Showing posts with label Newspaper story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newspaper story. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

General John A. Samford's 1952 UFO Disclosure

The new blog, The Saucers That Time Forgot  presents "the cases that UFO historians either missed, or would like to keep buried." This piece was originally written for STTF, but since it's not exactly about a saucer case, and is more about UFO history, culture and the media, it's appearing here at BBL.

Most people know the Air Force's Major General John A. Samford from his historic July 29, 1952 press conference given after the Washington, D.C. radar incidents, where he talked about the small but troubling percentage of UFO reports "from credible observers of relatively incredible things." 

Major General John A. Samford, July 29, 1952 

Captain Edward Ruppelt in the notes made in preparation for his 1956 book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,  described Gen. Samford in his entries on the key figures involved in the Air Force's Project Blue Book:

An earlier draft of Ruppelt's notes.

Samford, Major General John 
General Samford never committed himself one way or the other on the subject of UFO’s. He was always very much interested and gave me the utmost in cooperation, but he never said much. He used to ask many of the other people at meetings what they thought and there were a lot of “pro” answers but he never agreed or disagreed with anyone. The only time that I ever heard him say anything was when Col Porter got real nasty about the whole thing one day and began to knock ATIC, UFO’s, me and everything associated with the project. Then the General said something to the effect that as far as he could see, I was the first person in the history of the Air Force’s investigation that had taken a serious approach to the investigation and that he didn’t see how anyone could decide until I’d collected more data.
At the present time the General is the one who is so rabid on the fact that nothing will be released. He got “burned” real bad on the press conference in July 1952. His statements were twisted around and newsreel shots of him were “cut and pieced” to get him saying things that he didn’t. He wanted to play along with the writers but they misquoted him so badly that now he is saying absolutely nothing. Donald Keyhoe keeps writing about the “silence group” in the Air Force, those who want to clamp down on UFO news.  Gen Samford is the silence group and friend Keyhoe can take all of the credit for making him that way. 
 (From "Figures Associated With Project Blue Book")

Samford's Dynamic Disclosures in See Magazine


No mention of saucers on the cover.
See magazine, dated March 1953

See was a bi-monthly magazine, sort of a more sensational version of Life, but featuring a heavier emphasis on entertainment. See's covers featured beautiful buxom women, making it look more like a girlie pin-up magazine, but they did cover news and current events. In their last issue for 1952 See made news for its coverage of the flying saucer controversy in an exclusive interview with General Samford of the USAF.

"It would be foolhardy to deny the possibility that higher forms of life exist elsewhere," reported the general just as it would be "unreasonable" to deny that we may already have been visited by beings from outer space. Regarding the, unexplained phenomena, and the possibility of the presence of an alien intelligence, General Samford added, "We believe that all of this eventually will be understood by the human mind, and that it is our job to hasten the understanding." 
 - - -

In Loren Gross' UFOs: A History 1952 November—December,  he summarizes the same interview from See, but emphasizes different points than the newspaper article.
See talks to General Samford.
The November issue of See magazine featured an interview with Chief of Air Force Intelligence General John A. Samford by the periodical's Washington editor Serge Fliegers. The General, for the most part, repeated what he said during the big press conference at the end of July. He acknowledged that 25 per cent of UFO reports were made by military personnel, rejected professor Donald Menzel's theories, and insisted that evidence of visitors from space was lacking. Have UFOs been seen over Russia, asked Fliegers? The General replied that the U.S. Air Force didn't know. The Air Force, according to Samford, also lacked satisfactory proof of the supposed "ghost rockets" reported in 1946. Before Flieger left Samford's comer Pentagon office overlooking the Potomac, he questioned the General about the possibility Communist agents were spreading flying saucer reports to put fear into Americans about Russian secret weapons. The General answered: "We cannot discount that possibility. It is under investigation." 
Indiana Evening Gazette, Dec. 26, 1952

Says Space Visitors Possible

NEW YORK -- It is definitely possible that intelligent beings from some other world have been able to visit our planet, or at least to travel within our atmosphere, Major General John A. Samford, Chief of Air Force Intelligence now investigating the Flying Saucer mystery, said today, in an exclusive interview in the current issue of See Magazine, just released.

"It would be foolhardy to deny the possibility that higher forms of life exist elsewhere," reported the general just as it would be "unreasonable" to deny that we may already have been visited by beings from outer space. Regarding the, unexplained phenomena, and the possibility of the presence of an alien intelligence, General Samford added, "We believe that all of this eventually will be understood by the human mind, and that it is our job to hasten the understanding."

In commenting upon the 20 percent of flying saucer reports which remain mysteriously unexplained, General Samford declared the saucers' behavior indicates they "either have unlimited power or no mass." Many "credible people have seen incredible things," he asserted, "some of which have later been satisfactorily explained, while others so far have defied explanation."

General Samford said that the Air Force is keeping nothing from the public regarding Project Flying Saucer. The only information not disclosed is names of those reporting saucer sightings and the method used by Air Force Intelligence to investigate and evaluate these reports.

A Harvard professor's theory that flying saucers are caused by reflected light has not yet been proved, General Samford reported. Even if it were true, he stated, "It would not account for all reports, by any means."

The general branded as false the rumor that jet pilots have had orders to shoot at saucers. "We have thousands of letters and telegrams begging us to rescind this 'shoot-on-sight order. But no "such order was ever given."

The theory of the late Secretary of Defense, James A. Forrestal, that flying saucers were related to this country's experiments with "man made moons" -- platforms that could be suspended in the atmosphere for defense and observation -- was categorically denied by General Samford. "Saucers are in no way related to these moons," he said.

Here's a partial transcript of the See magazine article itself:

Flying Saucers- the last word!

SEE presents an exclusive interview with the worlds best informed military man – Major General John A. Samford – on the worlds most exciting modern mystery 




Frequent Queries Answered Below
What do flying saucers look like?
Why did they make no sound? 
Are they really caused by reflected light? 
Does mass hysteria explain them?
Do they contain visitors from space? 

No other mystery has so inflamed the imagination of The 20th century man as the Mystery of the Flying Saucers. And no one else among us knows more about the flying saucer stand Major General John A. Samford, a tall quiet gentleman with penetrating eyes and a crack record as a fighter pilot, who sits in a corner Pentagon office overlooking the Potomac. General Samford is Chief of Air Force Intelligence. As such, he is head of Project Saucer, which has been investigating the enigmatical objects which have streaked across our heavens.

Last summer, when another rash of saucer sightings spread from coast to coast, General Samford how they press conference to quiet public furor. But that conference left a number of points on answered or unemphasized. Hence, in an effort to fill the gaps in public understanding of the subject, the questions which appear below were put to General Samford by Serge Fliegers SEE's Washington editor, who has followed saucer report from Stockholm to Seattle.

Q: General Samford, what do flying saucers look like? 
A: There is no single pattern. Unidentified aerial objects, as I prefer to call them, have been described as having cone shapes, disc shapes, ball shapes. Reports have them going and incredible speeds. 

Q: When did the reports start coming in? 
A: Here in the U.S., the Air Force started investigating such reports in the fall of 1947. On December 30, 1947, it directed its Air Force Material Command, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to set up a project to evaluate all facts concerning them. 

Q: How many reports of come in since then?
A: Serious reports analyzed by Dayton center total about 1500. Sixty-odd percent come from the civilian population. About eight per cent come from civil airline pilots, and about twenty-five per cent from military personnel, including military pilots.
 
Q: But doesn't that destroyed the "mass hysteria" explanation of saucer signings? After all, most pilots are pretty reliable man. 
A: The Air Force has never believed that all reports on unidentified aerial objects are caused by hysteria. But careful evaluation by our Dayton center showed fully 80 per cent of the reports concerned natural, explainable occurrences. 

Q: What is your reaction to that Harvard professor's (Dr. Donald Menzel) theory that flying saucers are caused by reflected light? 
A: The theory is appealing, but has not yet been proved. Therefore the Air Force cannot yet accept it as a satisfactory explanation. Furthermore, it would not account for all reports, by any means. 

Q: Violent headlines have declared that jet pilots had orders to shoot at the saucers. Is that true? 
A: We have thousands of letters and telegrams begging us to resend this "shoot on sight "order. No such order ever was given. I repeat, the Air Force never ordered it to pilots to shoot down any of these so-called "flying saucers." The pilots had orders to find and find out what they were all about. 

Flying Saucers Not Hostile 
Naturally, if a jet fighter pilot sees an object approaching at great unknown speed,  heading, say, for New York City, he is going to try to contact it. Then, if it proceed against his warnings and its actions appear hostile, he will try to intercept it. 

Q: Has the Air Force any reason to believe that these unidentified aerial objects may be a danger to us, or may be trying to harm us?
A: None whatsoever. 

Q: You say that 80% of the sources reported could be explain naturally. What about the other twenty per cent? 
A: The Air Force is still trying to answer that. 
 - - -

Something Was Not Right. Fake News?

The part about Gen. Samford saying it was unreasonable "to deny that we may already have been visited by beings from outer space" was a pretty spectacular claim to be coming from the United States government. In response to the See article, the Air Force issued a press release to correct the record. We've been unable to locate the document, but have the fragments from it carried in newspaper articles.

Oil City Derrick, Dec. 29, 1952
"As limited as man is in his knowledge and understanding of the universe and its many forces, it would be foolhardy indeed to deny the possibility that higher forms of life existed elsewhere. 
It would be similarly unreasonable to deny that intelligent beings from some other world were able to visit our planet, at least to travel within our atmosphere. 
"However, the Air Force desires to reiterate emphatically that there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that this possibility has been translated into reality."
According to Donald Keyhoe's Flying Saucers from Outer Space, the See interview was a fake:
"I saw the AP story on it," I said. "But the Air Force is a little sore about that article. (Al) Chop told me they didn't interview General Samford directly—it was supposed to be labeled a hypothetical interview based on public statements he'd made."

Who was Serge Fliegers?

Mike Wallace (L) interviewing Serge Fliegers (R) in 1962.
 "Serge Fliegers See's Washington editor..." was best known as a European correspondent for Hearst newspapers. A mini bio of him appeared in The Freeman magazine, April 1953:
Serge Fliegers was brought up in Switzerland, educated at Cambridge and Harvard. As a correspondent he has traveled in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, speaks eight languages, including Arabic. Between covering the United Nations for the Inter Continental Press and writing magazine articles, he manages to find time for his special interest- opera and instrumental music.
In 1964, Fliegers' name came up during the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Word got to them that Fliegers claimed that an anti-Khrushchev, pro-Chinese group in the Soviet Union had trained Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate the President. Investigating the credibility of Fliegers and his sources, investigators contacted Dan Brigham, an editor of the New York Journal American newspaper. Brigham was able to give them Fliegers' location for questioning, and reported that Fliegers was "one of the biggest fakers in the business and anything he says has to be taken with a large grain of salt." 

Warren Commission Exhibit No. 1444
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1444.pdf

When Fliegers was questioned about the source of his assassination information,  he said that his source may received this information from another source who, in turn, may have received the information from contacts in Russia. Pressed for the identity of his source  Fliegers was evasive and said it was impossible for him to contact him by telephone. The information went nowhere, and turned out to be rumors and speculation repeated by a reporter as if it were facts.

Silenced

Was the See interview an example of what Ed Ruppelt was saying, that Gen. Samford's comments were "cut and pieced” to get him "saying things that he didn’t?" Samford's statements were similar to his remarks from the July 29, 1952 press conference on the Washington, D.C. UFO radar incidents. 

Project Blue Book's files has the AF transcript of Samford's press conference:
https://www.fold3.com/image/1/12428060
Saturday Night Uforia has an easily searchable version of the transcript.
http://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/articles/articlehtml/samfordpctanscript.html

If the See "interview" had it's origin there, great dramatic license was taken with Samford's words. Maybe after getting burned by Serge Fliegers in See, Gen. Samford set an example for the Air Force, setting the policy that the best way to handle the press on the UFO topic was silence, "saying absolutely nothing."



Thanks to The Saucers That Time Forgot's Claude Falkstrom for the lead on this article, and to Jan Aldrich for additional details on the AF press release refuting the See article.

. . .


Footnote: Forrestal's Military Man-made Moons

The man-made moons comment in the See story was referring to data discussed in this story from Mechanix Illustrated, Apr, 1949 :
Secretary James Forrestal disclosed recently that his department is working on a “satellite base” to revolve around the world like a miniature moon, as a military outpost in space.
“The earth-satellite vehicle program, which is being carried out independently by each military service, was assigned to the committee on guided missiles for coordination,” he revealed in his first annual report on the national military establishment.
Mechanix Illustrated, Apr, 1949  




Monday, July 17, 2017

UFOs, Sea Serpents, Ridicule and Disinformation


Ridicule... it wasn't invented for flying saucer witnesses.

Neither were little green men. That was an old phrase used to describe the wee folk way before saucers, and if someone was seeing the LGM, chances were good they were drunk or had a screw loose.

The Song of the Little Green Men 
from "The Christian Advocate" magazine, Dec. 1, 1910

These little men were not necessarily green, but these tales started circulating thanks to Silas Newton's Aztec saucer crash story in 1949. This cartoon is by John Carlton from April 2, 1950 and was syndicated nationally by the Associated Press. A good look at how the public felt about the AF's handling of the saucer situation, and how the whole topic was silly.



Long before 1947, people tended to doubt the word of witnesses reporting weird things, and ridicule was a frequent response. Here are some examples from the heyday of the Sea Serpent era.
.


The Broadford Courier, March 1, 1895
 from Victoria, Australia

No, ridicule of strange sightings was not invented for UFOs. A frequent gag was that the person was seeing things as the result of drinking too much. A cartoon from the Reading Eagle, Aug. 30, 1914.

The Reading (PA) Eagle,  Aug 30, 1914 
That Sea Serpent
Q "What has become of the sea serpent that used to show up every summer?"

A: "They had to chase him off the coast. He caused so many men to take the (sobriety) pledge that he was killing business for the bar."

Another example, an even older one, from The Toronto Daily Mail, September 8, 1885!

The Toronto Daily Mail, Sep 8, 1885 

Unfortunately, ridicule and disbelief are part of human nature. It's certainly not of anti-Disclosure UFO disinformation scheme. That would be silly.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Memories of Roswell

What's in a word?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell on Aliens and their Spacecraft.

An important distinction from a flying saucer scientist

Stanton Friedman uses the term flying saucer to indicate “intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft.” He says,
A truly enormous amount of material has been written about flying saucers. Some people don’t even want me to use the term, but I use it to make an important distinctionFlying saucers are, by definition, unidentified flying objects, but very few unidentified flying objects are flying saucers. - Flying Saucers and Science

1947 artist's conception of a flying saucer.

But flying saucer did not always have that meaning. It was only after Donald Keyhoe’s article and book, Flying Saucers are Real, and the science fiction movies of the 1950s, did the term come to be understood as spacecraft. It was for that reason, unidentified flying objects or UFOs was used by the Air Force to avoid the automatic association with alien craft (but that term, too became associated with spaceships).

In 1947, when a newspaper said “flying saucer,” it was putting a label on a mystery. Spaceship from other planets was mentioned by a few, but mostly in jest, as Men from Mars were familiar to people from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers comic strips. At that time, many thought the flying saucer answer was atmospheric anomalies or secret military planes either of US or Soviet origin. It is only from our perspective, that yesterday’s headlines mentioning Flying saucers seem to be saying extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Telephone or Chinese Whispers is a game where people pass a whispered phrase around a circle to see how the story changes. It’s a good example of just how stories transmute even when there’s no intent to exaggerate or fabricate. Translation of a story from one language to another can unintentionally distort details  but a just having it paraphrased within the same language is enough to do the same thing, especially when it’s done from memory many years later.


A Newspaper Witness from Roswell?




From Edgar Mitchell’s introduction to the 2009 edition of Witness to Roswell:
“I was ready to begin my senior year in high school in the summer of 1947 when the Roswell Daily Record on July 8 proclaimed the recovery of a crashed alien spacecraft on a ranch northwest of Roswell.
The Roswell Daily Record from July 8, 1947, makes no such claims. The headline states
"RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region"
It does not characterize the object as a spacecraft, alien or otherwise.

On July 25, 2008, Edgar Mitchell appeared on BlogTalkRadio’s ShapeShifting, hosted by Lisa Bonnice. 
"Well, that the crash of an alien spacecraft in the Roswell area was a real event and much of the lore, I can't say all of the lore, but much of the fact that dead bodies were recovered and live ones were recovered, that they were not of this world, was the story. And of course it was reported in the Roswell Daily Record one day and promptly denied the next day and a cover story of a weather balloon, and that was pure nonsense. That was a cover-up.  (Quoted at http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/07/edgar-mitchell-and-roswell.html)

In this clip we see him claim that he heard stories about the Roswell alien bodies, but admits it wasn’t until after 1980, when the first Roswell UFO book was released.
Mitchell interview posted by German UFO site.

In this clip from "Roswell Slides" promoter, Jaimie Maussan, Mitchell claims that the newspaper published stories about a Roswell crash of an alien spacecraft and bodies were recovered. As seen earlier, the story was only about a “flying saucer.” 
“I read it in the newspaper. On one day- on the day it reached the newspaper, it was that an alien spacecraft has crashed and bodies recovered and the next day, thanks to the Air Force and the military, they hushed it up and said, no, it was a weather balloon.”

BeWitness video with Edgar Mitchell

Edgar Mitchell lived at Roswell at the time, but had no direct experience with the alleged UFO events. All of his information on the events come from the stories of others.  Combining his memory of the newspaper coverage with the modern definition of flying saucer, when he relates his experience, even though he is sincere, he is in error. 

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Case of the Fiery Diamond by Dennis Stacy and Kevin McKinney

The OMNI magazine October 1988 issue had an article by Dennis Stacy and Kevin McKinney, "Lee County’s Lizard Man and other Unsolved Mysteries." It was a collection of nine cases of strange, unexplained events, billed on the cover as"Nine strange mysteries that have stumped science." One of the cases feature was the Cash-Landrum case. Dennis Stacy was a staffer at the MUFON UFO Journal and was its editor from 1985 to 1997, so he was able to get good sources for the story. His co-author, Kinney was an associate editor for OMNI.

Token UFO picture, not from OMNI



The story is good, but contains some biases probably generated at the source. The most valuable thing it provides are quotes from those involved in the legal case, unique quotes from attorney William Shead,  Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Conforti, as well as defiant closing comments from Betty Cash.

OMNI Magazine October 1988


From the article "Lee County’s Lizard Man and other Unsolved Mysteries"
by Dennis Stacy and Kevin McKinney

The Case of the Fiery Diamond 

DESCRIPTION: One Of the most horrifying UFO encounters on record occurred in Dayton, Texas, near Houston, on the night of December 29, 1980. Betty Cash, then fifty-one years old, Vickie Landrum, fifty-seven, and Vickie's seven-year-old grandson Colby Landrum were returning from a bingo game. Driving along pine-tree-lined rural Highway FM1485, they allegedly sighted a hovering "diamond of fire" belching flames and emitting air-brakelike sounds. Cash brought her Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme to a halt, and all three passengers got out to take a closer look. As they gazed in awe and terror, more than 20 helicopters suddenly appeared and circled the fiery object, trailing it when it finally flew away. 

Betty Cash remained outside the car longest, until the heat became unbearable. When she attempted to reenter the car, the door handle was so hot that she had to grasp it with her coat. 

EVIDENCE: The fiery diamond left behind a legacy of illness and suffering that continues to afflict the three victims. Within hours they were medically treated for "sunburn," as well as recurring bouts of vomiting and diarrhea — apparently the results of radiation sickness. Cash’s skin blistered so badly she was hospitalized. A week later, moreover, her hair began falling out in clumps. 

Their health problems have continued to mount: Cash has undergone a mastectomy and suffered a heart attack. Landrum's vision has deteriorated, and slow-healing sores have broken out on her hands and feet. Young Colby's eyesight has also rapidly deteriorated, and abnormal patches of hair have sprouted on his chest and back. 

WITNESSES: There are at least six other eyewitnesses who saw the helicopters. There seemed to be no reason, at the time, to report the choppers to the police. The witnesses surfaced later, however, during a Mutual UFO Network investigation led by aerospace engineer John Schuessler. 

STATUS: "We have used the term UFO only for want of a better word," Schuessler explains. "It could have been a secret military experiment, for all we know." 

The helicopters were the basis for a lawsuit, according to Bill Shead, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers. "The government had to own them, and it is, therefore, responsible for damages." 

Both the Army and the Air Force, however, deny any knowledge of the event. "Whatever they saw and whatever happened is not the issue," says Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Conforti. "The question is. Why are they suing the government? It's like somebody hits your car and you decide to sue me, even though I'm not responsible for the accident." 

In September 1985 a federal district court dismissed the $20 million civil suit for injuries inflicted during the alleged encounter. "That's it, as far as the court system goes," Shead says. The only possible relief for the victims is a congressional resolution awarding damages. "It's rare, but it has happened before." 

Cash, however, remains unmollified. "Even if the government didn't know what the object was then, it does now," she says. "Those helicopters were there, and for the judge to throw the case out, not even hearing us, is a sad decision," She adds that she'll "do whatever it takes" to bring attention to the dismissed case. "I'll fight until they lay me in my grave," she says. "I want people to know how our federal judicial system works." 

RECOMMENDATION: The three victims saw something. Suggest you follow up on lawyers' or victims' future tactics. Anyone in the vicinity of Houston should be particularly observant if driving along Highway FM1485. 
- - -

Betty Cash petitioned Congress to investigate the case, but ultimately it was lost in the noise of Washington DC.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Dr. J. Allen Hynek on the Cash-Landrum UFO case


Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Speaking on the Cash-Landrum UFO Close Encounter of the Second Kind

“Something sure as hell happened..."

Dr. Hynek, as seen in Spielberg's CE3K



Dr. J. Allen Hynek was only indirectly involved with the Cash-Landrum case, but he knew it well. From the beginning, John F. Schuessler was sending copies of his Project VISIT reports to Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). In April 1981, Dr. Hynek’s protege, Allan Hendry, (CUFOS’ chief investigator) was contracted by the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR) to investigate the incident. Further, Schuessler made his first lecture on the case at Hynek’s CUFOS symposium in September 1981. While Hynek himself did not investigate the case, he was very familiar with it. 

In 1981, just as the news of the Cash-Landrum story was spreading through mainstream media, Dr. Hynek was contacted by a Texas newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for his comments on the case.


Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 13, 1981 p. 1A

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, founder of the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Ill., and the country's premier UFO investigator, termed the Dayton incident a “really crucial case,” because of the “absolutely unequivocal physical effects.”
“Something sure as hell happened: Those women didn’t pull out their hair and blind themselves," said Hynek. "The connection with the event is clear-cut. It's one-to-one. We have other cases, but rarely as clear-cut as this.”

“We are dealing with a real event , but we’re not sure if it’s a government exercise or a UFO sighting," said Hynek, who headed Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force study of UFOs from about 1948 to 1969. "There’s a lot of secret stuff going on that most people don’t know about.”
Hynek believes the women should file a lawsuit to compel disclosure.
Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 13, 1981 p. 1A
Texans Tell of Strange Encounter by Pamela Lyon

OMNI Magazine Interview with Dr. J. Allen Hynek


The year before he died, Dr. Hynek was interviewed at length by Pamela Weintraub of OMNI magazine, it appeared in the February 1985 issue. A number of UFO cases were discussed, and in a rather surprising way, the conversation turned to the Cash-Landrum case.

Dr. Hynek. Portrait from OMNI magazine
Omni: ... close encounters of the third kind might be anybody's fantasy.

Hynek: I can't disagree. That's why I'd like to focus most of my new research on close encounters of the second kind, where there are actual physical marks. -Perhaps a foreign consciousness is creating not just illusions but the real ship and the-real creatures as well. If they weren't physical creations, they couldn't leave traces. That's the importance of the close encounter of the second kind. Let us suppose that a very, very advanced civilization has, as a part of its everyday technology, the ability to project a thought form that, like a holographic image, temporarily assumes three-dimensional reality. This is just speculation of the wildest sort, but if the UFO phenomenon is doing anything, it's causing us to expand our imagination, to make us aware that this nice, cozy world we live in is only the world we see around us, not the sum total of our environment. 

Omni: Are there any close encounters of the second kind that you feel would particularly help to reveal this broader reality? 

Hynek: I'd like to get to the bottom of the Cash/Landrum affair. The story there concerns Betty Cash, Vicki Landrum. and Vicki's grandson Colby The three were coming back from a Bingo game when they saw a glowing triangle spewing flames above them in the sky. They stopped the car to watch the thing, and as it moved off, they reportedly saw about twenty-three helicopters escorting it out. After they got home there were all sorts of physiological effects: Their eyes swelled, their hair fell out, they developed blisters, they were nauseated and weak. The event completely altered their lives. 

Omni: What do you think was at the root? 

Hynek: My best guess is that they were exposed to some kind of microwave radiation. 
Space-shuttle engineer John Schuessler, who's investigating the case, is veering toward the idea that the three were exposed to a government device escorted by twenty-three helicopters, He's even helped Betty, Vicki, and Colby to institute a lawsuit against the government. But there's another side of all this: Where would twenty-three helicopters come from? First of all, it was Christmas week, and people at the bases said they would never conduct military exercises at a time like that. 

Omni: Certainly you can't be suggesting the possibility of twenty-three extraterrestrial helicopters? 

Hynek: No, that's preposterous. But perhaps Cash and the Landrums saw a holographic image of the helicopters. I could buy that more than I buy twenty-three solid, physical helicopters from some unknown base, when no baseman will admit seeing so many helicopters of that particular kind. 

Omni: Yet I really think that we're obliged to  consider the fact that some of these sightings are due to government craft. Recently, James E. Oberg traced many reports to secret Soviet satellite launchings. 

Hynek: Today, of course, such technology may account for many reports. From 1947 through 1955, however, almost none of the maneuvers ascribed to UFOs could have been duplicated with human technology. And even today, our technology can duplicate only part of the phenomenon. We still don't have craft that can hover and then take off at fantastic speed. 

Omni: As far as you know. But the government has been implicated in other ways as well. A group known as CAUS [Citizens Against UFO Secrecy] claims that the government has been orchestrating a massive cover-up of UFO information. They've recently invoked the Freedom of Information Act to obtain classified information. Have they found anything, and do you believe there's a government cover-up? 

Hynek: What can be covered up? You can cover up ignorance, embarrassment, sinister political acts. I myself don't see real evidence for a diabolical, Machiavellian cover-up. I do perceive a strong reluctance to share information with the public.

The conversation turns to other UFO topics. See this link for a PDF of the entire article:

Omni Magazine February 1985 interviewed by Pamela Weintraub.