Conspiracy Road Trip: UFOs

On Sunday night I watched my recording of the BBC's Conspiracy Road Trip: UFOs from last week.

I wasn't expecting much from the programme - and wasn't disappointed in that regard.

It was another example of the lazy programming over the last few years which seems to be a hallmark of British television allotted to the subject of UFOs. Andrew Maxwell - an Irish comedian (why him as presenter?) who has occasional flashes of comic genius - and whose star must be on the wane (judging by this show), led a group of five British people, each of whom claimed their own UFO encounter, on a road-trip through American (why not British?) UFO hotspots to effectively discredit their experiences. The climax (or should it be debacle?) was their collective experience of Area 51 which ended up being that of spending three hours lying flat on a floor with guns pointed at their heads for having trespassed onto the outskirts of the infamous military base - go figure.

The 'contactees'

I think it was no coincidence that one of these people (called Scott) had been chosen presumably because of his penchant for wearing a tin-foil skull-cap under his beanie hat when out and about and his conviction that earth was shortly to be invaded by aliens. I had a hard time believing that this chap wasn't a plant to make the programme marginally more interesting for it's one hour run-time. Stooge or not it seemed like he'd watched M Night Shyamalan's Signs more often than is healthy.

The other four 'contactees' ranged from a long-time UFO investigator from Shropshire called Darren; a wide-eyed young male bar worker called Ben - claiming to be a witness to a classic night-time lights sighting; an attractive but vulnerable looking* lady (and there's a point to me mentioning this later) called Brigitte - who claimed to have seen a classic saucer-shaped UFO over a US freeway; and another more ballsy and eloquent lady - Franky - who claimed an alien/other-dimensional vision.

The 'experts'

After listening to each person's claimed account of their experience, Andrew Maxwell attempted to debunk it by introducing them to an 'expert' offering a contrary viewpoint. Seth Shostak was the first who - quite rightly - asked for photographic or film evidence of Brigitte's encounter, which she couldn't provide.

But hang on? Seth Shostak is an astonomer isn't he? Yes he participates in SETI (which I happen to be a subscriber to through SETI@Home), which means he's considered the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life out in the cosmos much more than your average person in the street - but since when has he seriously studied the phenomenon of UFOs?

Another 'expert' was (if I'm correct about this) scientist and biologist P.Z. Myers who appeared to state - if I understood correctly - that it was statistically highly improbable (not impossible mind you) that another species from outside earth could - through natural evolution - develop humanoid facial features akin to our own like the ubiquitous 'grey' aliens supposedly had. But - wait a minute? Turn that on its head and there are thousands of species on this planet - apparently unrelated to humans on a genetic level - that have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Am I missing something?

Yet another 'expert' was psychologist Michael Shermer, publisher of The Skeptic magazine who whilst correctly pointing out what the initials UFO actually stood for (and that anyone with an enquiring mind shouldn't bother to enquire further on any UFO origins - some chance!) - went on to patronise the contactees by advising them that humans were - as a whole - fallible creatures often prone to convincing delusions. Fair enough - but that would presumably mean his own world view was just as fallible wouldn't it?

The wildcard

In a rather strange deviation from the pattern being established so far in the programme, the group was then introduced to former airline pilot and wildcard in UFO circles - John Lear - who, it appeared on the surface, was a bit of own goal for Mr Maxwell - but this might have been for calculated comic effect - in that he (John Lear) banged on not only about aliens being studied at Area 51 but also about his (frankly implausible in my view) theory concerning a city on the moon.

The dubious book author

Finally, the contactees were introduced to author Annie Jacobsen , who's faced a lot of criticism for various long stretches of the imagination in her book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base including those concerning a story that one of her sources may have been citing elements strangely similar to those in science fiction writer James Blish’s short story "Tomb Tapper". In the programme, Ms Jacobsen effectively stated that the CIA/military use UFO conspiracies as disinformation to conceal their greatest military secrets. Fair enough again - I'm sure all the Superpowers engage in routine disinformation campaigns. However, that doesn't automatically rule out the E.T. hypothesis (E.T.H.) still being a possible explanation behind some UFO encounters.

Just to add insult to injury, Jacobsen then regurgitated (from her book) an old chestnut concerning the crashed Roswell disc being a Stalinist Russian device carrying deformed or mutilated human passengers in 'spacesuits'. Other versions of this story cite children having being found aboard - again an element possibly pinched from the science fiction story referred to above. Jacobsen claimed she had a reliable but anonymous 'source' to confirm this. But this story is no more plausible than the E.T.H. - and what if her 'source' is feeding her disinformation?

My conclusion?

In my view, the arguments put forward by the sceptics were just as flimsy as the evidence for the five contactees' encounters. Where were the representatives of MUFON, NARCAP or even BUFORA? Where was Fife Symington III, Leslie Kean, Nick Pope or any of the speakers at the recent Secrets of Area 51 event (you could see this event's logo in the background at one point suggesting that Andrew Maxwell and co. were at the National Atomic Testing Museum during filming)?

None of the above people were on hand to give a balanced appraisal of these claimed encounters (or at least make the five people on the show not feel completely humiliated) - and I think I can guess why. Where they did rope in one 'ufologist' - author and UFO investigator Christopher O'Brien - half-way through the programme, it was only in an attempt (ultimately fruitless) to make his theories appear more outlandish to the contactees than their own.

At the end I couldn't decide whether Andrew Maxwell's own crisis of conscience at putting Brigitte - whom I presume he liked because she was 'attractive and vulnerable-looking'* (I told you there was a reason I mentioned it earlier) - through a polygraph test, only to intervene and stop it, was genuine, ill thought out, or just patronising.

Actually - I did decide.

We never got to find out whether Brigitte would have passed or failed. But the results wouldn't have mattered anyway. If she genuinely believed she'd seen a flying saucer - even if in reality she hadn't - I doubt that a polygraph test would have revealed anything significant either way. Maxwell was convinced she would fail (an arrogant assumption to make) and so wanted to 'protect her belief system' (another arrogant assumption) and consequently protect her supposed 'fragile state'. Just how patronising can one Irish comedian be towards a grown woman?

Of course it was never the programme makers' intention to give credence to anything these people said or had apparently experienced. Even if they had, that's not how it came out in the final edit. And each individual had probably been hand-picked just as they would have been for an episode of Come Dine With Me, Coach Trip, or a myriad of other 'reality' shows, with the point being for the relevant, casual audience 'demographic' of this type of show to indulge in voyeuristic schadenfreude.

So - given the attention deficit, dumbed-down programming like this that many appear to accept - we're unlikely to ever see a quality documentary exploring this subject in-depth on British television anytime soon, where:-

• credible witnesses in the military and civil aviation, the police and other emergency services of different countries worldwide come forward and are interviewed; 
• individuals such as Stanton Friedman, Leslie Kean, Timothy Good and Nick Pope have been shown to be writing about the subject rationally and with rigor (and for far longer than I suspect Andrew Maxwell has been bothered about the subject); 
• sceptics have an opportunity to have their say but also be roundly challenged by opponents including those named above;
• documentary evidence such as MOD case files and other hard evidence - including radar, radio, photographic and film records, imply a significant number of UFO incidents that still remain unexplained to this day;
• and whether we like it or not, the same documentary evidence points - in a number of cases - to something or someone (not necessarily E.T.) with apparently very advanced technology penetrating (and causing many potentially lethal near-miss incidents in) the airspace of the UK, US, China, Belgium, France and Sweden to name but a few.

Ho-hum.

Guilty as charged?

Anyway the full programme is below if you haven't already seen it. Let me know what you think...

Secrets of Area 51 revealed?

I'm sure all of you will have noted the recent event "Area 51: Myth or Reality" that took place at the National Atomic Testing Museum, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. The publicity running up to it rather misleadingly claimed that the 'secrets' of 'Area 51' were to be revealed.

Obviously such publicity promised much and delivered virtually nothing, so whilst there wasn't any earth-shattering news to come out of this event, it was a milestone for having the Smithsonian - a respected U.S. establishment - host an event of this type.

Publicity image from the National Atomic Testing Museum

It was also notable for having five respected speakers with military backgrounds and/or impressive credentials who willingly and candidly spoke about their take on the UFO phenomenon - and this being outside of any pro-ufologist forum such as that of the Disclosure Project. The speakers were retired US Air Force Col. Robert Friend; retired US Air Force Col. William Coleman; retired US Air Force Col. Charles Halt; former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator Nick Pope; and retired US Army Col. John Alexander.

Several online articles, including one posted by the Las Vegas Sun give a good rundown of the speakers and their comments so I won't repeat them here.

Concerning Area 51

Area 51 itself is in the news yet again because of a BBC film crew that recently tried - and failed - to enter the base, according to various articles, the most comprehensive of which is the Daily Mail's.

At the BUFORA 50th anniversary conference, a member of the audience asked one of the speakers whether they had any insider knowledge about the old chestnut that is the alleged reversed engineering of alien spacecraft at Area 51. I have to say I groaned inwardly when I heard this person ask the question (a question that was frankly naive). The speaker rightly answered that they had no knowledge on this. Why would they anyway? It is highly unlikely that a representative of a volunteer UFO investigation body in Britain would have come into possession of genuine, privileged information about Area 51, let alone whether this information contained the 'smoking gun' about E.T.

As it is, if you believe the hype about what goes in in Area 51 then this place is perhaps - bizarrely - one of the worst kept military secrets in the world. Look at it another way however (I'm sure I'm not the first to say this) and we may be observing a great smoke and mirrors operation in effect. In my view,  Area 51 very usefully serves to divert attention away from genuine ongoing USAPs or black projects elsewhere in the U.S. (or perhaps in other friendly countries) which - if they are being carried out in the interests of national security - should of course remain heavily protected from unfriendly powers.

Given the continuous satellite surveillance by all superpowers - and other interests over the globe, not to mention an increasing army of 'Google-earthers' out there,  any such activity would have to be based either underground or in very ordinary looking facilities at an unremarkable location so as not to attract unwanted attention. Such a location, or locations could be housed in existing military - or even civil - facilities but known to only a select few with the highest compartmentalised security clearance. And given the Americans have had nearly 70 years - since the Second World War - to perfect how to hide their greatest military secrets, I'm sure they're now very good at it.

As for strange lights/activities observed by those over the years who claim to have skirted - or even penetrated - the perimeter of Area 51 (a rather foolhardy thing to do in my opinion considering the threat of deadly force to interlopers - the BBC film crew were let off lightly in my view), this could all be part of the 'show'.

Of course I claim no privileged knowledge on this subject. It just seems to me to be a simple and logical conclusion to reach about this now world-famous area.

Another school running a 'UFO crash drill'?

Ok so I recently posted this about a few instances of schools running 'UFO crash drills' and - what d'you know? Another one pops up in the news!

Here's the link to the article in the (presumably Sheffield) 'Star'

This time it's a 'rocket' but the event is staged in much the same way as previous events.

It makes me think that someone, most probably a fast-streamer Civil Servant - or an 'HEOD' as they're now called - in the Department for Education thought conducting such activity across schools in England would be a wheeze. Either that or school heads are just copying each other's ideas.

But recently allowing this kind of thing into school activity does seem rather strange, even if it is done under the guise of increasing an awareness of 'science' amongst pupils.

So who first planted the suggestion of doing this at all at the first school and why?

Undersea Mystery in Baltic: Update

At the 50th Anniversary BUFORA Conference, Clas Svahn from Sweden representing the AFU (the final speaker for the first day) was asked whether he had any knowledge about the Baltic sea underwater object(s) discovered by the Ocean X Team, given that the Ocean X Team is also Swedish. 

Clas replied (and I'm paraphrasing here) that he had been in touch with the Ocean X team and there was nothing new to report other than what is already in the public domain. However, he did confirm that, from what he had been advised, the object(s) are indeed made of stone or rock - as opposed to being metallic - which, in my view, would certainly end speculation about any form of 'craft' having been discovered (unless our E.T. or pan-dimensional friends can fabricate vehicles from stone of course!).

He went on to explain that there would be no fresh news released for the time being because the Ocean X Team appear to be tied into a deal with a television company, who will most likely have exclusive rights to any broadcast about the undersea object(s).  Consequently, any release of information prior to the TV broadcast would compromise the deal. Clas said that it is likely that any such broadcast will be later this year.

This makes perfect sense to me - and I think it increasingly likely that this will be a huge anticlimax. All the same, Ocean X - and whichever TV company they are apparently working with - will still milk this for all it's worth to them.

Clas - if you happen to read this post and anything I have reported here is inaccurate, I would be more than happy to correct it.

BUFORA's 50th Anniversary Conference

Yesterday I attended the first day of BUFORA's 50th Anniversary Conference at the Holiday Inn, Kings Cross, London. 

BUFORA Logo

It's the first time I'd attended an event of this type, so I went pretty much with an open mind as to what to expect. Having given presentations myself and attended numerous seminars in my former (Govt) capacity I was able to look at these speakers with an experienced and critical eye. On the whole - and the usual minor technical upsets notwithstanding, I'd say it was was a good experience for anyone not very conversant with the whole UFO subject, as well as a happy and familiar experience for those with much more grounding in it. The main speakers (detailed below) gave good presentations, each of which centred on different aspects of the UFO phenomenon. In fact, I would go as far as saying that one speaker especially easily matched some university lectures I have seen for quality of content and professionalism in presenting. It seemed to me that attendance at the event was good. It appeared to peak during the middle of the day with something like up to 70-80 delegates (at a guess) packed into the small conference room.

BUFORA is run by a hard working and dedicated group of volunteers who genuinely want to find the truth behind the persistent enigma of the UFO phenomenon, irrespective of whether what they find fits in with popular public perception or not. It is clear that they are definitely not sensation seekers and are professional and unbiased in their search for explanations behind UFO incidents. It is a testament to their serious commitment to 'Ufology' that BUFORA has lasted half a century whilst other similar such groups have appeared and vanished over a (sometimes much) shorter timespan.

What impressed me was their broad consensus that the majority of UFO cases they had investigated had conventional explanations (which I agree with), and that they possess a wealth of hard data and experience to support this. This of course makes those few cases where all the usual explanations are ruled out more compelling, but I liked the assertion that - as more than one of the speakers pointed out - just because we don't yet have definitive answers to such cases, we shouldn't automatically turn to the E.T. hypothesis for a solution.

It is apparent too that BUFORA have, over the years, garnered respect amongst other agencies/communities involved to a lesser or greater extent in the UFO phenomenon such as astronomers and civil aviation professionals. It is also worth noting that they gather witness testimony from civil aviation and military personnel (in confidence of course) in addition to members of the general public.

Consequently, I would strongly encourage anyone with a serious interest in UFOs to check in and register with BUFORA. And I say this in my blog without having had any financial incentive from them to do so.

And so to the speakers 
(please scroll to the relevant bio in the BUFORA link provided for the first four speakers)

Lionel Beer

Lionel Beer was a founder member in 1962 of BUFORA. He shared some interesting anecdotes about BUFORA's beginnings and some of his personal experiences, as a precursor to the other presentations. Of note was his meeting with none other than Dr. J. Allen Hynek with photographic evidence to prove it.

Heather Dixon

Heather Dixon's presentation was a good overview of the fallibility of human memory and recall in terms of witness testimony - and how we do not yet fully understand the workings of the human mind to be confident, especially when attempting to explain UFO encounters or 'high strangeness' events generally. For example, she touched on hypnagogic and hypnopompic stages of sleep which can leave a witness in an 'altered state of reality' and vulnerable to experiencing things that may be subjectively, as opposed to objectively, 'real'. It could be argued that many - but not necessarily all - abduction cases could be explained by this altered state of consciousness, especially if there is no external evidence i.e. multiple witness testimony or other physical evidence available to investigators. What was also made clear in her talk was the unreliability of regression hypnotherapy as a form of witness testimony, which is still open to debate and which is why BUFORA has a policy of not using it to gather evidence.

John Spencer

In my view, John Spencer's presentation was the most engaging. John covered the growth of the modern UFO phenomenon from the days of the Kenneth Arnold sighting to the present and how media reportage, cinema treatment and patterns in UFO encounters often mirror world events or influence public perception. An example cited was George Adamski's alleged encounters with the 'Nordic Aliens'. To paraphrase John, the benevolent 'Nordics' gave advice about the dangers of atomic weapons (very much an issue at the time of Adamski's alleged encounters) but did not appear far-sighted enough to mention other significant threats to humanity such as global warming. In other words, many of these 'close encounters' involved aliens telling various humans about issues that were hardly prophetic and already widely known. What was also interesting was John's theory about the Americans' recurrent theme of 'dual identity' in life or 'hybridisation' in their UFO encounters. He noted that a sizeable number of US abduction cases featured aliens seeking insemination with human DNA to create some new hybrid race, and that this reflected recurrent themes of the hybrid human/alien, human/robot, human/mutant, human/vampire etc. in the majority of American science fiction and fantasy, something which - interestingly - is not so prevalent in British SF and fantasy.

Jenny Randles

Jenny joined the conference by video link and also gave an engaging talk about how important it is to not jump to conclusions about a given UFO event until one has as much available evidence as possible. She then cited a classic case where film evidence of a glowing UFO orb subject to multiple witness sightings was in fact a rare - but not unknown - 'ball' of superheated fuel from a test fighter plane experiencing engine trouble and engaging its afterburners to rectify the problem.
Consequently, she explained that serious investigators have to be mindful of and rule out a huge variety of conventional explanations before a case ceases to be one of an Identified Flying Object (IFO) and subsequently becomes a UFO. In fact, Jenny said that BUFORA tend to use the initials 'UAP' (which can stand equally for Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena - as for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) when engaging with external agencies such as the police, military or CAA, as a way of engendering confidence and being an effective disassociation from the stigma attached to the initials 'UFO'.  I don't think their organisation's name would have quite the same ring to it if they called it BUAPORA though!

Given the above, Jenny has co-authored a book about supposed UFO encounters that ended up having conventional explanations, called 'The UFOs That Never Were'. I plan to get my hands on a copy as soon as I can.

The Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe

Lionel was a reasonably well-known UK household name in the nineties having presented Channel Four's Fortean TV. He is a colourful and charismatic character, most notably being an Anglican priest, keen motorcyclist and a 3rd Dan martial arts instructor. He and his wife Patricia have decades of experience in the paranormal world and do not devote themselves exclusively to just the UFO phenomenon.

In his very stimulating talk, and in addition to sharing some fascinating anecdotes, Lionel laid out his - and his wife's - six key theories concerning explanations for the hard core of inexplicable UFO encounters, in that they could be:-

1. 'time ships' - vehicles or devices from the future with technology far in advance of our own;

2. 'dimension ships' - vehicles or devices that have crossed over into our universe from a parallel one;

3. 'extraterrestrial' visitors - as in visitors from another planet;

4. vestigial ancient technology - as in devices from hitherto unknown or long-vanished former human civilisations;

5. secret Government/military experiments; and

6. psychic or psychological phenomena which is as yet not fully understood.

Clearly number 3. is the most popular theory and more recently there has been an acceptance of the first two, which - unsurprisingly - has developed in line with cutting edge thought in the mainstream scientific community. Number 5. is popular with conspiracy theorists of course and I imagine number 6 is in the list because of Lionel's own experience.

I found theory 4. to be something I hadn't seriously considered before. There are more than a few 'ancient alien' proponents who believe humanity was given advanced technology by extraterrestrials thousands of years ago - but not many of these appear to consider the possibility that humans, through their own ingenuity, might have already achieved advanced levels of technology during the 200,000 years it is currently estimated we have been on the planet (as Homo sapiens or humans). A big problem with this theory however is that one would have expected some archaeological evidence to support this, given that we are still unearthing dinosaur fossils that are far older by several tens of millions of years.


Clas Svahn board member of the AFU

Clas Svahn was given the longest slot of the conference by far (it felt something like 90 minutes without a break) which was asking an awful lot of the delegates in terms of attention at the end of quite a long day. I suspect that this was less his doing and more to do with BUFORA giving him such latitude because: a) he had travelled the furthest of all the speakers (from Sweden) to be there and b) it became apparent that the body he represents (AFU) has given a great deal of support to BUFORA, and the relationship between the two bodies is a strong one.

Clas talked about the history of the body he represents and the frankly staggering amount of work his group of volunteers undertake in recording and documenting UFO cases worldwide since the start of the modern UFO phenomenon - which I applaud. What also stood out for me was that they have a very good working relationship with the Swedish military, which still has its own 'UFO desk' (unlike Britain) and which uses the AFU's database to record their own UFO incidents. 

Clas then gave delegates a fascinating insight into the long-standing 'Ghost-rocket' phenomenon in Sweden which is too extensive to elaborate on here. Please follow the link for a general explanation.

All in all, BUFORA staged a very good event for those interested in the UFO phenomenon.  Long may their good work continue until (perhaps one day) the whole mystery is comprehensively explained.

Why are schools running 'UFO crash drills'?

Just today I noticed the following article

Pupils investigate UFO crash site 

which - bizarrely - refers to pupils of a school in Somerset being allowed to get involved in the 'investigation' of a mock 'UFO Crash site'. This is allegedly with the assistance of local police whilst extra theatricality is provided in the form of an 'MI5 operative' and 'scientists' being present (presumably teachers and local volunteers) at some point during the day

Leigh UFO and meteor sightings (From The Bolton News)

Now whilst this is a great way to engage young minds with what is probably a fun and exciting event (wish my school had done something like this when I was a nipper!) why stage a crashed UFO event, rather than recreate a more earthly crime scene of some kind?

Doing the usual internet trawl reveals that this has generated quite a few results, which I guess is no bad thing in terms of publicity for the school. What's more this isn't the first time this has been done. Another such article on a separate exercise is Pupils Investigate UFO. Others go back to at least 2008. (Note: these articles are helpfully referred to by other net authors - I can't claim the credit for having initially spotted them)

It begs the question - why UFOs?

It could just be a case of a subject matter being one that is most appealing to a young generation brought up with the likes of Dr Who and recent releases of films like Men In Black 3. These exercises may also all be the brainchild of one or a small number of individuals as a way of stimulating pupils across the UK.

But is the apparent trend more than that?

If - as some experts on the E.T. hypothesis behind UFOs believe - there is some gradual disclosure process being carried out by The State in various countries (a theory I remain open-minded about), then one could argue that one aspect of this could be the act of engaging the youngest minds of our society.

However, there only seem to be a handful of exercises like this that have taken place in the UK so far. It would be interesting to see if other countries do something similar with their own children. To date they don't appear to have happened with any frequency to suggest anything other than coincidence. In other words - it doesn't look like it's part of any 'grand plan' so far...