Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 01:03:17 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Underwater caves off Yucatan yield three old skeletons—remains date to 11,000 B.C.
http://www.edgarcayce.org/am/11,000b.c.yucata.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

MAJESTIC 12 & THE SECRET GOVERNMENT

Pages: 1 [2] 3   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: MAJESTIC 12 & THE SECRET GOVERNMENT  (Read 2858 times)
0 Members and 94 Guests are viewing this topic.
Jennie McGrath
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4349



« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2007, 12:51:01 pm »

The Study Begins

On October 6, 1966, the University of Colorado formally agreed to undertake the UFO study. Condon would be the director, while Low was coordinator and Saunders a co-principal investigator, along with astronomer Franklin Roach. The other primary Committee members were astronomer William K. Hartman; psychologists Michael Wertheimer, Dan Culbertson and James Wadsworth (a graduate student); chemist Roy Craig; electrical engineer Norman Levine; physicist Frederick Ayer; and administrative assistant Mary Louise Armstrong. Several other scientists or experts would serve in part-time and temporary roles, or as consultants.

Two days after the Committee had formally accepted the project, the Denver Post quoted Low as saying that the project had met the University's acceptance threshold by the narrowest of margins, and furthermore that the project was accepted largely because it was difficult to say no to the Air Force.

Public response to the Committee's announcement was generally positive; historian Jacobs argues that there was "optimism on all sides." (Jacobs, 225). Hynek characterized Condon's perspective towards UFOs as "basically negative", but he also assumed the Condon's opinions would change once he familiarized himself with the evidence in some of the more puzzling UFO cases. NICAP’s Donald Keyhoe was publicly supportive, but privately expressed fears that the Air Force would be controlling things from behind the scenes. That a scientist of Condon's standing would involve himself with UFO research marked something of a sea change, and heartened some academics who had long expressed interest in the subject, such as atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald. Many other scientists who’d earlier been hesitant to speak out on the subject now offered their opinions, whether skeptical, supportive or somewhere in between.

One of the Condon Committee’s first formal duties was a briefing by Hynek and astrophysicist/mathematician Jacques Vallee. Both men stressed the importance of implementing a fast, consistent, statistical rating system to sort UFO reports and focus attention towards the best documented and most puzzling cases. The Committee also met with Major Hector Quintanilla (then head of Project Blue Book), and with Col. Robert Hippler of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The Committee secured the help of civilian UFO research group APRO, though they would play a relatively minor role in the project when compared to NICAP's involvement. In November of 1966, Keyhoe and Richard Hall (both of NICAP), briefed the panel. They agreed to share NICAP’s considerable research files, and also to implement an Early Warning System to better collect UFO reports. Eventually, Hall and Saunders would form a "close working relationship" after Hall worked for the Committee as a paid consultant for two weeks, compiling some of NICAP’s best-documented, yet most perplexing UFO reports. Clark writes that "As with so much of the project would start, nothing would come of Hall’s efforts." (Clark, 596)

The remainder of 1966 was devoted primarily to assembling a library, and determining how to best collect on-site investigations of UFO reports as quickly as possible. Despite these advances, the Committee was somewhat adrift and directionless for a few months, due in no small part to disagreements among the Committee’s members as to goals and methods. There was no shortage of suggestions, noted Saunders, who also lamented that "fifteen months and $313,000 did not allow the luxury of doing anything we could imagine." (Saunders and Harkins, 77) Hynek notes that "groping for a methodology was an absorbing pastime for the committee." (Hynek, 200)

A particular problem was that by seeking out people with no position on UFOs, the Committee was staffed by persons with no experience regarding (or knowledge of) previous UFO studies. One Committee member suggested filming UFOs using stereo cameras mounted with defraction gratings in order to study the spectrum of light emitted by UFOs. This had been attempted some fifteen years earlier following a specific suggestion regarding UFOs made by Dr Joseph Kaplan in 1954, but was quickly judged impractical after a number of such cameras were distributed to Air Force bases. (Hynek, 199) Had the Committee known this, they would not have spent any of their limited time exploring unproductive ideas.

When the Air Force asked for a progress report in January, 1967. Committee members scrambled to prepare a presentation. During the meeting with Air Force officials, Committee members noted that they had decided to focus more on the witnesses than on the UFO reports themselves. As Swords writes, "Michael Wertheimer wanted to create UFO-simulation events and then sweep through the area studying the perceptual, memory, and reporting accuracies of the population. Another psychologist, Stuart Cook, supported that. Colonel Hippler said absolutely not. That's all we need: Inventing fake UFOs to fool people; a public relations catastrophe for the Air Force."

Yet beyond Hippler's disapproval of Werthheimer and Cook's idea, the meeting was unproductive until Low asked specifically what the Air Force expected from the Committee. The Air Force representatives had no ready reply.

A few days later, Col. Hippler wrote to Low. Though he wrote on Air Force letterhead, Hippler stressed that he was writing not in any official capacity, and suggested that ultimately, the UFO project "ought to be able to come to an anti-ETH conclusion", as Clark writes. Hippler went on to write that the Air Force wanted to cease its UFO studies, and that an official study reporting that there was nothing unusual about UFO reports would be the best way to accomplish this goal. (Clark, 597) Low replied to the letter, thanking Hippler for clarifying the Air Force’s expectations. With this sequence of events, Dr. Michael D. Swords argued some years later, "the fix was in." (Clark, 597)
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy