, who held a degree in physics. His staff consisted of a lieutenant, a sergeant, and a secretary.
Many observers believed that the Blue Book staff was intellectually unable to handle some of the new, challenging cases, such as the Exeter, New Hampshire, and Portage County (Ravenna, Ohio) sightings, resulting in further embarrassing confrontations with the press and the private UFO organizations. After 1966, the University of Colorado UFO Project relieved the pressure considerably. The university’s Condon Report, released publicly in early 1969, recommended the closing of Project Blue Book. A March 1969 meeting in Washington, D.C., attended by officers from Systems Command, Air Defense Command, and Air Force Headquarters, resulted in the decision to close the operation permanently, and the termination was announced on December 17,1969, by Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Jr. In a memorandum to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General John D. Ryan, Dr. Seamans stated that Blue Book could no longer “be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”
The Air Force’s final statistical breakdown, released soon afterward by the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information (SAFOI), gave a total of 12,618 UFO reports in Blue Book files, 701 of which remained unidentified. Numerous private UFO researchers have claimed that many more of the reports should have been carried as unidentified, and some unidentifieds are actually easy to explain, indicating, at least in some instances (according to these observers), arbitrary assignments of labels.
In the SAFOI release, Lieutenant Colonel James H. Aikman stated, among other things, that no UFO had ever “…given any indication of threat to our national security…” and that “…there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge.” These statements were identical, word for word, to the periodic Air Force UFO releases throughout the 1950s and 1960s, which were based on the terminology of the 1953 Robertson Panel report.
Most of the Blue Book files were declassified and retired to the Air Force Archives at Maxwell Air Force Base, in Alabama, where several academic researchers obtained access to them. They were subsequently transferred to the Modern Mihtary Branch of the National Archives, in Washington, D.C., where public access to them is granted.
Over the years, numerous claims have been made that Project Blue Book was merely a “front” for a secret and more sophisticated Air Force or Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation. Some observers have even proposed that Blue Book staff members were innocent “pawns,” who were totally unaware of the ultrasecret laboratories where the real “good” UFO material was sent. Despite all the claims, no hard evidence has ever been produced to support this. In fact, as Air Force personnel were subject to AFR 200-2 (and amendments), which required all UFO reports and material be transmitted to ATIC and, later, FTD, and as AFR 200-2 was signed by the Air Force Chief of Staff, it is difficult to envision how hundreds of base-level personnel, of which there was (and is) a constant turnover, could have done otherwise. That is, it is not at all clear how they would have known where to send only the “good” reports without the existence of an additional regulation, and any such additional regulation would have very soon become public knowledge.
Although the U.S. Air Force no longer maintains a special UFO investigative unit like Project Blue Book, it continues to investigate specific UFO incidents, if and when warranted by national defense or security reasons, as part of its normal intelligence functions.
—ETEP STAFF
Project Magnet This project was a study of UFOs carried out by the Department of Transport (DOT) in Canada in the early 1950s. It was set up in December 1950 under the direction of Wilbert B. Smith, then senior radio engineer, Broadcast and Measurements Section.
The project was quite small; it used facilities of DOT, with assistance from other government departments, including the Defense Research Board (DRB) and the National Research Council (NRC). The project was an outgrowth of work already being done by Smith and a group of colleagues within DOT on the collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field as a source of energy. It was the belief of many that “flying saucers” were operating on magnetic principles and it was thought the DOT work might explain their operation.
The program consisted of two parts: (I) collection of high-quality data, analysis, and drawing conclusions; and (2) a systematic questioning of all our basic concepts in hope of identifying a discrepancy which might be the key to a new technology. Smith also developed ideas for measuring the reliability of observational data, and using these measurements to rate the probability that a given report could be accepted as a real observation.
It is noteworthy that in September 1950, Smith interviewed Dr. Robert I. Sarbacher who was then Director of Research for National Scientific Laboratories Inc., in Washington, D.C. and had held numerous
other top-rank industrial positions and worked on contract as a “dollar-a-year-man” on UFO research. He was also Dean of the Graduate School of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Smith was told by Sarbacher, through LCDR Bremner, on staff of the Canadian Embassy in Washington who acted as intermediary, that the facts reported in Frank Scully’s book (Behind the Flying Saucers, 1950) “are substantially correct,” that flying saucers exist and that the subject of flying saucers “is classified two points higher even than the H-bomb. In fact, it is the most highly classified subject in the U.S. Government at the present time,” according to this record. Smith went on: “May I ask the reason for the classification?” Sarbacher replied: “You may ask, but I can’t tell you.” The notes recording this interview were first discovered in one of Smith’s personal files given to this writer by Smith’s widow; then another copy was found in a formerly-classified file held by the Canadian government. In 1983, as reported in the MUFON Symposium Proceedings for 1986, Sarbacher confirmed the above statements to Mr. William Steinman. It was only three months after Sarbacher’s statements to Smith that Project Magnet received official Canadian government authorization.
In 1952, Smith submitted an interim report, in which he stated that it appeared evident that flying saucers are emissaries from some other civilization and actually do operate on magnetic principles.
In 1953, he submitted a further report in which he concluded that we are faced with a substantial probability of the real existence of extraterrestrial vehicles and that such vehicles must of necessity use a technology considerably in advance of our own.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 79