a

By JOHN MOSS

top team of American scien-
ts, after an 18-month study
in nced by U.S. Air Force
ts of $500,000, has shot
own most of the _ flying
aucer myths that have hovered
yer the American scene for the
mast 20 years.
_Hundreds of cases have been
by University of Colo-
ado experts in the past two
years during the first thorough
investigation of phenomena that
ip to five million Americans
have claimed to have seen.
» Reports that vary from stories
Venusians landing in the Cali-
nian desert to allegations of
oreign aircraft of previously
inknown design flying in U.S.
lir space have been analyzed in
a 360,000-word document.
Project director was Dr. Ed-
vard Condon, the distinguished
strophysicist at the University
ff Colorado in Boulder, former
resident of both the American
Association for the Advance-
nent of Science and of the Ame-
i Physical Society.
He was director of the Nation-
| Bureau of Standards and is
rrently president of the So-
tiety for Social Responsibility
Science.
He crossed with the late Sena-
x Joseph McCarthy in the
yommittee on Un-American Ac-
Wities and Richard Nixon tried
© smear him for his liberal be;

Despite its size, the report was
fushed out in the United States
fore Nixon’s inauguration as
resident, surely a comment on
he cold-war attitudes that have
lampered a truly scientific study
unidentified flying objects
U Os).
' Dr. Condon’s main conclusion
=that there is no scientific or
Miiltary justification for further
idy of flying saucers as such
=—will upset the UFO enthusi-

But the Colorado finding has
been backed by a distinguished
Manel of the National Academy
Sciences (equivalent to our
byal Society).

The Colorado team puts bang
the first page of its report:
"Our general conclusion is that
lothing has come from the study
Mf UFOs in the past 21 years

Gregory Farakos

regory Farakos, a leader of
banned Greek Communist
arty, and 30 other alleged Party
embers are to be hauled before
he Athens special military court
b.this month..or;early jnext,

that has added to scientific
knowledge.

“Careful consideration of the
record as it is now available to
us leads us to conclude that fur-
ther intensive study of UFOs
probably cannot be justified in
the expectation that science will
be advanced thereby.”

The report adds that “the least
likely explanation of UFOs is
the hypothesis of extra-terri-
torial visitations by intelligent
beings.”

In a paragraph that ought to
put paid to cold-war saucer
stories, the report roundly
states: “The history of the past
21 years has repeatedly led air
force officers to the conclusion
that none of the things seen, or
thought to have been seen, which
pass by the name of UFO re-
ports, constituted any hazard or
threat to national security.”

The Colorado team, while in-

vestigating, was met with the
double-bluff theory that the
whole project was a cover to
divert attention from the real na-
ture of UFOs.
’ Dr. Condon was even asked
by one New York magazine if
his study was really a top secret
project MIDF (Martian Invasion
Defense Program) to prepare
Americans for men from Mars
(shades of the famous Orson
Welles 1938 radio program when
thousands of listeners to a sci-
ence-fiction program thought the
Martians were really landing) .

So it is too much to hope that
the efforts of Colorado's experts
in radar, plasma physics, mir-
ages, photography and percep-
tion problems, who flew to the
scene of reported sightings, will
have laid flying saucers to rest.

But the 59 detailed case his-
tories presented are a sufficient
cross-section to explain not only
fakes, but how the bewildering
variety of natural events can
fool, especially untrained, obser-
vers.

The phrase “flying saucers”
entered the language soon after
June 24, 1947, when Kenneth
Arnold, a businessman of Boise,
Idaho, flying a private plane near
Mount Rainier, Washington, re-
ported seeing objects flying in a
line which looked “like pie-plates
skipping over the water.”

Plenty of UFOs have been re-

Greek

faces

Athens sources said last week.

They will be tried under a
1947 law which carries a pos-
sible death sentence.

Gregory Farakos, a World
War II Resistance hero, was ar-
rested by the Greek junta last
November and was held for over
three months in the torture cells
of the Security Police headquar-
ters at Bouboulinas Street, Ath-
ens.

He has now been moved to
Averof Prison in Athens.

He and the other 30 have been
charged with plotting to over-
throw the junta, the Athens
sources said. Gregory Farakos
has been a member of the Greek
Communist Party’s central com-

,Tnittee for eight years, and of its .

FLYING SAUCER STORIES LAID T0 REST:

UR ARE THEY!

FUVUUCASEODANAGEEOAUANESUUAOESOAAOOEDAUEOOGOCUGEEOSOOOANEOEAEAUUOUUEEREE POOUNAOSEAAUCEEOOAOOOCOOOOEOOSEUOGEOEUOSOSOOOEOEUVOOOSUOOEOOHUOOOSUONOOENEDS

ported before in history. In 1270,
Gervase of Tillbury wrote in his
book “Otto Imperialia” about an
aerial craft that caught its an-
chor in a Bristol church steeple,
and an occupant of the ship
scampered down a ladder to free
it.

The man was stoned by a
crowd and asphyxiated in the
atmosphere. The “demon’s” bo-
dy was said to have been burned.

The experience of the Brazi-
lian Antonio Villas-Boas, who
left his plough on October 14,
1957, when a UFO shaped like
an elongated egg landed near by
was happier.

According to Coral Lorenzen,
who wrote it up in “The Great
Flying Saucer Hoax,” a title
changed in paperback to “Flying

leader
death |

political committee since last
year.

Mr. Tony Ambatielos, repre-
sentative of the anti-junta Pat-
riotic Front, said in London this
week:

“Gregory Farakos and his
comrades are to be charged with
violation of Decree Law 509 of
1947 against Communism but, in
fact, their offence is that they
struggled against the fascist mili-
tary dictatorship.

“The junta’s aim is obvious.
They are in a hurry to do away
with their political opponents,
and hope thus to put a stop to
the rising tide of resistance.

“Gregory Farakos and_ his
comrades must be saved. And
people the world over must be-
gin now, to. raise, their voices.”

Saucers: the Startling Evidence
of the Invasion from Outer
Space,” Mr. Villas-Boas was se-
duced by a small but shapely
visitor in the ship.

He was first stripped and sub-
mitted to various medical pro-
cedures by. “men” flyers before
the small but well-built and
completely nude woman walked
in.

She held herself close and rub-
bed her head against his face.
She only communicated, like the
“men,” in grunts and howls,
which nearly spoiled the other-
wise pleasant togetherness.
Eventually Mr. Villa-Boas’ cloth-
es were returned and he was
shown the door of the saucer,
which then took off vertically.

The problem of contact with
extra-terrestial beings is put
clearly by the famous astronom-
er Gerard Kuiper: “The problem
is more difficult than finding a
needle in a haystack; it is find-
ing a piece of extra-terrestial hay
in a terrestial haystack, often on
the basis of reports of believers
in extra-terrestial hay.”

Prof. Kuiper was observing
Venus in daytime with an 82-
inch telescope at the McDonald
Observatory when he was amaz-
ed to see a number of star-like
objects almost as bright as
Venus.

A quick check with the tele-
scope finders discovered that the
objects were moving with the
wind a few hundred feet above
the observatory—and turned out
to be spiders floating over the
Rocky Mountains in their webs
and illuminated by the sun.

Correct perception of the many
natural phenomena is revealed as
the answer to many UFOs. Ob-
servers do not recognize Venus
and other planets for what they
are, let alone more exotic phe-
nomena like mirages, dust devils,
high clouds, reflections, balloons,
rocket and aircraft trails, and

‘the rare ball-lightning that has

been known to invade an aircraft
cabin.

A plastic bag only 2 feet by
3 feet was identified as a UFO,
75 feet long, with lights brighter
than those of a car. True, teen-
agers had put balsa cross-mem-
bers supporting six candles in it
and a cup of lighted fluid.

Regular beeping noises turn-
ed out to be owls, and hunters
were convinced a UFO was fol-
lowing them when a_ hoaxing
light aircraft pilot with a search-
light turned it on them.

A 5 inch metal object found
on a Colorado lawn near a burn-
ed spot of its own size was
thought to have fallen from out-
er space in the night. But it
turned out to be a muffler from
a power-mower.

Prof. R. V. Jones, FRS, of
Aberdeen University and former
director of an intelligence, tells
the tale of how “Russian mis-
siles” over Sweden turned out to
be lumps of coke.

Prof. Jones points out that
tensions of war (he might have
added cold war) provide a fer-
tile ground for the conception
of apparitions.

Of course, Dr..Condon’s team
members were puzzled by a
small residue of observations
that they could not explain.

In that sense UFOs still re-
main, and Dr. Condon suggests
that any competent scientist who
comes up with a clearly defined
specific proposal for study
should be supported.

But his team has taken the
hysteria out of the flying saucer
—at a cost\of $500,000. Like a
fleeting image across the sky,
the report only reveals a glimpse
of the pressures in high places
that there must have been for
and against the study.

As the current Nature says,
the report is a sledgehammer to
crack a nut but “the nuts will
be quite immune to its impact.”
j —Morning Star

} Seo

2 RE Ce A a NO te oN,

» PACIFIC TRIBUNE MARCH,2|1,, 1969-—Page 21