UFO or not UFO? Area 51 declassifying pours cold water on theory..

The Tech Herald ^ | April 12th, 2009 | Rich Bowden

[TaraP]

A former engineer at the top secret airfield "Area 51" in Nevada has spoken out about UFO sightings in the region in the 1960s, saying the witnessed flashes of light were part of top secret US aircraft experiments.

In an interview with ABC News, Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, a former special-projects engineer at Area 51 said: "No one really knew we existed. Even our wives didn't know where we were going when we left Monday morning and came back Friday evening."

Barnes was an electronics engineer for NASA who also specialised in advance radar and Soviet MiG fighter aircraft and was asked to join a team of CIA experts who would work on secret military projects at the infamous base.

UFO folklore has it that Area 51, about 80 miles north northwest of Las Vegas, is where captured aliens and their spacecraft have been stored by the US military. The conspiracy theory comes in part because of the preponderance of strange, unaccounted for lights that have been seen in the region of the top secret military base.

However Barnes poured cold water on the theory saying the "alien spaceships" were in fact light flashes from top secret spy planes being flown at 2,000 miles per hour at altitudes of 90,000 feet.

The experimental planes produced light flashes that some interpreted as alien spaceships and this was considered helpful by the team in covering their activities.

"We considered it to be a bonus," said Barnes. "They made it easier to conceal what we were doing."

However some ufologists have said the area has only been partly declassified and UFO work at the base may well have carried out though in a region unknown to engineers such as Barnes.

"Those guys who came forward may very well be telling the truth, with the caveat that they wouldn't know if there was something going on," said Stanton T. Friedman, a nuclear physicist, lecturer and top UFO researcher.

Friedman added that evidence coming out of places such as Area 51 proved how much was going on in the country without peoples' knowledge.

"National security has a real place in all of this stuff. There is no way to tell your friends without telling your enemies," he said. "A lot of Americans woke up to the fact that there's a lot going on that they don't get told about."

[allmendream]

You mean that in the totality of all artwork and carvings of humanity there just might be figures that bear a superficial resemblance?

Yes, and that one carving of something that looks like vaguely like a stegosaurus must mean that humans and dinosaurs lived contemporaneously!

That was not what I was asking for, and neither have you provided even THAT.

I want an ancient account of a bug eyed alien coming out of a disco lighted disk, maybe someone getting the rectal probe, fast moving object in the sky, bright colored lights, etc, etc.

There are simply no accounts of such anywhere in the ancient world before people knew that technological flight was possible or that there could be extraterrestrial life.

[Travis T. OJustice]

This threads real funny because the true believers are doing everything they insist the doubter are doing: insults, and a lack of research all in defense of an iron closed mind. No true believer hereon has had a remotely fitting or statistically accurate issue to respond to.

EXACTLY! Not one of the "believers" can ever prove ONE SINGLE SHRED OF EVIDENCE. Ever. Lifetime batting average of .000. Gawd, that must suck, being a 100% failure.

[Frank_Discussion]

The connection may not be there because attempts have been made by somebody (aliens or governments) to make sure the connections don’t meet up. Of course, there is the possibility that there are NO aliens with which to connect.

My gut says that in the absence of evidence, it is still not easy to say there are no aliens out there. However, the fact that there is evidence out there makes it almost impossible to deny the existence of aliens. The evidence IS there, though it is often difficult to quantify, or it is evidence of something else that is still exotic to our experience but still not part of the alien concept.

Evidence has been actively suppressed and openly riduculed by official scientific bodies and other official organs for so long, it is supremely easy to do the same as a layman. That does not preclude the existence of the evidence. As others have said, sources of the evidence exist, you can’t be an infant about it. You’ll have to pick up the fork and feed yourself.

[allmendream]

What I am saying is that crazy people throughout human history have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy stuff.

Back when nobody thought of the possibility of technological flight and extraterrestrial intelligent beings, the crazy things that crazy people claimed to have seen didn’t include such things; but instead included glowing mystical figures, flaming chariots, beams of light, a shower of golden coins, etc.

Only now that people are aware of the possibility of interplanetary spacecraft of alien life does the crazy things that crazy people claim to have seen include lighted disco disks and bug eyed aliens.

[GunRunner]

Not to say I have 100% faith in Stanton Friedman, but what he said, if it were on a more mundane military tech discussion would not get this kind of heat.

Exactly. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Friedman is a mainstay of the cable channel shows about UFOs, so while I can't claim to be a reader of his books, I've certainly listened to hours of his discussions on the topic. From that, and his comments today, I think we both can say that he's not staking any claims that can ever be proven false. No amount of physical and testimonial debunkings will ever, ever change his mind. Such is normally the case with conspiracy theories and UFOology's cousin, cryptozoology.

[Travis T. OJustice]

How about shwoing me where to find a fork. Plausible stuff only, not fringe quackery.

MAKE me want to believe, how’s that?

[razorboy]

Too many of them approach it from a standpoint of not liking people. It’s kind of a variation of the “blame America first” mentality; such a deep seated belief that people are stupid (and with recent election results I can see where this comes from) that we couldn’t possibly have invented this stuff on our own, so we must have gotten help from somebody, like reverse engineering crashed UFOs. I don’t think any of them ever actually tried to reverse engineer anything, they don’t understand that you actually do need some level of base knowledge to be able to know what you’re taking apart and learn how to replicate it.

[Frank_Discussion]

You’re completely hopeless. Who are you to say people are crazy to have seen what they’ve seen? You must have no other point in being here ther than to slur folks. Good luck out there.

[TaraP]

What have you proved razorboy?

As I have said on this thread..The Government has a Global Security Measure in place...

What do you think would happen if the government said..*We have un-covered Alien life, and we have a couple aliens we are talking to at the Pentagon currently?*

[TaraP]

Thank you for your intelligence and kindness on this thread..

It is appreciated...

[allmendream]

No. I have plenty of hope.

I see you have little hope of actually countering my argument and instead wish to engage in a discussion about me.

Crazy people throughout human history have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy things.

Amazing how none of those crazy things that crazy people claimed to have seen included lighted disco disks and bug eyed aliens until the modern technological age.

[outpostinmass2]

Bwah hah ha ha ha hah hah

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hah

lol

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Do tell us what would happen. I expect people would get up in the a.m. and go to work.

[razorboy]

I’m asking questions, I’m not trying to prove anything, I’ve got nothing to prove. Meanwhile you’re making assertions that NEED proof, but not bothering to even try, instead insisting every that disagrees is just wrong.

I don’t really think much of anything would happen. The hippy douches of the world would probably have a bunch of idiotic “welcome ceremonies”, the paranoids would batten down their hatches a little tighter, and the rest of us would go to work in the morning just like always maybe keep an eye out for TV coverage of the situation on our favorite networks.

[Travis T. OJustice]

LMAO, I’m liking the wy you put hings on this thread.

[TaraP]

DID YOUR FAVORITE NETWORK BROADCAST THIS?

During the transmission of the Moon landing of Armstrong and Aldrin, who journeyed to the Moon in an American spaceship, two minutes of silence occurred in which the image and sound were interrupted. NASA insisted that this problem was the result of one of the television cameras which had overheated, thus interfering with the reception.

This unexpected problem surprised even the most qualified of viewers who were unable to explain how in such a costly project, one of the most essential elements could break down... Some time after the historic Moon landing, Christopher Craft, director of the base in Houston, made some surprising comments when he left NASA.

Author Sam Pepper (otherwise unidentified and he has since vanished) gave this version of “the top secret tape transcript” from “a leak close to the top”, as follows:

Moon: Those are giant things. No, no, no - this is not an optical illusion. No one is going to believe this !
Houston: What ... what ... what ? What the h-— is happening ? What’s wrong with you ?
Moon: They’re here under the surface.
Houston: What’s there ? (muffled noise) Emission interrupted; interference control calling ‘Apollo 11’
Moon: We saw some visitors. They were here for a while, observing the instruments
Houston: Repeat your last information !
Moon: I say that there were other spaceships. They’re lined up in the other side of the crater !
Houston: Repeat, repeat !
Moon: Let us sound this orbita ... in 625 to 5 ... Automatic relay connected ... My hands are shaking so badly I can’t do anything. Film it ? G—, if these d—ned cameras have picked up anything - what then ?
Houston: Have you picked up anything ?
Moon: I didn’t have any film at hand. Three shots of the saucers or whatever they were that were ruining the film
Houston: Control, control here. Are you on your way ? What is the uproar with the UFOs over ?
Moon: They’ve landed here. There they are and they’re watching us
Houston: The mirrors, the mirrors - have you set them up ?
Moon: Yes, they’re in the right place. But whoever made those spaceships surely can come tomorrow and remove them. Over and out.

When the “Pepper Transcripts” first became public, UFO buffs wrote to their congressmen demanding that NASA officially confess to the coverup. NASA replied that “the incidents ... did not take place. Conversations between the Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control were released live during the entire Apollo 11 mission. There were between 1000 and 1500 representatives of the news media and T.V. present at the Houston News Center listening and observing, and not one has suggested that NASA withheld any news or conversations of this nature.” (Letter from Assistant Administrator for Legislative Affairs to several congressmen, January 1970.)

[Frank_Discussion]

What extraordinary claim did Friedman make? You may not BELIEVE the claim, but that doesn’t make it extraordinary.

I know he’s a showman, BTW, and I don’t like to watch him too often because of that. But his books have verifiable information.

As for the whole conspiracy theory thing, that’s the debunker’s red herring. If you look at the possibilities from a scientific and technological perspective, and leave out Mulder, Scully, and the Cigarette Smoking Man, there is a lot to consider. :)

I’m going to expand on something that irritates me to no end: the debunker’s call for “Show me the evidence!”

Gawd.

In the kind of work I do, there are few (read NO) people who could give you chapter and verse on every system, subsystem, flight mode, energy requirements, and who knows what else on an entire terrestrial spacecraft. Imagine what it would be like to be asked to do the same for a technology much beyond current human experience? Actually, I don’t HAVE to imagine, as I know what you do in that case - you send people to references to dig deeper. Quix has done that time after time, as have others over the years. It is a debunking technique to insist on encyclopedic personal knowledge (and instant recall of it) of an entire technology and/or sociological phenomenon. If you haragued someone like that in a business setting, you’de get your ass thrown out of the conference room with your attitude.

[Frank_Discussion]

“Crazy people throughout human history have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy things.”

I ask again - who made you the arbiter of “crazy”?

[razorboy]

I’ll be here all week, and hopefully longer.

But really I do think aliens among us would be the non-event of the century. Human beings in general, and Americans in particular, really do excel at rolling with the punches. We live in a world that regularly undergoes dramatic changes in relatively short amounts of time, and just keep on trucking. I was at work when the Berlin Wall fell, somebody came up from the break room and yell “the Wall is down” the capitalists among us yelled “woohooo” and we went back to work, and bought a bunch of magazines and stuff over the next couple of weeks.

Cars, TV, the internet, cellphones. Our world gets etch-a-sketch shook pretty regularly, and we just kind of keep on trucking. Even bad shake-ups, I found out about 9-11 while I was voting, and then went to work, didn’t get much done that day, but nothing about 9-11 meant I didn’t have bills to pay and deadlines to meet. I suppose a full fledged alien invasion might mean I don’t have bills to pay anymore, probably wouldn’t go to work then.

[TaraP]

The following is an excerpt from the transcript of the Apollo 11 technical debriefing; Aldrin: The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizeable dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it. Collins: How'd we see this thing ? Did we just look out the window and there it was. Aldrin: Yes, and we weren't sure but what it might be the S-IVB. We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6,000 miles away. We had a problem with the high gain about this time, didn't we ? Collins: There was something. We felt a bump or maybe I just imagined it. Armstrong: He was wondering whether the MESA had come off. Collins: I don't guess we felt anything. Aldrin: Of course, we were seeing all sorts of little objects going by at the various dumps and then we happened to see this one brighter object going by. We couldn't think of anything else it could be other than the S-IVB. We looked at it through the monocular and it seemed to have a bit of an L shape to it.