The UFO Bestiary; A Rebuttal By Stanton T. Friedman

By Stanton T. Friedman
www.stantonfriedman.com
© 5-4-12

I read your article with interest. I will give you credit for consistency. When you attended my “Flying Saucers ARE Real” lecture on the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2003, you didn’t raise your hand as having read any of the 5 large scale scientific UFO volumes that I spoke of. In 2004 when we debated on Coast to Coast Radio, it was quite clear that you still hadn’t read any. That may be one of several reasons you lost the debate to me by 57% to 33% for you and 10% undecided .

When some time later we were both on Larry King, it was still clear that you hadn’t done your homework about the UFO evidence or the easily demonstrated government cover-up. You pointed to the government’s mishandling of the FEMA/Katrina event and their mismanagement of the post office as proving they couldn’t cover up anything. I will admit that wasn’t as silly as the claim made by your colleague Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson that the proof of no cover-up was how much the public has learned about President Clinton’s genitalia. I gather neither of you know anything about how security works. No mention of the NRO, NSA, CIA,DIA, OSI, ONI? They are some of the agencies which keep secrets. Their cumulative annual budget has been estimated at well over $30, billion. Perhaps you can tell me what is under the whiteout used by the NSA on better than 95% of the material on 156 pages of old TOP SECRET UMBRA NSA UFO documents? All one can read is about one sentence per page. How about the many pages of TOP SECRET UMBRA CIA UFO documents, almost all of which are blacked out? No Cover-up?

I was glad to see you mention the Betty and Barney Hill case. Too bad you didn’t mention the 2007 book “Captured: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience” by myself and Kathleen Marden, Betty’s niece. It has an entire chapter on the star map work relating to Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli. Your readers would have learned that they are the closest to each other pair of sun like stars in our local neighborhood being 30 times closer to each other than the sun is to its nearest neighbor. By the way, they are also a cool billion years older than the sun. Reticulans would have had a much greater incentive for developing interstellar travel than do we(with such close neighbors) and also considerable more time. Of course one must ask the SETI community why ETI’s would send messages to earth in the first place and why they would use a primitive technology such as we Earthlings are limited to. After all, Marconi’s first long distance signals were sent only 111 years ago. Do you really believe any advanced civilization, maybe only 1000 or a million years older than ours , would still be using such primitive tools? Are you still using a slide rule? Using your strange reasoning, I presume the fact that SETI has picked up no signals from any target means there is nobody out there. Right?

It sounds likely from your article that you think the only sources of UFO information are the emails sent to you. I have a list of 10 old PhD theses about UFOs in my “TOP Secret/MAJIC.” MUFON has had over 40 annual Symposia with Proceedings published every year. Most of the papers are prepared by engineers and scientists who, unlike you, have studied the relevant evidence.

As you will recall, I, with your permission ,sent you my 2008 book “Flying Saucers and Science.” I know you received it because on a later Coast to Coast program you claimed it was on your night stand. Too bad you still haven’t read it. You are, of course, mentioned in it in the chapter on The Cult of SETI. The studies are discussed in detail as is the cover-up, star travel, motivations for visiting Earth, etc

I agree with you that it is hard to believe that governments are the only ones able to obtain evidence . . . witness the Hill case. I don’t think that is true. However, you must admit that governments are the ones in charge of large radar networks, spy satellites, sophisticated signal receiving equipment and the right to grab and keep wreckage such as that from Roswell and Aztec They also have strong powers of witness intimidation. I suspect the ridicule offered by the SETI community has helped intimidate people.

90% of the people in my audiences who claim to have seen a flying saucer have not reported what they has seen . . .. They have expressed fear of ridicule from “Experts“ such as you and Dr. Tyson. I don’t agree with the notions of your email critics that the only reason that few scientists give much credence to the visitation idea are that 1. The government is keeping all the good evidence under wraps and scientists are knee jerk debunker, unwilling to take any of this stuff seriously. I have had only 11 hecklers in over 700 lectures and, as you know, I come on very strongly. I think the primary reason is a combination of ego and ignorance. Look at you. You haven’t paid any attention to five large scale scientific studies that you have been told about by a scientist who has now been studying the subject for 54 years and who has worked under security, and on systems for deep space travel, and been to 20 archives.

It is obvious that if significant data were released proving alien visitations, that nobody would need to waste money listening for hypothetical SETI signals. Better to learn sign language. It is also obvious that you and Dr. Tyson and others in the astronomical community abide by 3 major rules:

A. Don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is made up.

B. What the public, and my colleagues, don’t know, I won’t tell them.

C. I will do my research by proclamation, investigation is too much trouble. These are hardly the way of science. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is no excuse for ignoring the relevant data when there is so much of it.

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