Well Shodan, the government cover-up issue is whole other kettle of fish. I did indeed say that one of the possible reasons for a cover-up would be “To not directly interfere with human society as to inflict mass panic or a complete collapse of our religious and economic institutions as a dramatic appearance would undoubtedly cause”. I shouldn’t have said undoubtedly. Possibly would have been a better word, but I do believe that a dramatic appearance by aliens would have a primarily negative effect on these institutions. It’s not hard to imagine how sensitive markets would react negatively to such an event considering how they react to more mundane news. I’m sure religious institutions would have problems as well, but certainly could survive depending on how their followers react to the news. “Complete collapse” might have been a little strong I admit, but it’s one of the scenarios that people have proposed.
As for Jimmy Carter I’m not sure. He did say he wanted to find out what the government knew about UFOs and if he ever became president he would make all the information available. He obviously didn’t do that. In 1977 an official release was made on the subject of disclosure:
“Whatever statement you saw concerning President Carter’s view
on UFOs was not exactly what he said. He had seen something that
he thought was unexplainable that possibly might have been a UFO
and he will certainly disclose and describe any unusual
phenomena he might see. He is committed to the fullest possible
openness in government and would support full disclosure of
material that was not defense sensitive that might relate to
UFOs. He did not, however, pledge to “make every piece of
information concerning the UFOs available to the public.” There
might be some aspects of some sightings that would have defense
implications that possibly should be safe guarded against
immediate and full disclosure.”
– Walter Wurfel, Carter Deputy Press Secretary, February 28, 1977
So alien visitors or top secret military projects? Who knows? It’s hard to deny that government secrecy and UFO’s don’t go hand in hand however.
Carter hasn’t been the only president making statements on the UFO secrecy issue either. It was during that July 2000 campaign encounter in Springdale, Ark. that Charles A. Huffer a UFO researcher asked George W Bush if he were elected President would he disclose "the truth about UFOs,”:
Huffer: “Half the public believes that they are real. Would you finally tell us what the hell is going on?"
Gov. Bush: “Sure. I will.”
Huffer: “This man knows. He was Secretary of Defense.”
Bush: “And was a great one.”
Several minutes later, Huffer again saw Gov. Bush in the hall. He recognized him immediately and unsolicited said approximately the following:
Gov. Bush: “It will be the first thing he (pointing to Cheney) will do. He’ll get right on it.”
Charles A. Huffer: “Will, will you really?”
Gov. Bush: “Yes Sir.”
Cheney was later questioned during his appearance on the Washington D.C. Public Radio Station WAMU on April 11, 2001. He spoke from the White House.
Researcher Grant Cameron: “Since the statement made by George Bush last July, there is a vicious rumor circulating in the UFO community that you’ve been read into the UFO program. So my question to you is, in any of your government jobs, have you ever been briefed on the subject of UFOs, and if you have, when was it and what were you told?”
Cheney: “Well, if I had been briefed on it, I’m sure it was probably classified and I couldn’t talk about it.”
Rehm (host): “Is there investigation going on within this administration, Mr. Vice President, as to UFOs?”
Cheney: “I have not come across the subject since I’ve been back
in government, oh like since January 20th.”
Rehm: All right.
This is interesting because of Cheney’s statement that the subject of UFOs would “probably be classified.” The U.S. government has been claiming since December 1969 when it shut down Project Blue Book that nothing is classified, and everything is on the table.
Here are more quotes from other government officials on the matter:
U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, retired Air Force Reserve Brigadier General and pilot:
•“I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don’t know about–and probably never will unless the airforce discloses them.”
•“I remember the case in Georgia in the 1950’s of a National Guard plane going after a UFO and never returning. And I recall the case in Franklin, Kentucky, when four military planes investigated a UFO. One of them exploded in midair and no one knows why.”
•“Hell no, you can’t go. I can’t go, and don’t ask me again.” --Senator Goldwater quoting General Curtis Lamey’s response to the senator’s request to visit the “Blue Room” at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where, Goldwater claims he was told physical evidence exists confirming the existence of alien spacecraft.
•“Yes.” --Senator Goldwater’s response to Larry King’s question: “Do you think our government knows UFOs are real and are keeping this fact from the American public?”
Nick Pope, headed up the “UFO desk” at Air Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defense from 1991-1994, and has served in other departments of the Ministry of Defense since 1985:
•“I concentrate on the science. I’m interested in the UFOs seen by the police and military witnesses. I’m interested in the near misses that pilots report, where their aircraft nearly collide with these things. I’m interested in the visual sightings backed up by radar. I’m interested in the military bases that are overflown by these things. I’m interested in the cases where you have radiation readings on the ground. These are no lights in the sky. These are not misidentifications of fantasy prone individuals. This is a cutting-edge technology being reported by reliable, trained observers, and it is something that goes beyond what we can do. That to me suggests that if it is not ours, it belongs to someone else. If that technology is better than ours, then the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems to me the best explanation.”
•“Certainly when I socialized with my RAF colleagues, I would find that they were a little bit more receptive to the idea of UFOs–and by that I mean perhaps even an extraterrestrial explanation for this – than you might have supposed. One of the reasons for that was that so many RAF pilots had actually seen things themselves. Many of them have never made an official report. I had one chap tell me that he had seen something over the North Sea. I asked him why he hadn’t reported it, and he said, ‘I don’t want to be known as Flying Saucer Fred for the rest of my career.’”
•“We were asking the Americans, ‘Are you operating a prototype aircraft in our airspace?’ That, of course, was nonsense. You simply would not do that from a diplomatic and political point of view. It would undermine the entire structure of NATO if you were putting things through someone else’s airspace, particularly a close ally, without seeking the proper diplomatic clearance. But we had to ask. And the Americans, having had similar reports, I guess, since the Hudson Valley wave [New York state, mid-1980s], had been quietly asking us if we had some large, triangular shaped object that could go from 0 to Mach 5 in a second. Our response was that we wished we did. This was the bizarre situation: that we were chasing the Americans, and the Americans were chasing us.”
•“The official line from the Ministry of Defense is, ‘Yes, this happened. No, we don’t know what it is, but we say that it is of no defense significance.’ How can it possibly be of no defense significance when your best jet is left for standing by a UFO? And, again, how can it be of no defense significance when your air defense region is routinely penetrated by structured craft?”
Other notable quotes on UFOs from government officials:
•“The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.”
-Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Youth, May 4, 1990)
•“I know that neither Russia nor this country has anything even approaching such high speeds and maneuvers. Behind the scenes high ranking officers are soberly concerned about UFOs, but through official secrecy and ridicule many citizens are led to believe that the unknown flying objects are nonsense. . .To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.”
-Admiral Roscoe Hillencoter, former director of the CIA, at a 1962 NICAP press conference in Washington D.C.
•“I would do it [aid the Army Air Force in its investigations] but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to the discs recovered. For instance in the LA* case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.” --From a handwritten notation at the bottom of a now declassified memo.
•"[UFOs are] considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the Army and the Air Forces." --From a declassified 1949 FBI document from the San Antonio FBI office, to J. Edgar Hoover.
•“An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers. Approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall. Dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.” --From a March 22, 1950 memo to J. Edgar Hoover from the Washington FBI Office, released in 1976 under the freedom of information act.
•“I feel that the Air Force has not been giving out all the available information on the Unidentified Flying Objects. You cannot disregard so many unimpeachable sources.”
-John W. McCormack, Former Speaker of the House, January 1965
•“It’s difficult for me to understand even if there was a legitimate security concern in 1947, that it would be a present security concern these many years later. Frankly I am baffled by the lack of responsiveness on the part of the Defense Dept. on this one issue, I simply can’t explain it.” (Excerpts of Congressman Schiff’s remarks on CBS radio’s The Gil Gross Show, February 1994.)
Personally, the more I look into the UFO cover-up issue the more intriguing it gets. One thing’s for sure though; the debate will continue on both sides of the issue for a long time to come as credible UFO sightings continue alongside apparent official government denial.
North.
"When four college professors, a geologist, a chemist, a physicist and a petroleum engineer report seeing the same UFOs on fourteen different occasions, the event can be classified as, at least, unusual. Add the fact that hundreds of other people saw these UFOs and that they were photographed, and the story gets even better. Add a few more facts - that these UFOs were picked up on radar and that a few people got a close look at one of them, and the story begins to convince even the most ardent skeptic." (Ruppelt, Edward J., The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, New York: Doubleday, 1956.) (Re: Lubbock lights case).
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