Couldn't they have coordinated with this the lunch of the new X-Files? Fox marketing sucks!
CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
31–40 of 224 posts
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#32Reports of strange new energies & crafts also made science seem magical and helped fire the imagination of the next generation of scientists and engineers for the ongoing cold war. The UFO phenomenon was handy on a few fronts.
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#33I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed t…
I read a history of Area 51 that had several interesting stories in a similar vein. The book struck me as down-to-earth and well researched.
http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/d...
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, I asked my grandfather, who was at that time an AF Colonel (he's now passed away), whether UFOs were real and whether he has seen aliens. He just looked at me, took me aside, and told me that UFO stories were propagated by the "boys from Langley" as a way to hide experimental aircraft testing. That way, every report of some black plane that was seen by the public, would be chalked up to UFOs and Rus…
RE: Abductions, it's entirely possible that those stories could be, instead, related to MK Ultra [0] rather than Air force testing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
Anybody who hasn't, do read to see how much they were ready to do. Abductions or just "anal probes" are nothing compared to their actions. Note the use of different drugs and the brain washing experiments after which some innocent people never recovered.
E.g.
"In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels in San Francisco, California to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events." (...) "In other experiments where people were given LSD without their knowledge, they were interrogated under bright lights with doctors in the background taking notes. The subjects were told that their "trips" would be extended indefinitely if they refused to reveal their secrets."
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#35I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed t…
Oh, I remember reading something about this in the book "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base"
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#36Good to see that the CIA has a little bit of a sense of humor about this kind of thing. What a PR coup by the X-files reboot, as well.
The CIA twitter feed [1] is pretty cool. This isn't them just taking advantage of X-files, their social media was already pretty good.
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#37[deleted]
Why does everyone always assume the government would hide aliens from the public?
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#38If you want to understand the UFO story better, you should watch Mirage Men about Air Force Office of Special Investigations Agent Richard Doty, a self-admitted UFO disinformation agent- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14 The intelligence agencies aren't hiding anything about UFOs from my experience. And I don't really think the USAF is either. But the USAF did tell various people that UFOs were real and the…
When I was a kid, I asked my grandfather, who was at that time an AF Colonel (he's now passed away), whether UFOs were real and whether he has seen aliens. He just looked at me, took me aside, and told me that UFO stories were propagated by the "boys from Langley" as a way to hide experimental aircraft testing. That way, every report of some black plane that was seen by the public, would be chalked up to UFOs and Rus…
Like carrots.
The British promulgated the belief that carrots improve eyesight to explain the effective of their aircraft spotters, instead of radar.
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#39I love UFOs because UFOs tell us a lot about how we deal with non-reproducible observations. Walk outside and see a green, glowing light that hovers then disappears? You can walk outside again for the rest of your life and never see it again. Does that mean you didn't see anything? Of course not.
This really messes with people's heads. The rationalists will say that since we can't independently observe it, it might as well not exist. Folks who have a deep mythology as part of their worldview will simply incorporate their observation into their mythology.
Even cooler is the fact that something is obviously going on that we can't categorize or figure out. (See thunderstorm sprites and jets as a recent example). Is it one phenomenon? Highly unlikely. But beats me how many different and really cool things there are out there to discover. I'm sure some of these may take hundreds of years to nail down, if ever.
And then the government gets involved and -- get this -- starts deliberately fucking with people about it. Hey, that wasn't a new stealth bomber, that was probably aliens. While it may have confused the Soviets, it was also a deliberate attempt to mislead the voters. I'm not a constitutional expert but seems to me the one thing that ought to carry the severest penalty is government officials in a democracy deliberately trying to mislead the public about critical issues.
And then we have them pawning their B.S. off on mentally ill people. Nice. Very classy.
UFOs tell us a lot more about ourselves than they do anything from another planet. Unfortunately, much of what they tell us is rather unpleasant.
Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's my tin-foil-hat theory on UFO's. The whole idea of a UFOs and flying saucers was a kooky ass idea from the US government to spook the Soviets into thinking, the US actually had in their possessions aliens, and futuristic alien technology. It is too coincidental the first reports of flying saucers came in the late 40s. When the cold war first started to heat up. I think the Soviets actually bought it up and the…
UFOs predate the cold war; the "flying saucer" image is from that time, but that's a time when advantages of flying saucers were being discussed and experiments being tried.
The "airship sightings" are especially fun(ny).