The History of Scientific Denial of
the Extraterrestrial Presence
(C) Kathleen Marden
Early in my career as UFO and abduction researcher, I felt perplexed by the failure of physical science to take UFOs and alien abductions seriously. Was there funding for academic research studies on the evidence that these phenomena might be real and not imaginary? As part of my investigation, it seemed prudent to explore the official channels that have diverted funding away from the scientific study of UFOs, to the investigation of those so-called "weird" people who report UFO encounters. What I discovered is an orchestrated plan, through official channels, to effectively take the science out of UFO research.
In this time frame, The information was difficult to acquire, so at great expenditure from my personal funds I visited physical archival collections at the American Philosophical Society and wrote my book "Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers" with the late nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman. The correspondence files contained interesting evidence of collusion by certain members of the intelligence community, and certain academic scientists and media collaborators, to misinform the American public. It was not paranoia! It was real!
The cover-up began in the mid-1940s and was strengthened in 1953, when a team of government scientists, intelligence officers, and military officials convened, with CIA funding, to view a limited amount of evidence and set official policy regarding UFOs and the people who observe them. Following this meeting, the lid came down in an orchestrated plan for official denial. At the same time, secret channels within the military establishment were studying UFO reports that might be a threat to national security. The official US Air Force program, Project Blue Book funneled reports that defied explanation into the top secret channels.
In 1966, the Air Force Science Advisory Board’s Ad Hoc Committee convened to review Project Blue Book, ostensibly in an effort to improve it. However, the government’s own documents, acquired through FOIA requests, reveal a clear intent to end the project. Project Blue Book had become little more that a public relations mouthpiece and was a thorn in the side of the Air Force. An official Top Secret channel was already collecting the most compelling cases of contact with highly advanced technology, so expending additional taxpayer dollars for public relations was of no significant purpose. The US Air Force devised a plan to end the program by claiming there is no evidence to support the belief that UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin. Furthermore, they do not pose a threat to national security.
In October 1966, the Secretary of Defense announced the committee’s decision to appoint Edward U. Condon, PhD, a respected physicist at the University of Colorado to spearhead a formal study on unidentified flying objects, which resulted in the 1969 “University of Colorado Report on Unidentified Flying Objects”. Ufologist’s high hopes for an objective study diminished when Dr. Condon made a series of negative public statements about the project, avoided cases that warranted serious attention, and personally focused upon “crackpot” cases. Yes, there is a lunatic fringe that Dr. Condon exploited, with assistance from two of his cronies. It was a highly political undertaking.
At the project’s inception in 1966, Robert J. Low, assistant dean of the graduate school, wrote to university officials Thurston Manning and E. James Archer, “In order to undertake such a project, one would have to approach it objectively. That is, one has to admit the possibility that such things as UFOs exist. It is not respectable to give serious consideration to such a possibility…The very act of admitting these possibilities just as possibilities puts us beyond the pale…Our study would be conducted almost exclusively by non-believers who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear to be a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group on non-believers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer…One way to do this would be to stress investigation, not of the physical phenomena, but rather of the people who do the observing—the psychology and sociology of persons and groups who report seeing UFOs…I can’t imagine a paper coming out of the study that would be publishable in a prestigious physical science journal. I can quite easily imagine, however, that psychologists, sociologists and psychiatrists might well generate scholarly publications as a result of their investigations of saucer observers.”(1)
Levine handed the memo to David R. Saunders, PhD, a Condon Committee key staff member. In turn, the memo found its way to writer John G. Fuller. His expose’ in the May 14, 1968 issue of LOOK Magazine titled “Flying Saucer Fiasco: The half-million-dollar cover-up on whether UFOs really exist” blew the project wide open, enraged ufologists, and troubled American taxpayers. Doctor Condon expelled Saunders and Levine from the project because they had disclosed "the trick" to the American public. This disloyal move would not be tolerated.
In keeping with his negative tone, at the end of the study, Condon issued the following statement: “Nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge.…we consider it safe to assume that no ILE (intelligent life elsewhere), outside of our solar system has any possibility of visiting Earth in the next 10,000 years.”(2)
Despite the official statement made by Edward Condon that the committee found no evidence to justify a belief that extraterrestrial visitors have penetrated our skies, the special UFO subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics found that 30 percent of the 117 cases studied in detail could not be identified. This independent conclusion was not in accordance with the highly political decision that extraterrestrial visitation is nonsense.
The subsequent National Academy of Science’s report on the Condon Study states, “The least likely explanation for UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings.” Section 7 of the report states that UFO reports “should be of interest to social scientists.” Let us study those who see UFOs and ETs and those who have been memories of being taken to craft, to determine what aberrant psychological processes cause some people to believe the "impossible." Talk about a loaded political opinion! This taken together with the “trick memo” suggests that project’s conclusions and recommendations might have been predetermined before even one evidence file was examined.
In recent years, brave retired military whistle blowers, high ranking government officials, and scientists who were funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have stepped forward with radar videos of highly advanced craft that defies explanation. They are trans-medium and can move with ease underwater, in our atmosphere, and in space. Our most advanced scientific minds can offer hypotheses on how these craft can simply appear, disappear and reappear again, can know in advance what our military pilots are thinking, can predict their behavior and respond in kind, and can support life despite rapid acceleration and deceleration. The floodgates for disclosure are beginning to open and credible evidence is trickling in. The US Congress is funding UFO (UAP and AAP) studies, and people with a desire to learn the truth can find it. Watch my blog posts for links and findings by our brave disclosure geniuses.
Footnotes:
1. The entire text of Robert Low’s memo can be found in Appendix A of "UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee went Wrong" by David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins.
2. Edward Condon, "The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects," Section 2. “Summary of the Study”.