Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

UFO or not UFO? Area 51 declassifying pours cold water on theory..
The Tech Herald ^ | April 12th, 2009 | Rich Bowden

Posted on 04/13/2009 11:39:11 AM PDT by 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."


TOPICS: Conspiracy; UFO's
KEYWORDS: aatip; area51; fringe; mystery; ohsomysteriouso; uap; ufo; ufos; usaf
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160 ... 521-539 next last
To: Frank_Discussion

Do you deny that there have been crazy people throughout human history?

Do you deny that these crazy people have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy things?

Do you wish to deal with why nobody before the technological age claimed to have seen aliens coming out of a flying disco disk?

Obviously not.


121 posted on 04/13/2009 2:01:06 PM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 118 | View Replies]

To: TaraP

LOL, I have an autographed Buzz Aldrin pic on my office wall. It’s the one where he’s (supposedly) on the surface of the moon.

So, they saw an L-shaped object. I guess that is proof positive Space Aliens exist. LOL!


122 posted on 04/13/2009 2:04:35 PM PDT by Travis T. OJustice (I can spell just fine, thanks, it's my typing that sucks.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 120 | View Replies]

To: allmendream

Is Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong your version of *Crazy*

OR:
Does NASA recruit from Mental Institutions?


123 posted on 04/13/2009 2:05:34 PM PDT by TaraP (The RAPTURE: Separation of Church and State)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 121 | View Replies]

To: TaraP

Oooh a guy that’s “unidentified” and “vanished” puts forth an unverifiable transcript and that’s proof. Of course I found a link that would appear to be where you quoted from (because it’s got your whole block of text verbatim)
http://ronrecord.com/astronauts/armstrong-collins-aldrin.html

What’s interesting is the text that comes immediately AFTER the part you quoted:

In 1976, chief of the astronaut office Deke Slayton claimed that “I don’t recall any of our astronauts ever reporting UFOs.”
NASA claims that all photos, all voice transcripts, all debriefings are in the public domain and are available to the news media. ...
...Who has taken the trouble to check out this material ? Well, James Oberg has, for example. Alan Sandler did. Dr Hynek visited the Houston space center in July 1976 and was shown the material in question. NASA’s original story, surprising, has been
...From internal evidence alone, it looks more and more like a crude hoax. This can be deduced from the vocabulary itself.
“Mission Control, this is Mission Control...” this was NEVER a phrase used by NASA, which instead always referred to “Houston”.
Technical-sounding gibberish such a “field-distortion”, “orbit scanned”, “625 to the fifth”, “auto-relays”, etc. were never found in real transcripts.
“Repeat, repeat...” is never used on the radio; instead astronauts and Mission Control use the phrase “Say Again”.
In addition, interviews with the handful of amateur radio listeners who are known to have tuned in to the S-Band (2270 megahertz) moon signals produced testimony that they heard the same conversations which were released by NASA. Since listening to the m
...The unavoidable conclusion is that the “Pepper Transcript” was either fabricated or that Pepper used very poor judgement in allowing himself to be victimized by somebody else’s fake.


124 posted on 04/13/2009 2:06:21 PM PDT by razorboy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 116 | View Replies]

To: Travis T. OJustice

Are you an astronaut?

Have you been to the Moon?

Do you work on the Space Station?

Do you have Area 51 Priviledges?

Did you interview all the folks who were a witness to the Roswell incident?

Do you believe in GOD?

Or are you just one of the run of the mill *Scoffers*


125 posted on 04/13/2009 2:08:52 PM PDT by TaraP (The RAPTURE: Separation of Church and State)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 122 | View Replies]

To: allmendream

“Do you deny that there have been crazy people throughout human history?”

Oh brother. That’s as silly as me asking you if you deny that there have been sane people throughout human history. My answer to you is, no, I don’t deny any such thing.

“Do you deny that these crazy people have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy things?”

Another silly question, and begs some additional related and more interesting questions:

Do you deny that these crazy people have claimed to have seen some pretty normal things?

Do you deny that sane people have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy things?

Do you deny that sane people have claimed to have seen some pretty normal things?

“Do you wish to deal with why nobody before the technological age claimed to have seen aliens coming out of a flying disco disk?”

Certainly, if they held belief systems or a limited propensity to abstraction, they would call “aliens” by some other name. Gods, angels, devils, demons, spirits, mosters, mysteries. I’m certain as well that acient peoples had no experience with disco, of which I am somewhat envious. :)

What you consider to be “obvious” is pretty humorous.


126 posted on 04/13/2009 2:09:49 PM PDT by Frank_Discussion (May the wings of Liberty never lose a feather!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 121 | View Replies]

To: TaraP

Gee you’re quoting from the same link again, let’s look a little further down:

Aldrin: So then I got down in the LEB and started looking for it in the optics. We were grossly misled because with the sextant off focus what we saw appeared to be a cylinder.
Armstrong: Or really two rings.
Aldrin: Yes.
Armstrong: Two rings. Two connected rings.
Aldrin: Yes.
Collins: No, it looked like a hollow cylinder to me. It didn’t look like two connected rings. You could see this thing tumbling and, when it came around end-on, you could look right down in it’s guts. It was a hollow cylinder. But then you could change the focus on the sextant and it would be replaced by this open book shape. It was really weird.
Aldrin: I guess there’s not too much more to say about it other than it wasn’t a cylinder.
Collins: It was during the period when we thought it was a cylinder that we inquired about the S-IVB and we’d almost convinced ourselves that’s what it had to be. But we don’t have any more conclusions than that really. The fact that we didn’t see it much past this one period -— we really don’t have a conclusion as to what it might have been, how big it was, or how far away it was. It was something that wasn’t part of the urine dump, we’re pretty sure of that.

Looks like optic problems distorting something. Something they don’t know what it was, and they aren’t concluding it’s from a UFO.


127 posted on 04/13/2009 2:11:41 PM PDT by razorboy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 120 | View Replies]

To: razorboy

Much is out there if your really CARED TO LOOK..

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Are UFOs Real?

Aired July 13, 2007 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, was a UFO buzzing around the historic Apollo 11 moon mission?
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin tells us what he thinks he saw.

Arizona’s former governor once dismissed the Phoenix lights that stunned hundreds of eyewitnesses 10 years ago. He’ll explain why he now says they could not have been military flares.

Plus, the stories behind the close encounters former Presidents Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter allegedly had.

And a return to Roswell, New Mexico, where the UFO controversy began 60 years ago with the man who says his father showed him debris from an alien spacecraft.


128 posted on 04/13/2009 2:12:34 PM PDT by TaraP (The RAPTURE: Separation of Church and State)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 124 | View Replies]

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

I would say that any claim that fundamentally changes our understanding of the universe qualifies as an extraordinary claim.

The general theory of relativity, the discovery of the atom, Lemaitre's Big Bang, all extraordinary.

Aliens visiting this planet in interstellar vehicles is an example of an extraordinary claim. Mundane military tech discussions are not.

That's the difference; that's why Friedman's statement drew heat when it would otherwise not if he was addressing something more pedestrian.

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.

Where did I demand encyclopedic personal knowledge from anyone? I would simply ask for some piece of evidence that is reproducible, verifiable, and accessible to observation and experimentation. Is there any field other than Ufology that doesn't have to meet this standard (religion doesn't count)?

I don't really understand your "business setting" jibe. But as someone who is in the business of knowing a product with encyclopedic knowledge, I can say that you're quite wrong about that. On the contrary, not being able to back up your claims is the way you get your ass thrown out on the curb.

129 posted on 04/13/2009 2:13:30 PM PDT by GunRunner
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 117 | View Replies]

To: Frank_Discussion

And yet their descriptions are nowhere close to describing a disco light UFO and bug eyed aliens. Demons and angels and spirits and monsters were all clearly described in the ancient world; none of them even remotely resembled the modern mythological creatures that UFO kooks claim to have seen.

Why is that?


130 posted on 04/13/2009 2:14:08 PM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 126 | View Replies]

To: TaraP

Yeah because Larry King is the font of all truth. Heck he’s had more recent UFO shows than that, my FIL was on one in 2008. Unfortunately it’s all the typical Larry King twaddle, oriented towards confrontation to make good TV but carefully avoiding any useful questions.

Again I do believe in possibilities. But most of the “proof” is junk.


131 posted on 04/13/2009 2:17:30 PM PDT by razorboy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 128 | View Replies]

To: allmendream
Frankly...I do not think Aliens look like *Greys* Big eyes grey bodies giant heads..I think they look like human beings Like Geithner and Sarkozy... In these last days, the Bible says it will be a time of mass hybridization and the mixture and corruption of human DNA by fallen angels, also known as "Aliens."
132 posted on 04/13/2009 2:21:04 PM PDT by TaraP (The RAPTURE: Separation of Church and State)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 130 | View Replies]

To: TaraP; Travis T. OJustice; allmendream; Star Traveler; Quix

Ahhh. . .”The Day After Roswell” and supposed selective leaking of “alien technology.”

An amusing read, especially when given the fact the R&D in all these areas is quit well documented, and overlooking the tens of thousands of people over the years that would have to be in on the conspiracy. . .but then again, the lack of evidence of a conspiracy is proof of how good the conspiracy actually is.

With that in mind, how do we know you aren’t one of “them”. . .hummmmm. . . I wonder.


133 posted on 04/13/2009 2:21:17 PM PDT by Hulka
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: TaraP
Wow. Try double ply tinfoil.

So aliens are actually Angels?

Angels come from other planets?

Or are UFO’s spiritual not technological?

They need technology in Heaven?

The Bible mentions DNA?

134 posted on 04/13/2009 2:26:43 PM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 132 | View Replies]

To: Hulka; TaraP; Travis T. OJustice; allmendream; Quix

But..., it makes for a heck of a time on Free Republic, though... :-)


135 posted on 04/13/2009 2:31:57 PM PDT by Star Traveler
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 133 | View Replies]

To: allmendream

Yes Angels are from the Bible...Not all Angels are of GOD
Some are Demons....Who built the Pyramids? Why didn’t any other cultures try to re-create the Pyramids?

Why did GOD destroy the world in Noah’s Flood?
The Bible says Fallen Angels were pro-creating with eartly women.
In Enoch

Chapter 6:1 it says..

1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.

2 And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men

3 and beget us children.’ And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them:

Chapter 15

1 And He answered and said to me, and I heard His voice: Fear not, Enoch, thou righteous

2 man and scribe of righteousness: approach hither and hear my voice. And go, say to the Watchers of heaven, who have sent thee to intercede for them: “You should intercede” for men, and not men for you: Wherefore have ye left the high, holy, and eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men and taken to yourselves wives, and done like the children

4 of earth, and begotten giants (as your) sons? And though ye were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten (children) with the blood of flesh, and, as the children of men, have lusted after flesh and blood as those also do who die

In the LAST DAYS..Jesus said we would be living like the Days of Noah...SO IMHO that mean Aliens/Demons are inhabiting the earth..
P.S

Jesus did not wear a Double Tinfoil Hat....


136 posted on 04/13/2009 2:37:32 PM PDT by TaraP (The RAPTURE: Separation of Church and State)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 134 | View Replies]

To: TaraP
You do not speak with the voice of Jesus.

Pyramids were unique to Egyptian culture. Why WOULD any other culture build a Pyramid as a tomb for their fallen kings if they didn't believe that it would confer any benefit upon their king in the afterlife?

The Pyramids were built by human means, no aliens required.

In fact, the only tall imposing structure that CAN be built using the technology of the time is a PYRAMID.

That is why the American natives built large stone stepped pyramids as well. Because it was the only large structure that they COULD build.

So are UFO’s technological or spiritual?

Do they need interstellar space craft in Heaven?

The Bible says they can descend to Earth and ascend to Heaven. It says nothing about flashing disco light disks being required.

137 posted on 04/13/2009 2:44:56 PM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 136 | View Replies]

To: Frank_Discussion; allmendream
Do you deny that sane people have claimed to have seen some pretty crazy things?

Summer of the 3rd grade, back in the sixties. Me and a bunch of other kids were playing nighttime "Hide and Go Seek". I was 'it. I leaned against the tree (home base), counted to one hundred, then turned to go after my victims.

It was a very clear night and a light in the sky caught my eye. It looked just like a falling star. I was excited to see one so I watched. The 'star' streaked acroos the sky and then it abruptly stopped. It sat motionless for several seconds and then streaked off in a different direction.

The 'star' traversed over half the sky and then stopped again. Once more it sat motionless, but still bright, for a few seconds. After that, it tore off again in another direction and disappeared. An awesome sight for a little boy but I went back to playing hide & seek just the same.

138 posted on 04/13/2009 2:47:04 PM PDT by houeto (I see Obama voters...and it's changed my tipping habits.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 126 | View Replies]

To: allmendream

JMO...

As I said, I come from this in a *Biblical Perspective*
The End of Days could not be understood until Israel became a nation once again...When did that happen? 1947...

When did people, Roswell, UFO’s really take off? 1947

Jesus spoke of a *Last Generation* to see this prophecy all take place...Are we that generation? 40 yrs 70 yrs?

Jesus made a point of saying... *Do not be deceived* Let no one deceive you, DECEPTION WILL BECOME APPARENT in the Last Days...

Jesus also said..the Last Days are and will be like the one Noah lived in....

The Prophet Daniel and the 70 weeks is also about the increase of knowledge, how we communicate...

So like I said..this is just my opinion, but I think Alien/Demons could of pro-created with women in our lifetime, I think those creatures are in some of today’s Churches and Governments, I think they are deceiving people currently....


139 posted on 04/13/2009 2:47:36 PM PDT by TaraP (The RAPTURE: Separation of Church and State)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 134 | View Replies]

To: TaraP
Reference your question as to what the population response would be to an Alien contact, Col John Alexander (PhD), and others, wrote scholarly on this subject:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/religion.htm

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/alexander/statistical_analysis.html

and

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/alexander/response_analysis.html

and

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/alexander/survey_religion.html

etc.

Findings indicate no massive spiritual rupture or mass panic.

140 posted on 04/13/2009 2:51:42 PM PDT by Hulka
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 109 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160 ... 521-539 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson