—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFO’s—A Scientific Debate (Cornell University Press, 1972) edited by Carl Sagan & Thornton Page. This book summarizes the proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science special symposium held in December 1969. Fifteen American scientists challenge each other and the evidence of whether extraterrestrial visitation is physically real.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFO’s: Nazi Secret Weapon? (Samisdat, 1975) In this Canandian published tract, Mattern Friedrich claims that Adolf Hitler and a group of Nazi scientists escaped to Antarctica in flying saucers and account for the subsequent spate of worldwide UFO reports. Extraterrestrial visitors from another galaxy may have given the Nazis a helping hand in designing these craft because the Germans spoke a universal technological language.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOs Explained (Random House, 1974). In his second book about the UFO phenomenon Philip Klass drops his theory that plasmas can account for sightings to argue that other logical scientific explanations can be found for any seemingly unexplained occurrence. He dissects a few dozen sightings to show how misidentifications of natural phenomena explain some, while others are simply hoaxes promulgated by publicity seekers and the greedy.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOs—Identified (Random House, 1968). Aviation magazine writer Philip Klass began his career as a UFO debunker with this book in which he attempted to offer an unusual natural explanation for a series of UFO sightings in New Hampshire recounted in John G. Fuller’s book, Incident at Exeter. UFOs may be produced by a family of plasmas which include ball lightning and other freak atmospheric phenomena, Klass concluded, abandoning his previously held belief UFOs were just the result of hoaxes or misidentifications of conventional aircraft. When his plasma theory attracted considerable skepticism and ridicule from atmospheric scientists, Klass discarded the idea and fell back upon a strategy of trying to prove UFOs were mostly hoaxes and misperceptions of natural and human objects.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOs—Operation Trojan Horse (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970). John A. Keel writes that entities that are cosmic tricksters have deceived humans into thinking UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin. He warns that dabbling in the UFO subject can cause paranoia and schizophrenia, and recommends that parents forbid their children from becoming involved.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOs Over the Americas (Signet/NAL, 1968) by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. This book carries a quote on the cover by Carl Jung: “I hope you will continue your courageous fight for the truth.” The Lorenzens think the truth may be that UFOs are projected images to deceive us and that the CIA has infiltrated civilian UFO groups to manipulate them, perhaps even their own group, The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). They suggest that UFOs might be projected images of what contactees want to see, or what UFO occupants want them to see. Even though our technical equipment, our own minds, and the UFOs themselves may be deceiving us, it is the CIA that remains the chief agent of deception.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOs: What on Earth Is Happening? (Harvest House, 1975). John Weldon and Zola Levitt make an evangelical Christian case that demons pilot UFOs and they are preparing humanity for a satanic dictatorship under the Antichrist. These demons are manipulating the magnetic field of our planet “to affect the perceptions of those who see or contact them.”
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
Ultimate Encounter (Pocket Books, 1978). Bill Barry recounts the story of Travis Walton, an Arizona woodcutter zapped by a UFO in front of six coworkers, who subsequently disappeared for five days and resurfaced claiming to have been abducted by aliens. His story was made into a movie and continues to generate controversy.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UMMO affair UMMO is, without any doubt, the longest-running hoax in UFOlogy. It drove wedges between believers and nonbelievers—between those who had received the “Good News” purveyed by the Space Brothers and those who took a more skeptical approach. The scientific jargon which characterized the UMMO reports led many to consider it the real thing.
The Ummites—tall, blond visitors from the planet UMMO, located some 14 light-years away from Earth—would have been perfectly at home in the company of Adamski’s Venusians or the tall Nordics which have become part and parcel of modern UFOlogical taxonomy. Often endowed with names like DEI 98, ASOO 3, and IAUDU 3, they purportedly represented a civilization which had overcome planetary disharmony and mastered the secret of spaceflight (but apparently not the use of lowercase letters), trekking throughout neighboring solar systems in their OAWOLEA UEWA OEM, which humans referred to as “flying saucers.”
These putative space travelers were in possession of a science completely undreamed of by human thinkers: their numerical system operated on a base of 12 rather than 10; they had discovered that the link between body and soul was a chain of 84 atoms of krypton lodged in the hypothalamus; their physicists had rejected our concept of Euclidean geometry and discovered that the universe was formed of an unsuspected number of dimensions and that matter, energy, and mass were in fact the result of three independent axes known collectively as IBOZOO UU. It was precisely this control of IBOZOO UU which enabled them to leave their homeworld and reach our solar system in some seven or eight months of travel time. Ummite cosmologists spoke of a “multiverse,” the WAAM-WAAM, and were fascinated by magnetohydrodynamics, which they employed to power the small remote spheres (UULEWA) employed by their agents on Earth.
All information concerning their society, organization, and beliefs was gleaned from endless, erudite “reports” aimed at familiarizing humans with their culture, and acquainting humans with their perspective on our affairs, such as war, inequality, etc. These reports were allegedly transmitted by means of dictation to a human typist (who was strictly ordered never to attempt contact with the addressees), and then sent to scientists, philosophers, and broad-minded individuals who, in the Ummites’ opinion, would be able to understand them and put them to good use.
A 1968 article appearing in Spain’s conservative ABC newspaper openly discussed the existence of an “extraterrestrial colony” operating within that country at the time. The source of this information was a Catholic priest, Father Eduardo López, whose secondhand knowledge of the UMMO affair had been misconstrued by an eager journalist who wished to create the impression that the priest was actually in contact with the supposed aliens.
None of this quenched the public’s appetite for UMMO, its progressive society, and its marvelous machinery. In 1971, the First UMMO Conference, organized by Rafael Farriols, was held outside Madrid. The public was treated to recorded readings of the various UMMO documents, along with a variety of slides.
Two years later, the Second UMMO Conference, held in Barcelona, featured a symposium of readings on humanity’s place in the universe, daily life on UMMO, and other topics of interest. Farriols’ and Antonio Ribera’s book UMMO: un caso perfecto (UMMO: A Perfect Case) would appear shortly later.
Jacques Vallée pursued the phenomenon to Argentina, where a medical establishment dispensing miraculous cures had become UMMO’s most tangible manifestation to date. In his book Messengers of Deception, Vallée had intimated the possibility of an espionage link with UMMO as part of the Cold War. In 1970, a British company known as UMO Plant Hire Ltd. was exposed as a front for KGB activities. One year later, over a hundred Soviet officials were expelled from the U.K. under suspicion of espionage, and UMO closed down.
The distinguished UFOlogist hinted at the strong possibility that UMMO was in fact some sort of covert exercise by one of the world’s intelligence agencies, possibly aimed at the creation of a cult which would later be put to other uses. He was not alone in his observation: it had already been suggested by certain Spanish investigators that life on UMMO—an antiseptic society obsessed with personal cleanliness, heavily dependent on gadgetry for every detail of their existence, flitting about in aircars
straight out of The Jetsons—reflected the ideal futuristic society from an American cultural perspective, thus hinting at the possible motive behind the entire affair.
—SCOTT CORRALES
Unidentified, The (Warner Books, 1975). Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman theorize that the UFO phenomenon is a planetary poltergeist generating apparitions from humankind’s repressed unconscious. Relying upon the work of Carl Jung, the authors write that the “otherworld” realm of the collective unconscious produces UFO manifestations and the Men in Black, who symbolically represent archetypal depictions of the Devil. (Clark, a former editor of Fate magazine, has since disavowed many of the ideas in this book.)
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
Uninvited Visitors (Cowles, 1967). Biologist Ivan T. Sanderson believes UFOs are a form of life sent here to keep watch over the cosmic nursery called Earth. These lifeforms were manufactured by higher intelligence to duplicate a variety of Earth species and may live in outer space, visiting this planet periodically to feed on natural and human-produced electricity.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
University of Colorado UFO Project In a March 1966 report to the U. S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, an ad hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, chaired by Dr. Brian O’Brien, recommended that the Air Force contract with several leading universities to conduct comprehensive investigations into UFO reports. A panel was then created to implement the recommendations, and confidential inquiries were sent to some well-known institutions. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of North Carolina, and the University of California reportedly declined the Air Force offer.
After further efforts, a contract was signed with the University of Colorado on October 6, 1966, for a fifteen-month, $313,000 study (later increased to twenty-four months and $525,000). The project officially began on November 1, 1966, under the direction of Dr. Edward U. Condon of the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, and terminated on October 31, 1968.
Air Force officials were quick to point out that Condon was both a distinguished physicist, having made significant wartime contributions to the development of the atomic bomb and radar, and a staunch individualist, not likely to be successm]y pressured by the Air Force into explaining UFOs away. Condon had been a victim of the McCarthy era persecutions, had clashed with Representative Richard Nixon, and had had his security clearance revoked twice, in 1953 and 1954.
Condon’s commitment to the project was only half time, so much of the organizing and direction was left to Robert J. Low, assistant dean of the Graduate School, who was appointed as full-time project coordinator. Low was later to become the focus of controversy and dissent within the project. Dr. Franklin E. Roach, of the Department of Astrogeophysics, contributed 100 percent of his time as a principal investigator, and Dr. Stuart W. Cook, head of the Department of Psychology, served as the second principal investigator, with the understanding that his department’s responsibilities would be met by other faculty members; Dr. David R. Saunders, a psychometrician, agreed to allocate 100 percent of his time as a coprincipal investigator, Dr. William A. Scott, a social psychologist, contributed 20 percent, and Dr. Michael W. Wertheimer, an experimental psychologist, also contributed 20 percent. Scott withdrew from the project after a few months, however.
The project also retained the consulting services of a number of other specialists, both at the university and elsewhere, in the areas of physics, nuclear physics, solar physics, meteorology, physical chemistry, electrical engineering, psychology, and psychiatry. Various research approaches were followed: on-site field investigations were conducted and radar cases were analyzed, as were some UFO sightings by U. S. astronauts. Dr. William K. Hartmann, an astrogeophysicist at the University of Arizona, was contracted to conduct the photographic analyses. A historical review and an attitude survey were commissioned, as were various essays on perceptual and psychological problems, optics, radar, sonic booms, plasmas, and balloons, much of which had little direct bearing on the UFO question. Stanford Research Institute (SRI), for example, agreed to prepare the written reviews on optical mirages and radar anomalies (reportedly for about $50,000), provided their staff did not have to examine any UFO reports. These reviews appeared as chapters in the final report.
Most UFO researchers and organizations offered to assist the project, and consultations were held with many of them, including the head of Project Blue Book, Major Hector Quintanilla, Jr., its consultant, Northwestern University astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek; Dr. James E. McDonald, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona, who had actively been advocating an indepth UFO study; and Dr. Jacques Vallée, a French computer specialist, as well as with officials and members of the two national UFO groups, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). There was a feeling among many UFO proponents that the Colorado project would make or break the future study of UFOs, and that it was important to cooperate with, advise, and even influence the project as much as possible.
The project, however, got off to a precarious start. First, the project staff had not previously been involved in UFO matters. Although this helped to ensure a new and impartial analysis of the data, it also meant that valuable time was expended in attempts to determine what the problem actually was, and how to go about studying it. The UFO subject, the Colorado investigators found, has many complex facets, and by the time they felt they were beginning to understand them, it was time to start writing up the final report.
Second, few of the older “classic” UFO incidents were reinvestigated because of the difficulty in doing so after several (sometimes many) years. Rather, it was felt that resources would be better expended in the investigation of cases reported during the course of the study (only twenty of the fifty-nine case reports in the final report predated the project). Consequently, a number of older unexplained cases, which still have not been satisfactorily explained, such as Exeter, New Hampshire, Ravenna, Ohio (Portage County), and Levelland, Texas, were not addressed by the project. However, during the course of the study, a few classic UFO reports were reinvestigated, such as McMinnville, Oregon (Trent); Great Falls, Montana; Lakenheath-Bentwaters, England; and some new ones, later to become classics, were tackled for the first time, such as the Michalak (Falcon Lake, Canada) incident, and the Schirmer (Ashland, Nebraska) incident. Although tentative or speculative solutions were proposed for many of these in the final report, publicly released in January of 1969, it has been estimated that between a third and half of the total case reports remained unexplained.
Another problem that surfaced early in the project was the approach taken by the director. Dr. Condon, who had a keen sense of humor, very much enjoyed the UFO subject, but more for its entertainment value than for the data it generated. He paid close personal attention to the claims of contactees, but did not personally participate in any of the field investigations. In short, he felt that “flying saucers” were merely a nagging social/psychological problem which the Air Force rightfully wanted buried once and for all, and he practically admitted as much in a speech in January of 1967, before the project had barely began, hinting also that the final report would be negative. These kinds of comments raised many doubts among the individuals and organizations cooperating with the project (NICAP eventually broke off relations) and led to conflict within the project.
The situation deteriorated further when, in July of 1967, coprincipal investigator Saunders and research associate Dr. Norman Levine, an electrical engineer, found a memorandum written by coordinator Low before the contract had been awarded. In the memo, addressed to the university’s higher administration, Low had outlined some of his ideas about the conduct of the project and the possible perceptions of it by others. He stated that “…the trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study, but to the scientific community would present the image of a group of nonbe
lievers trying their best to be objective, but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.”
Low’s unfortunate terminology, particularly the word “trick,” incensed the two investigators, already bothered by Condon’s derogatory public remarks, and they sent a copy of the memo to NICAP. James McDonald eventually received a copy, and he referred to it in a Januwy 31, 1968, letter to Low, who then reported the matter to Condon. Two days later, on Fedruary 8, 1969, Condon fired Saunders and Levine from the project for “incompetence.” Soon afterward, the project’s administrative assistant, Mary Louise Armstrong, resigned, claiming low morale due to Low’s participation in the project.
Public release of the memo and the firings created nationwide publicity. Look magazine featured it, and several scentific journals and some Congressmen began questioning the credibility of the Colorado study. Some UFO organizations even became convinced that the project was a fraud and that Condon and Low had conspired with the Air Force to produce a “whitewash.” Others simply thought that Low, at best, had acted irresponsibly in writing such a memo and in leaving it in the project’s open files. It should be recognized that the word “trick” has common usage when referring to a possible solution to a problem, be it technical or political, and does not necessarily imply deceit. It can appear deceitful, however, if taken out of context. Condon stated, furthermore, that he had been unaware of the memo’s existence and that it had not influenced his direction of the study.
The final months of the project, after the departure of Saunders and Levine, were quiet ones. Under Condon’s direction, the final report began taking shape. Low’s participation practically ended in May 1968, and Condon made no more derogatory public statements. Saunders, meanwhile, published hts own book, UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong, assisted by Boulder journalist Roger Harkins. The book represented a sort of “minority report” and gave an embarrassing “inside story” of the Colorado project from its planning in September of 1966 until his departure in February of 1968.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 113
