* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ * * ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ * L I T E R A R Y F R E E W A R E * * * * F O U N D A T I O N * ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ * * ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * -=ð P R O U D L Y í P R E S E N T S ð=- From: germannvh@aol.com (Germannvh) Date: 17 Oct 95 23:19:57 GMT Newsgroups: alt.paranet.ufo (VG) The Air Force, BlueBook and Dr. McDonald Val Germann Columbia, Missouri ** The following is excerpted and edited from a speech McDonald gave to the American Meterological Society in 1966. Once again we see what a ball of fire this guy was and how very, very uneasy he must have been making everyone who had anything to do with UFOs on an "official" level at that time -- Hynek especially. I have separated each sentence of one paragraph from McDonald's speech. Each one lands like a 500-pound aerial bomb: My study of past official Air Force investigations (Project Bluebook) leads me to describe them as completely superficial. They have, for at least the past dozen years, been carried out at a very low level of scientific competence. . . . . .as a very low-priority task (one of about 200 within the Foreign Technology Division, Wright-Patterson AFB). Officially released "explanations" of important UFO sightings have often been almost absurdly erroneous. In only a few instances has there been any on-the-spot field investigation by Bluebook personnel, and much of that has been quite superficial. On the other hand, official press releases, statements to Congress, etc., have conveyed an impression of expertise and investigative thoroughness. . . . . .that has led both the public and the scientific community at large to accept the conclusion that no significant scientific problem exists with respect to UFOs. A part of the background to the manner in which Bluebook has handled the UFO problem in the past dozen years is to be found in the complete report of the 1953 Robertson Panel. That scientific panel concluded that there was no strong evidence of any hostile UFO action. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), represented at the policy-drafting sessions. . . So many UFO reports were flooding into air bases throughout the country and other parts of the world in the summer of 1952 that the CIA regarded them as creating a national security problem. In event of enemy attack on the country, the clogging of military intelligence channels with large numbers of reports of the evidently non-hostile UFOs was regarded as an unacceptable risk. . . .January 1953, was followed by the promulgation, in August 1953, of Air Force Regulation (AFR) 200-2, which produced a sharp drop-off in public reporting of Air Force UFO sightings, by forbidding release, at air-base level, of any information on sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena. All sighting reports were to be funneled through Project Bluebook, where they have been largely categorized as conventional objects with little attention to scientific considerations. The strictures implicit in AFR 200-2 were made binding with promulgation of JANAP-146, which made any such public release of UFO information at air-base or local-command level (by any of the military services and, under certain circumstances, commercial airlines) a crime punishable with fines up to $10,000 and imprisonment up to 10 years. These regulations have not only cut off almost all useful reports from military pilots, tower operators, and ground crews, but even more serious from a scientific viewpoint has been their drastic effect on non-availability of military radar data on UFOs. Prior to 1953, many significant UFO radar sightings were disclosed. Since then, military radar sightings have been scientifically compromised by confusing denials and allusions to "weather inversions" or "electronic malfunctions" whenever word of radar observations accidentally leaked out in the midst of a UFO episode. AFR 200-2 contained the specific admonishment that "Air Force activities must reduce the percentage of unidentifieds to the minimum." This has been achieved. *** Origin: Paranet(sm) . The world's leading UFO Investigative News Network (1:30163/150)