Sci Fi Channel-backed researcher sues NASA over UFO files

First Amendment Center Online ^ | Wednesday, December 17, 2003 | The Associated Press

[Momaw Nadon]

PITTSBURGH — A researcher backed by cable television’s Sci Fi Channel sued NASA for the release of records she contends the agency has of a UFO that reportedly crash landed and was recovered by government workers in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1965.

The lawsuit was filed Dec. 9 in U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of Leslie Kean, a San Rafael, Calif., investigative reporter backed by the cable channel and a group called the Coalition for Freedom of Information.

“Our lawsuit is aimed at getting NASA to tell the public what it knew and when it knew it,” said Ed Rothschild, a lobbyist the Sci Fi Channel hired from the Washington firm PodestaMattoon, who is also identified as CFI’s executive director. Former President Clinton’s one-time chief of staff John Podesta is backing the Sci Fi Channel’s efforts, and his brother, Anthony, is a principal in the lobbying firm hired by the channel.

Bob Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, said he was unaware of the lawsuit and could not comment.

The filing marked the 38th anniversary of the Kecksburg UFO incident, which occurred in the unincorporated hamlet about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Witnesses described a “fireball” in the evening sky, and a metallic, acorn-shaped object about 12 to 15 feet high and 8 to 12 feet in diameter that landed in the woods, according to news media accounts in the Tribune-Review of Greensburg and other outlets at the time.

Military personnel quickly surrounded the site, removed the object, threatened residents who tried to inquire about it, and left — later calling the object a “meteor,” according to news accounts.

James Romansky, 57, of Derry Township, was then a 19-year-old volunteer firefighter. He told the Associated Press that he was among those who drove to the landing site.

“Now, I’m prepared for a smashed-up airplane ... and I’m thinking, ‘What in the hell is this?’ I’m looking for wings, propellers, motors, a fuselage — but there’s none of that,” Romansky said. “There’s no rivet marks on it, no weld marks on it, no windows, no doors — no possible way of getting in and out of this thing that I seen.

“There was writing on it, but not writing that you or I could understand. I always referred to it as something like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. There was dots and dashes and circles,” Romansky said.

The cable network announced in June that it was backing the effort to research the Kecksburg incident in promoting a documentary, “Out of the Blue,” which examined various UFO reports.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” Romansky said. “The United States government has given us a snow job for the last God knows when. I can’t understand it for the life of me. They can’t come out and say it’s nothing because I was 10, 20 feet away from it.”

Sci Fi Channel officials said they’re looking for an explanation of what occurred. They’re also looking for viewers.

A November 2002 documentary on the suspected 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., was the highest-rated special in the network’s 11-year history. It was seen by nearly 2.4 million people, or about 2 1/2times Sci Fi’s usual prime-time audience.

The lawsuit contends NASA has thwarted Kean’s efforts to retrieve official files on the incident by sending her irrelevant information or nothing in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

[Virginia-American]

Not spelling God is some form of pseudo respect?

It's a Jewish tradition. And it's not pseudo-respect; it's real.

[RadioAstronomer]

He may have put life on other planets, but WE are the only intelligent life.

Got proof?

[Lancey Howard]

and the aliens have a sense organ with a pinhole lens that focuses the molecules. Smell and imaging.

See? Right there you have an alien "sense" that is strictly based in a human context - - "Smell and imaging."

The point is that everything that we have the capacity to imagine and discuss must, by definition, be based in a human context. Imagining "other possible senses" can surely be done as an intellectual exercise, but that exercise is obviously severely limited.

This is a very difficult topic to discuss (intelligently). Keep in mind that things like, "physical body" and "thought" are human concepts. We cannot separate ourselves from our only point of reference - - our "human-ness". Other "beings" (ha!, another human concept) which "exist" (there we go again....) in separate realities may have no physical attributes nor any ability for thought as parts of their essence.

Sorry if I sound crazy, but I think about this stuff from time to time and it usually makes my head feel like exploding. So, that's it for today.

Regards,
LH

[MitchellC]

I understand what you're saying, but there are some 'philosophical arguments' that I think any intellectually honest person would have to accept as evidence for the existence of God. One I am thinking of is the absurdity of an infinite regression of past events as proof of a starting point for time, which can only be caused by something that is itself outside of time. Another is natural law/common law/moral conscience as an indicator of objective morality and purpose for individual existence.