UFOs - Leslie Kean [121]
The FAA spokesman at the time, Paul Steucke, said it was just a “coincidence” that the split image happened to fall at the right distance and the same side of the aircraft where the object was reported visually by the pilot. And the final report simply outright ignored the three visual sightings with all their details and drawings, as if the event really had never happened. Remember, no one flying an aircraft can see a split image.
So, who are you going to believe, your lying eyes or the government?
CHAPTER 23
Government Cover-up: Policy or Myth?
The CIA’s directive that “this event never happened,” as reported by former FAA official John Callahan, may be familiar to those who have read statements from American military witnesses to UFO events. Many have been told more or less the same thing by their superior officers: Do not speak to anyone about the incident that you just experienced. In later years, some say they still cannot speak publicly because they’re bound by security oaths, and no doubt there are many others who, out of fear of breaking such oaths, have not even hinted of their involvement in a UFO event while in the military. But a number of fearless men and women have, years later, spoken out in spite of orders or oaths, without repercussions.
This repeated demand for silence, coupled with the overzealous classification of government documents and the furtive misidentifications issued by Project Blue Book, and later the FAA, has led to much speculation about whether government agencies are involved in some kind of cover-up—a widespread, carefully orchestrated policy, hidden from almost everyone, to keep secret “the truth” about UFOs. While publicly ignoring and avoiding the UFO issue, underneath the surface and unbeknownst even to those issuing the orders muzzling subordinates, a small yet powerful core group is actively hiding explosive knowledge, such as the extraterrestrial origin of at least some UFOs. At least this is what many—even conservative—analysts have come to believe.
As far-fetched as it sounds, this radical supposition cannot be dismissed out of hand. Documents prove that the UFO phenomenon became a concern to the Air Force, the CIA, and the FBI as long ago as the late 1940s, thereby giving U.S. authorities ample time to collect the best data and study physical evidence. Obviously the military would have been extremely interested in the technological capabilities demonstrated by these objects, if they could ever get access to them. We must consider the possibility that enough concise data—even physical material retrieved from crashed UFOs—could have been obtained and studied in secret. If our government officials were hungry to discover some of the keys to these exotic new technologies, or thought we were on the verge of unearthing a new physics, something from another space-time perhaps, these discoveries could give America unimaginable new capabilities.
Of course, such a study would have been daunting and could take decades. No matter how intense, scientists might still not be able to figure out very much about the workings or origins of UFOs, given the sophisticated, perhaps undecipherable technological systems, so remarkable that they seem almost like magic to us. The analogy has been made to a group of cavemen suddenly coming into possession of a television set, before even understanding the fundamental concepts of electricity or radio waves. Of course, this is pure speculation. But even if our covert scientists made very little progress on understanding what we had, it’s not a stretch to imagine that those in charge would have been extremely careful to keep such revolutionary information away from any “enemy” countries or rogue nations, including the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They would have been mindful of any future economic