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From: Gary Alevy <galevy@pipeline.com> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 00:12:02 -0500 Fwd Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 09:33:16 -0500 Subject: The State of Ufology Yesterday Below are the 14 questions Donald Keyhoe wanted answered by Edward Ruppelt before a Senate investigation Committee. The answers Keyhoe provided are from the record of Ruppelt's written and public statements. Is it any wonder Ruppelt never got to testify? All of this was on the record over 40 years ago. It certainly makes one wonder what goal there is in the continued piling up of sighting reports by individuals and UFO organizations. Gary Alevy Below quoted from Donald Keyhoe's "Flying Saucers Top Secret", 1960. "Ruppelt was already on record, and any variation from his published statements of fact-because of Air Force pressure - would certainly backfire. To estimate the impact of Ruppelt's appearance at a hearing, I had listed fourteen questions a Congressional committee was certain to ask him, with the exact answers he had already stated: Q. Were you ever told to hide the truth from the public? A. Yes. I was continually being told to "tell them about the sighting reports we've solved-don't mention the unknowns." (Page 89, Captain Ruppelt's published 'Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.") Q. Do you mean the Air Force policy was to explain away the sightings, regardless of the facts? A. After the Air Force order of February 11, 1949, which renamed the project as "Grudge," everything was evaluated on the premise that UFOs couldn't exist. No matter what you see or hear, don't believe it (page 87) . Q. Does that policy exist now? A. There have been definite indications that there is a movement afoot to get Project Blue Book to swing back to the old Project Grudge philosophy of analyzing UFO reports -to write them all off, regardless (p. 315), Some good reports have come in and the Air Force is sitting on them (p. 312). Q. Have any experienced Air Force investigators opposed this policy? A. Yes. Some were "purged" because they had refused to change their original opinions about UFOs (p. 87), Q. Do you personally consider any UFO reports as serious evidence? A. Yes. Many reports are made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they're looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they're still unknowns (p. 3 14). In a full answer to this question, Ruppelt could cite scores of unsolved reports he had listed, from official records: detailed visual, radar and photographic evidence from Service and airline pilots, White Sands missile trackers, airport-tower operators, Weather Bureau observers, balloon experts and other technically trained persons. The photographic evidence would include gun-camera and other motion-picture films showing UFOs moving at speeds far beyond any our planes had achieved. Q. Did the Air Force ever conclude that the UFOs are real? A. Yes, in a confidential letter ATIC told the commanding general of the then Army Air Forces that the "reported phenomena were real." This letter was sent by ATIC on Sept. 23, 1947. The only problem that confronted the people at ATIC was, "Were the UFOs of Russian or interplanetary origin?" (pages 31-32) . Q. Do you know of any high Air Force officers or Project scientists who accepted the second explanation? A. One group in Intelligence circles thought the UFOs were interplanetary spaceships. They ranged down from generals and top-grade scientists (p. 84). And "maybe they're interplanetary"-with the "maybe" bordering on "they are" - was the personal opinion of several very high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, so high that their personal opinion was almost policy (pages 177-8) . Q. Didn't any of these people attempt to tell the public their conclusions? A. There were two factions. One believed the spaceship answer but felt we should clamp down on information until we had all the answers. Another group favored giving more facts to the public, including the best cases, the unsolved movies of UFOs, and the Air Force conclusions. A press showing of the "Tremonton" UFO movie-which the Navy analysts said showed unknown objects under intelligent control - was planned early in '53 (pages 202-3; 286-90; 294; 297). Q. What happened to this plan? A. A new publicity policy went into effect -- don't say anything (p. 315). Q. Are we to understand that the Air Force has officially -that is, publicly-explained away UFO sightings which they actually were seriously investigating? A. In 1952, the press was led to believe the famous Washington Airport radar-visual sightings were only weather Phenomena. Actually, they're still carried as unknowns. The press conference did take the pressure off Project Blue Book -but behind the scenes it was only the signal for an all-out drive to find out more about the UFOs (pages 211-26; 229). Q. The Air Force insists that its Special Blue Book Re. port 14 is proof that UFOs don't exist. What do you think of this? A. That report was a shock to me. I was the one that had the IBM system tried out. It didn't prove a thing, and I had written it off as worthless before I left the Project. . . . Also, this report was drawn up in 1953, yet the Air Force released it as the latest hot dope in October, 1955. (Statement by Captain Ruppelt to Mr. Max Miller, for Saucers magazine; copy at NICAP, confirmed by Ruppelt.) Q. If the "flying saucers" are real, do you personally believe they could be interplanetary? A. If they are real there is no other alternative, staggering as the implications may be. (Statement in True magazine, April, 1954.) Q. Has there ever been any official conclusion as to what the UFOs are? A. In 1948 ATIC sent the Air Force Commanding General an Estimate of the Situation. It was a black-cover document, stamped TOP SECRET (p. 62) . Q. What was the ATIC conclusion? A. That the UFOs were interplanetary (p. 62). 2 [2 This was based on the ATIC analysis of unexplainable reports from scientists, pilots and other trained observers] Besides these answers, other significant Ruppelt statements were on record in his letters to me. If he were called by a Congressional committee, other Air Force officers who knew of the cover-up were almost sure to be summoned. As long as this threat to the secrecy existed, attempts to discredit or silence Ruppelt would continue. So far, they hadn't worked."
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