Sci Fi Channel-backed researcher sues NASA over UFO files

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.

Oh. darn. There was a clever post about that a little while back... let me do a quick search..

Apparently... in WW2, when different armies took over Pacific Islands the natives saw them bring in lots of goods and cargo. They benefitted from this a tiny bit.

When the war was also the cargo stopped coming, and many decided they could do the same thing the foreigners had done and they would get the cargo like the foreigners.

There were instances where natives would clear airfields and build bamboo control towers, complete with bamboo antenna's and they would even wear 'headphones' while they call in the cargo.

This went on for decades apparently, cults actually sprang up with the natives trying to will in the cargo from the skies just like the foreigners who occupied the islands in the war.

Kind of like UFO enthusiasts.

Cargo Cult definition from Wikipedia

The term cargo cult is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific, especially New Guinea and Micronesian islanders, in the years during and after World War II. There was no one Cargo Cult so this proper name is a misnomer - no one who participated in a cargo cult actually knew that they were doing so.

The vast amounts of war materiel that were air-dropped into these islands during the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of these islanders as manufactured clothing, canned food, tents, weapons and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers - and also the islanders who were their guides and hosts. When the war moved on, and ultimately when it ended, the airbases were abandoned and no new "cargo" was then being dropped.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders adopted a shallow version of the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood, and wore them while sitting in control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.

The cultists thought that the foreigners have some special connection to the ancestors, who were the only beings powerful enough to spill such riches. By mimicking the foreigners, they hoped to bypass them.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size mockups of airplanes out of straw, and created new military style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. The cultural impact of these practices was not to bring about the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war, but to eradicate religious practices that had existed prior to the war.

When Westerners explained to them that the riches came from labor and that islanders would get them as well if they worked hard enough, the cultists couldn't help noticing that, in missions and camps, islanders were doing the hardest work but got the least of the goods.

A similar cult, the dance of the spirits, arose from contact between American Indians and the American civilization in late 19th century. The Piute prophet Wowoka preached that by dancing in a certain fashion, the ancestors would come back on railways and a new earth would cover the white people.

Some Amazonian Indians have carved wood mockups of cassette players (gabarora from Portuguese grabadora) that they use to communicate with spirits.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris has linked the social mechanisms that produce cargo cults to those of Messianism.

Eventually, the Pacific cultists gave up. But, from time to time, the term "Cargo cult" is invoked as an English language idiom, to mean any group of people shallowly emulating practices of a group whose behavior they have seen result in a shower of unexplainable riches and social status.

In this sense, they are perhaps best known because of a speech by Richard Feynman at a Caltech commencement, which became a chapter in the book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" In the speech, Feynman pointed out that cargo cultists create all the appearance of an airport--right down to headsets with bamboo "antennas"--yet the airplanes don't come. Feynman argued that scientists often produce studies with all the trappings of real science, but which are nonetheless pseudoscience and unworthy of either respect or support.

That's incredible! I can believe it though.

There are still so many billions in the world (Muslims especially) that are so superstitious and would believe anything.

Again, like the UFO folks.

My favorite is the groupthink. Notice that, after Communion came out, ALL aliens now look the same? And ALL "abduction" stories are the same? It's like the near death folks and their stories...all the same.

In early January of 1997 I had a nasty automobile accident and totally lost my left ankle. Those responding freaked by the bruises I got from the seat belt and decided to take me to the Vanderbilt trauma center miles away rather than the hospital just three blocks away.

So I get to the emergency room and they start their trauma procedures. I get at least 3 doctors and 3 nurses doing things to me. They all are dressed in white and have masks on under those plastic shields they now wear with all the head gear of mirrors, lights, etc.

They decide to do a spinal tap and, of course, have to enter me, uh, anally. At this point I said, "Now I know what all these alien abduction people have really gone through"! Everyone in the room died laughing and I was screaming..."No anal probes...no anal probes!".

One doctor looked at me and said, "you are a better man than I to have such a sense of humor at at time like this". No big deal to me, I had no choice! lol

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