The UFO Phenomenon - Seeing Is Believing (Peter Jennings tonight - Live Thread)

ABC News ^ | Feb. 24, 2005

[traumer]

Almost 50 percent of Americans, according to recent polls, and millions of people elsewhere in the world believe that UFOs are real. For many it is a deeply held belief.

For decades there have been sightings of UFOs by millions and millions of people. It is a mystery that only science can solve, and yet the phenomenon remains largely unexamined. Most of the reporting on this subject by the mainstream media holds those who claim to have seen UFOs up to ridicule.

On Feb. 24, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" takes a fresh look at the UFO phenomenon. "As a journalist," says Jennings, "I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible. After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered — and a great deal not fully explained."

"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" airs Thursday, Feb. 24 from 8-10 p.m. ET on ABC. The program will be broadcast in High Definition.

This two-hour primetime special reports on the entire scope of the UFO experience — from the first famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 to the present day. The program draws on interviews with police officers, pilots, military personnel, scientists and ordinary citizens who give extraordinary accounts of encounters with the unexplained. Also included are the voices of professional skeptics about UFOs, including scientists who are leading the search for life forms beyond Earth elsewhere in the universe.

The program explores the facts behind the enduring mystery of the incident at Roswell, N.M., and looks into the strange stories of alien abductions. Among the UFO cases presented:

Minot Air Force Base, N.D., October 1968 — Sixteen airmen on the ground and the crew of an airborne B-52 witness a massive unidentified object hovering near the base.

Phoenix, March 1997 — Hundreds witness a huge triangular craft moving slowly over the city.

St. Clair County, Ill., January 2000 — Police officers in five adjoining towns all independently report witnessing a giant craft with multiple bright lights moving silently across the sky at a very low altitude.

Today if you report a UFO to the U.S. government you will be informed that the Air Force conducted a 22-year investigation that ended in 1969 and concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security and are of no scientific interest. But as one of the world's leading theoretical physicists says in the program, "You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by … a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology."

"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" is produced by PJ Productions and Springs Media for ABC News. Mark Obenhaus and Tom Yellin are the executive producers.

[LauraleeBraswell]

I read the Revelations- and they are REALLY REALLY scary.

I just- well I'm not Christian.

I just think they read like they were crazy.

[Quix]

Lots of history will have to be rewritten.

BTW, so far, I think Jennings is a duplicitous idiot on this show.

[disclaimer]

UFOs and aliens—is there something going on?
...Given the number of unexplainable sightings every year, however, there should be a virtual queue of extraterrestrial craft entering our atmosphere. But this has never been detected. Although the majority of sightings are explainable as natural or man-made phenomena, or psychological delusions, some are not so easy to dismiss. Regardless of whatever one may think they are, the evidence suggests that they are already here, that is, emanating from the earth.
Read more...

[SalukiLawyer]

Some on this thread seem to be sounding like experts on sleep paralysis and hallucinations. I doubt seriously most have even half my credentials on those topics.

My credentials are I had an awareness during sleep paralysis experience once, which, like sex, is a whole lot more to the point than only reading about it :-) Also, I do have some experience in credibility of eyewitness accounts, and how untrue beliefs can be shaped by the investigative process.

I'm not anti-UFO at all. I think something more is going on that the skeptical scientists on the show are willing to admit. I am just keeping an open mind about what most of them may be. I just don't believe the typical abduction stories, that's all, because they are, to my mind, satisfactorially explained by the stuff I discussed earlier.

I come in peace!

[Figment]

Everything's unidentifiable in the dark

[Tribune7]

Weren't for them alien fellers, we'd never have broken the sound barrier. Read it in comic book or saw it on ABC or sumthin' so I know it's true.

[SlightOfTongue]

"This is what Peter Jennings career has come to. How pathetic. But then again, I'm more optimistic about seeing a UFO then I am ever getting a social security check" The Art Bell of the alphabet nets lol. If one answers the fundamental question of why the vast majority of ufo's are seen at night, the subject becomes moot

Just what in the name of Chr*st are you talking about or smoking?

[SalukiLawyer]

lawbreaking of a certain slightly above misdemeaner nature will entail INSTANT EXECUTION by the closest policeman

Man, I better start looking for another line of work, since clients are going to be pretty thin on the ground!

[LauraleeBraswell]

All this Conspiracy theory, alien-Christian, end of the world, Globalisation junk makes me never want to have children.

[Joe Republc]

I wonder if Peter Jennings will consult anyone from the Jesus Seminar? They could use their beads on a case-by-case basis to decide which UFOs are 'real' and which are fictive.

-- Joe

[Dolphy]

Are these puppet masters mortal men or are they endowed with some kind of power beyond that of money and world political visions? And do I understand you to say that some UFOs and such are their work and some not?

[razorback-bert]

The pictures of the Roswell crash site shown on ABC tonight are not of the actual site, I have worked within walking distance of the site as defined by locals from the time.

BTW, there is a long groove in the ground.

[My2Cents]

Thanks. I'm sure my leftist colleague in the next cube will appreciate it. :-)

[Quix]

Did you observe in the last election:

1) the MSM

2) the public's response to the MSM;

3) SKERRY and company.

REflecting back even to 1960, I knew at the time--I was in Jr high--I could tell at the time that there were massvive amounts of coercive manipulation going on with the public regarding elections and other government maneuvers.

It's gotten geometrically worse.

The puppet masters et things up to be able to manipulate through essentially a critical mass in either party.

The Senate has to be wholesale compromised as does the Supreme Court.

I mostly don't think it matters any more who is President--except that I think Bush is honorable enough to try and do the patriotic thing as much as he can get away with it.

[World'sGoneInsane]

Jimmy Carter saw a UFO?!?!?

That was no UFO, it was a flying squirrel.

[djf]

Personally, I don't think man will be eradicated off the planet for a long time.

Hell, we can't even get rid of all the cockroaches.

[Quix]

Thanks.