Similarly, in 2002 Myrabo co-authored a book titled Lightcraft Model LTI-20 Technical Manual42 featuring cover images that appeared earlier on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s TAVD web site. The subtitle of the book is “An intriguing preview of the 2025 Space Command’s LTI-20 Lightcraft”. The accompanying text describes the “presently fictitious” vehicle as one designed for a critical U.S. Space Command mission. And what is the mission? To carry space commandos half way around the world and lurk in the atmosphere undetected.
My concerns about this technology being co-opted and distilled for military weapons research have recently led back to questions about what was happening at Kirtland AFB and who came calling on Paul Bennewitz. When Richard Doty visited Paul at his home he was accompanied by a man named Jerry Miller (allegedly at the request of the National Security Agency, though evidence is lacking). The AFOSI document describing this meeting (see Attachment C) identified Miller as having been with the Air Force Test and Evaluation Center (AFTEC). AFTEC was organized in 1974 to direct and oversee operational testing of emerging aircraft and systems.43 Later redesignated as AFOTEC (“O” for Operational), it is an Air Force independent test agency responsible for operationally realistic testing of new systems being developed for Air Force and multi-service use.44
Miller himself is something of an enigma, and whether or not the NSA was behind his visit to Paul’s home, the fact that Doty took Miller along as an expert says something in itself about the seriousness of the situation. More recently, information has come to light that Miller’s connections went far beyond AFTEC to the highest levels of defense intelligence. According to Greg Bishop, who met with Miller while writing Project Beta, Jerry R. Miller’s name appears in a 1981 Defense Intelligence Agency personnel list as head of Weapons and Systems Division (DT2) of the “Directorate for Scientific and Technical Intelligence”.45 Perhaps he holds positions in both agencies, though the mission of the DIA goes far beyond simple operational testing and evaluation. The DIA mission, as described on their web site, is to “Provide timely, objective, and cogent military intelligence to warfighters, defense planners, and defense and national security policymakers.” The DIA is a combat support agency and is long known to be a significant member of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Information is limited however, on just what the “Directorate for Scientific and Technical Intelligence” does, or the DT2 division. By all accounts, Miller’s background and apparent high-level connections to the military and national intelligence agencies suggests that what Paul Bennewitz had caught on film was important enough to require the attention of someone with Miller's "weapons and systems" expertise. Miller is reportedly retired now but still lives in the Albuquerque area. To this day, he remains one of the more shadowy connections between military and weapons development, intelligence agencies, and the glowing disc-shaped vehicles filmed by Paul Bennewitz.
No one would deny that the same technological advances that improve our lives and society should be used to protect us whenever possible. While there is always an open exchange of ideas and research between military and private sectors, classifying information is often anathema outside the military where researchers know all too well the axiom "publish or perish". No technology that stands to offer such profound benefits should be cloistered away because of its weapons potential. What is the point of keeping something like this from the public? Surely there is more that can be done with it than simply militarizing or weaponizing it.
Some time ago the National Security Agency released a document titled UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions (See Attachment G). This paper, apparently a 1968 draft, points out several possible outcomes when one civilization encounters another that is more technologically advanced. Even though the scenarios may seem frightening, the author of the paper spells out several methods for people and cultures to survive and maintain their identity. What seems very clear from this paper is that the methods listed—complete national solidarity, full and honest acceptance, and a correct but friendly attitude—require all people be fully involved. This paper, written many years ago and only released as a result of the Freedom of Information Act, is a strong indictment of the denial and ridicule that has shrouded this phenomenon. Is there a healthy mentality inside our national services if they deny to the public that this phenomenon exists and yet maintain a document that makes it very clear that the people must be told what the truth is—and must accept it?
“When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
—Alexander Graham Bell
Beyond the evidence, and beyond questions about why our military and government may be hiding the facts from the public, is what I see as the most complex issue of all. How do we face, and what do we do about, a reality that forces us to the limits of our collective comfort zone? Trying to change long-held beliefs, even with strong and compelling evidence, has been difficult throughout history. With ridicule always such a powerful deterrent, how can our best scientific minds openly and honestly examine the phenomenon if they are afraid that being associated with it will ruin their professional reputations?
Throughout my years studying this subject, most of the researchers I have met have generally had the same underlying goal, usually expressed as “proving the phenomenon is real”. But even with compelling evidence, proof can be very subjective. It is tied to interpretation of the evidence, and that interpretation may be skewed completely by what someone wants to believe. If what we believe effects what we think, then how can we be sure what we truly know? In the Encyclopedia Britannica is a wonderful example from the branch of Philosophy known as Epistemology that illustrates the complex relationship between knowledge and belief:
Suppose that someone believes there will be an earthquake in September because of a dream he had in April and that there in fact is an earthquake in September, although there is no connection between the dream and the earthquake. That person has a true belief about the earthquake but not knowledge. What the person lacks is a good reason supporting his true belief. In a word, the person lacks justification for it. Thus, in Theaetetus, Plato concludes that knowledge is justified true belief.
Although it is difficult to explain what justification is, most philosophers accepted the Platonic analysis of knowledge as fundamentally correct until 1963, when the American philosopher Edmund L. Gettier produced a counterexample that shook the foundations of epistemology: Suppose that Kathy knows Oscar very well and that Oscar is behind her, out of sight, walking across the mall. Further, suppose that in front of her she sees walking toward her someone who looks exactly like Oscar; unbeknownst to her, it is Oscar’s twin brother. Kathy forms the belief that Oscar is walking across the mall. Her belief is true, because he is walking across the mall (though she does not see him doing it). And her true belief seems to be justified, because she formed it on the same basis she would have if she had actually seen Oscar walking across the mall. Nonetheless, Kathy does not know that Oscar is walking across the mall, because the justification for her true belief is not the right kind. What her true belief lacks is an appropriate causal connection to its object.
Things become even more difficult when you confront long held or preferred beliefs.That people will cling to some beliefs, no matter how strong the evidence to the contrary, can seem as great a mystery as the UFO phenomenon itself. The 'fight or flight' response seems to apply to more than just physical danger, just as many a psychiatrist can testify that all the help in the world can be useless if a person does not want to change. The most any of us can ever do is present evidence and try to do it in the most effective way possible, but very often the evidence is only half the battle. People not only have to be willing to accept it, they must be able to accept it.
Hal Puthoff, in his 1996 paper CIA Initiated Remote Viewing At Stanford Research Institute, described encountering exactly this type of resistance. Even though the CIA had been spo
nsoring the research, he wrote:
As a sociological aside, we note that the overall efficacy of remote viewing in a program like this was not just a scientific issue. For example, when the Semipalatinsk data described earlier was forwarded for analysis, one group declined to get involved because the whole concept was unscientific nonsense, while a second group declined because, even though it might be real, it was possibly demonic; a third group had to be found. And, as in the case of public debate about such phenomena, the program’s image was on occasion as likely to be damaged by an overenthusiastic supporter as by a detractor. Personalities, politics and personal biases were always factors to be dealt with.46
In James Bamford’s recent book Body Of Secrets he reveals a comprehensive NSA study undertaken by Robert J. Hanyok that led to troubling questions of how early in the 1940s Allied intelligence might have become aware of the Holocaust. Hanyok concluded that Allied communications intelligence would have picked up indications of the anti-Jewish laws in their intercepts, but, in the end, the focus was almost always on military rather than diplomatic traffic. “The real problem,” he concluded, “was not interpreting the intelligence, but the attitude by the Allies, and the rest of the world, that the unthinkable was actually happening.”47 (Emphasis added) Clearly the difficulty they had in believing that something so unbelievable could actually be happening affected those with direct evidence that it was.
A simpler, but instructive, example came in a conversation I had on the subject of beliefs with someone very devout. In the course of the conversation, and only to make a point, I asked the question, “If I were able to give you conclusive proof that God did or did not exist, and it could go either way, would you want to know?” The answer was very telling, “Yes... but I might not believe you anyway!”
This is an issue I have had to think seriously about. Is there any point in telling the truth about what I know if people will selectively believe what they want? How can any of us be sure of what we believe if we are not willing to weigh our beliefs against real evidence? It would be ironic, to say the least, if after spending thousands of dollars and many years to earn a Ph.D. in a scientific field, that the scientific rigor we impress on our brightest minds might actually render them less able to realize what this phenomenon suggests. How many experts in Galileo’s day looked through his telescope at Jupiter and its moons and still steadfastly maintained that they could not see it?
What if, as many people suspect, the skepticism and ridicule that practically suffocates serious interest and discussion about this phenomenon is one way the truth is being controlled. Fear of ridicule becomes both a reason and an excuse not to deal with it. Make people afraid and they are more easily controlled—and fear of ridicule has certainly suppressed discussion of the UFO phenomenon. A prime example of this actually came during my telephone conversation with Leik Myrabo in June of 2004. In the course of our conversation, he happened to mention that during interviews he gave, if an interviewer ever brought up the subject of unidentified flying objects, he would stop the interview immediately. In fairness, who could blame him if he did not want to risk tainting his research by being associated with delusional UFO enthusiasts or having to respond to wild speculation? Still, what he saw in Ray Stanford’s images is not wild speculation, so, under the circumstances, it may have seemed safer not to risk awkward questions.
Perhaps some combination of fear and disbelief came into play when, in 2004, I submitted an article to Popular Mechanics, the very same magazine that in 1995 ran the article Fly By Microwaves detailing Myrabo and his concepts. I had decided to write a brief article under the title Propulsion Concept Inspired By Mystery Aircraft in which I would report simply that the Air Spike concept had been gleaned from a film of a “highly advanced and previously unseen aircraft”. Popular Mechanics had run numerous articles over the years touching on the subject of unidentified flying objects, including a February 2004 cover story titled When UFO’s Arrive. A quick search of that magazine's web site will reveal many past articles with “UFO” in the title. There was also an article from March of 2003 titled simply Mystery Plane Revealed. All of this made me fairly confident that my article fit perfectly with their subject matter and, since my article also related to their own 1995 article, I felt sure that it would interest them. Still, to be as journalistically accurate as possible (and to play it safe) I made certain that nowhere in my own article did I once use the term UFO or any of the words “unidentified”, “flying”, “object”, or “saucer”. When I was ready I placed a call to Jim Wilson, the Popular Mechanics Science Editor. After I read him a short synopsis his immediate response was, “Okay, I’m interested. Send it."
On the one hand I was surprised, and on the other hand not surprised at all, when I got a very short email reply saying it was not Popular Mechanics material. I was curious to know why, and so I wrote a polite email asking if he might give me a little input on what made it not their kind of material. Having read PM for many years I certainly thought it fit exactly with the kind of material they are well known for. I never received a reply, and chalked the experience up as par for the course when it comes to this phenomenon. Still, I cannot help wondering why, after expressing interest, Wilson never asked even one question about any of the facts behind the article.
More than anything else, this kind of situation is why I came to see human psychology as posing the greatest dilemma. Fostering the attitude that this phenomenon is a modern myth has created an environment where those who don’t know won’t ask, those who do know won’t tell, and meaningful discussion is fairly well suppressed. Even when the facts are based in hard science and technology, if both science and the media are too afraid to speak out, where does that leave the rest of us? A much more direct point was made in the NSA document quoted previously, UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions:
Up until this time, the leisurely scientific approach has too often taken precedence in dealing with UFO questions. If you are walking along a forest path and someone yells “rattler” your reaction would be immediate and defensive. You would not take time to speculate before you act. You would have to treat the alarm as if it were a real and immediate threat to your survival. Investigation would become an intensive emergency action to isolate the threat and to determine its precise nature - It would be geared to developing adequate defensive measures in a minimum amount of time.
It would seem a little more of this survival attitude is called for in dealing with the UFO problem.
It is debatable whether this phenomenon actually represents a threat to our survival. Perhaps labeling it a threat was simply a convenient way to place it in the military/intelligence domain. Even so, leaving the public unaware and unprepared may actually lead to the misperception that there is a threat. In the end, the debate may actually be whether the threat was, in fact, from this phenomenon and what it represents, or from a leadership that would deceive the public over something so profoundly important.
“In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.”
—David Bohm
It was not until I began to try to get this information out that human psychology became so fascinating. People react in strange ways when confronted with information that pushes them psychologically into areas with which they are uncomfortable. My interest has focused primarily on how people react to information that is outside this "comfort zone". They may not even be aware of the unconscious conflicts that drive their conscious reaction. Still, the ability to resolve these conflicts may be the deciding factor in how each of us deals with any difficult truth, including the truth within this phenomenon.
Fostering the belief that this phenomenon has no basis in reality and that no one with any real credibility would take it seriously may well have become a "Catch-22". Beyond simply maintaining a public and scientific community that is largely ignorant of the facts, inherent disbelief has already been shown to have potentially dangerous consequences,
even inside our intelligence agencies. A National Security Agency affidavit, originally filed in 1980 to justify withholding some records relating to unidentified flying objects, was recently released to researcher Michael Ravnitzky. Although portions of this previously highly classified document were still redacted, the information available actually reveals a worrisome situation within both the NSA and the intelligence community at large. It seems that the author of the NSA paper UFO Hypothesis And Survival Questions, who was eventually identified by Howard Blum to be Lambros D. Callimahos, a very influential NSA employee, also produced a monograph titled UFO’s and the Intelligence Community Blind Spot to Surprise or Deceptive Data. The author discussed what he saw as a serious problem with the agency’s ability to handle and respond to surprising information or deliberately deceptive data.
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